Dynamic Resource Pool Settings

Use the following settings to configure your dynamic resource pools for Impala.

Max Memory
Maximum amount of aggregate memory available across the cluster to all queries executing in this pool. This should be a portion of the aggregate configured memory for Impala daemons, which will be shown in the settings dialog next to this option for convenience. Setting this to a non-zero value enables memory based admission control.

Impala determines the expected maximum memory used by all queries in the pool and holds back any further queries that would result in Max Memory being exceeded.

If you specify Max Memory, you should specify the amount of memory to allocate to each query in this pool. You can do this in two ways:

  • By setting Maximum Query Memory Limit and Minimum Query Memory Limit. Setting them gives Impala flexibility to set aside more memory to queries that are expected to be memory-hungry.
  • By setting Default Query Memory Limit to the exact amount of memory that Impala should set aside for queries in that pool.

Note that if you do not set any of the above options, or set Default Query Memory Limit to 0, Impala will rely entirely on memory estimates to determine how much memory to set aside for each query. This is not recommended because it can result in queries not running or being starved for memory if the estimates are inaccurate.

For example, consider the following scenario:
  • The cluster is running impalad daemons on five hosts.
  • A dynamic resource pool has Max Memory set to 100 GB.
  • The Maximum Query Memory Limit for the pool is 10 GB and Minimum Query Memory Limit is 2 GB. Therefore, any query running in this pool could use up to 50 GB of memory (Maximum Query Memory Limit * number of Impala nodes).
  • Impala will run varying numbers of queries concurrently because queries may be given memory limits anywhere between 2 GB and 10 GB, depending on the estimated memory requirements. For example, Impala may run up to 10 small queries with 2 GB memory limits or two large queries with 10 GB memory limits because that is what will fit in the 100 GB cluster-wide limit when executing on five hosts.
  • The executing queries may use less memory than the per-host memory limit or the Max Memory cluster-wide limit if they do not need that much memory. In general this is not a problem so long as you are able to run enough queries concurrently to meet your needs.
Minimum Query Memory Limit and Maximum Query Memory Limit
These two options determine the minimum and maximum per-host memory limit that will be chosen by Impala Admission control for queries in this resource pool. If set, Impala admission control will choose a memory limit between the minimum and maximum value based on the per-host memory estimate for the query. The memory limit chosen determines the amount of memory that Impala admission control will set aside for this query on each host that the query is running on. The aggregate memory across all of the hosts that the query is running on is counted against the pool’s Max Memory.

Minimum Query Memory Limit must be less than or equal to Maximum Query Memory Limit and Max Memory.

You can override Impala’s choice of memory limit by setting the MEM_LIMIT query option. If the Clamp MEM_LIMIT Query Option is selected and the user sets MEM_LIMIT to a value that is outside of the range specified by these two options, then the effective memory limit will be either the minimum or maximum, depending on whether MEM_LIMIT is lower than or higher than the range.
Max Running Queries

Maximum number of concurrently running queries in this pool. The default value is unlimited.

The maximum number of queries that can run concurrently in this pool. The default value is unlimited. Any queries for this pool that exceed Max Running Queries are added to the admission control queue until other queries finish. You can use Max Running Queries in the early stages of resource management, when you do not have extensive data about query memory usage, to determine if the cluster performs better overall if throttling is applied to Impala queries.

For a workload with many small queries, you typically specify a high value for this setting, or leave the default setting of unlimited. For a workload with expensive queries, where some number of concurrent queries saturate the memory, I/O, CPU, or network capacity of the cluster, set the value low enough that the cluster resources are not overcommitted for Impala.

Once you have enabled memory-based admission control using other pool settings, you can still use Max Running Queries as a safeguard. If queries exceed either the total estimated memory or the maximum number of concurrent queries, they are added to the queue.

Max Queued Queries
Maximum number of queries that can be queued in this pool. The default value is 200. (optional)
Queue Timeout
The amount of time, in milliseconds, that a query waits in the admission control queue for this pool before being canceled. The default value is 60,000 milliseconds.
It the following cases, Queue Timeout is not significant, and you can specify a high value to avoid canceling queries unexpectedly:
  • In a low-concurrency workload where few or no queries are queued
  • In an environment without a strict SLA, where it does not matter if queries occasionally take longer than usual because they are held in admission control
You might also need to increase the value to use Impala with some business intelligence tools that have their own timeout intervals for queries.

In a high-concurrency workload, especially for queries with a tight SLA, long wait times in admission control can cause a serious problem. For example, if a query needs to run in 10 seconds, and you have tuned it so that it runs in 8 seconds, it violates its SLA if it waits in the admission control queue longer than 2 seconds. In a case like this, set a low timeout value and monitor how many queries are cancelled because of timeouts. This technique helps you to discover capacity, tuning, and scaling problems early, and helps avoid wasting resources by running expensive queries that have already missed their SLA.

If you identify some queries that can have a high timeout value, and others that benefit from a low timeout value, you can create separate pools with different values for this setting.

Clamp MEM_LIMIT Query Option
If this field is not selected, the MEM_LIMIT query option will not be bounded by the Maximum Query Memory Limit and the Minimum Query Memory Limit values specified for this resource pool. By default, this field is selected. The field is disabled if both Minimum Query Memory Limit and Maximum Query Memory Limit are not set.