Logical replication

Kudu replicates operations, not on-disk data. This is referred to as logical replication, as opposed to physical replication.

Logical replication has several advantages:

• Although inserts and updates transmit data over the network, deletes do not need to move any data. The delete operation is sent to each tablet server, which performs the delete locally.
• Physical operations, such as compaction, do not need to transmit the data over the network in Kudu. This is different from storage systems that use HDFS, where the blocks need to be transmitted over the network to fulfill the required number of replicas.
• Tablets do not need to perform compactions at the same time or on the same schedule. They do not even need to remain in sync on the physical storage layer. This decreases the chances of all tablet servers experiencing high latency at the same time, due to compactions or heavy write loads.