Limiting the speed of compactions

You can limit the speed at which HBase compactions run, by configuring hbase.regionserver.throughput.controller and its related settings.

The default controller is org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.throttle.PressureAwareCompactionThroughputController, which uses the following algorithm:
  • If compaction pressure is greater than 1.0, there is no speed limitation.
  • In off-peak hours, use a fixed throughput limitation, configured using hbase.hstore.compaction.throughput.offpeak, hbase.offpeak.start.hour, and hbase.offpeak.end.hour.
  • In normal hours, the max throughput is tuned between hbase.hstore.compaction.throughput.higher.bound and hbase.hstore.compaction.throughput.lower.bound (which default to 20 MB/sec and 10 MB/sec respectively), using the following formula, where compactionPressure is between 0.0 and 1.0. The compactionPressure refers to the number of store files that require compaction.
    lower + (higher - lower) * compactionPressure

To disable compaction speed limits, set hbase.regionserver.throughput.controller to org.apache.hadoop.hbase.regionserver.throttle.NoLimitThroughputController.