Known Issues in Apache HBase

This topic describes known issues and workarounds for using HBase in this release of Cloudera Runtime.

IntegrationTestReplication fails if replication does not finish before the verify phase begins

During IntegrationTestReplication, if the verify phase starts before the replication phase finishes, the test will fail because the target cluster does not contain all of the data. If the HBase services in the target cluster does not have enough memory, long garbage-collection pauses might occur.

Workaround: Use the -t flag to set the timeout value before starting verification.

HDFS encryption with HBase

Cloudera has tested the performance impact of using HDFS encryption with HBase. The overall overhead of HDFS encryption on HBase performance is in the range of 3 to 4% for both read and update workloads. Scan performance has not been thoroughly tested.

AccessController postOperation problems in asynchronous operations

When security and Access Control are enabled, the following problems occur:

If a Delete Table fails for a reason other than missing permissions, the access rights are removed but the table may still exist and may be used again.
If hbaseAdmin.modifyTable() is used to delete column families, the rights are not removed from the Access Control List (ACL) table. The portOperation is implemented only for postDeleteColumn().
If Create Table fails, full rights for that table persist for the user who attempted to create it. If another user later succeeds in creating the table, the user who made the failed attempt still has the full rights.

Apache Issue: HBASE-6992

Bulk load is not supported when the source is the local HDFS: The bulk load feature (the completebulkload command) is not supported when the source is the local HDFS and the target is an object store, such as S3/ABFS.; Workaround: Use distcp to move the HFiles from HDFS to S3 and then run bulk load from S3 to S3.; Apache Issue: N/A

Storing Medium Objects (MOBs) in HBase is currently not supported: Storing MOBs in HBase relies on bulk loading files, and this is not currently supported when HBase is configured to use cloud storage (S3).; Workaround: N/A; Apache Issue: N/A

Technical Service Bulletins

TSB 2021-494: Accumulated WAL Files Cannot be Cleaned up When Using Phoenix Secondary Global Indexes

The Write-ahead-log (WAL) files for Phoenix tables that have secondary global indexes defined on them, cannot be automatically cleaned up by HBase, leading to excess storage usage and possible error due to filling up the storage. Accumulated WAL files can lead to lengthy restart times as they must all be played back to ensure no dataloss occurs on restart. This can have follow-on HDFS impact if the number of WAL files overwhelm HDFS Name Node.

Upstream JIRA

Knowledge article

For the latest update on this issue see the corresponding Knowledge article: TSB 2021-494: Accumulated WAL Files Cannot be Cleaned up When Using Phoenix Secondary Global Indexes

TSB 2021-453: Snapshot and cloned table corruption when original table is deleted: HBASE-25206 can cause data loss either through corrupting an existing hbase snapshot or destroying data that backs a clone of a previous snapshot.
Upstream JIRA: HBASE-25206
Knowledge article: For the latest update on this issue see the corresponding Knowledge article: TSB 2021-453: HBASE-25206 "snapshot and cloned table corruption when original table is deleted".

TSB 2021-463: Snapshot and cloned table corruption when original table is deleted

The HDFS short-circuit setting dfs.client.read.shortcircuit is overwritten to disabled by hbase-default.xml. HDFS short-circuit reads bypass access to data in HDFS by using a domain socket (file) instead of a network socket. This alleviates the overhead of TCP to read data from HDFS which can have a meaningful improvement on HBase performance (as high as 30-40%).

Users can restore short-circuit reads by explicitly setting dfs.client.read.shortcircuit in HBase configuration via the configuration management tool for their product (e.g. Cloudera Manager or Ambari).

Knowledge article

For the latest update on this issue see the corresponding Knowledge article: TSB 2021-463: HBase Performance Issue .

TSB 2021-506: Active HBase MOB files can be removed

Actively used MOB files can be deleted by MobFileCleanerChore due to incorrect serialization of reference file names. This is causing data loss on MOB-enabled tables.

Upstream JIRA

Knowledge article

For the latest update on this issue see the corresponding Knowledge article: TSB 2021-506: Active HBase MOB files can be removed

TSB 2022-569: HBase normalizer can cause table inconsistencies by merging non-adjacent regions: The normalizer in HBase is a background job responsible for splitting or merging HBase regions to optimize the number of regions and the distribution of the size of the regions in HBase tables. Due to the bug described in HBASE-24376, the normalizer can cause region inconsistencies (region overlaps/holes) by merging non-adjacent regions.
Upstream JIRA: HBASE-24376
Knowledge article: For the latest update on this issue, see the corresponding Knowledge article: TSB 2022-569: HBase normalizer can cause table inconsistencies by merging non-adjacent regions