Storm+Kafka not parallelizing as expected - apache-kafka

Question

We are having an issue regarding parallelism of tasks inside a single topology. We cannot manage to get a good, fluent processing rate.
We are using Kafka and Storm to build a system with different topologies, where data is processed following a chain of topologies connected using Kafka topics.
We are using Kafka 1.0.0 and Storm 1.2.1.
The load is small in number of messages, about 2000 per day, however each task can take quite some time. One topology in particular can take a variable amount of time to process each task, usually between 1 and 20 minutes. If processed sequentially, the throughput is not enough to process all incoming messages. All topologies and Kafka system are installed in a single machine (16 cores, 16 GB of RAM).
As messages are independent and can be processed in parallel, we are trying to use Storm concurrent capabilities to improve the throughput.
For that the topology has been configured as follows:
4 workers
parallelism hint set to 10
Message size when reading from Kafka large enough to read about 8 tasks in each message.
Kafka topics use replication-factor = 1 and partitions = 10.
With this configuration, we observe the following behavior in this topology.
About 7-8 tasks are read in a single batch from Kafka by the Storm topology (task size is not fixed), max message size of 128 kB.
About 4-5 task are computed concurrently. Work is more-or-less evenly distributed among workers. Some workers take 1 task, others take 2 and process them concurrently.
As tasks are being finished, the remaining tasks start.
A starvation problem is reached when only 1-2 tasks remain to be processed. Other workers wait idle until all tasks are finished.
When all tasks are finished, the message is confirmed and sent to the next topology.
A new batch is read from Kafka and the process starts again.
We have two main issues. First, even with 4 workers and 10 parallelism hint, only 4-5 tasks are started. Second, no more batches are started while there is work pending, even if it is just 1 task.
It is not a problem of not having enough work to do, as we tried inserting 2000 tasks at the beginning, so there is plenty of work to do.
We have tried to increase the parameter "maxSpoutsPending", expecting that the topology would read more batches and queue them at the same time, but it seems they are being pipelined internally, and not processed concurrently.
Topology is created using the following code:
private static StormTopology buildTopologyOD() {
//This is the marker interface BrokerHosts.
BrokerHosts hosts = new ZkHosts(configuration.getProperty(ZKHOSTS));
TridentKafkaConfig tridentConfigCorrelation = new TridentKafkaConfig(hosts, configuration.getProperty(TOPIC_FROM_CORRELATOR_NAME));
tridentConfigCorrelation.scheme = new RawMultiScheme();
tridentConfigCorrelation.fetchSizeBytes = Integer.parseInt(configuration.getProperty(MAX_SIZE_BYTES_CORRELATED_STREAM));
OpaqueTridentKafkaSpout spoutCorrelator = new OpaqueTridentKafkaSpout(tridentConfigCorrelation);
TridentTopology topology = new TridentTopology();
Stream existingObject = topology.newStream("kafka_spout_od1", spoutCorrelator)
.shuffle()
.each(new Fields("bytes"), new ProcessTask(), new Fields(RESULT_FIELD, OBJECT_FIELD))
.parallelismHint(Integer.parseInt(configuration.getProperty(PARALLELISM_HINT)));
//Create a state Factory to produce outputs to kafka topics.
TridentKafkaStateFactory stateFactory = new TridentKafkaStateFactory()
.withProducerProperties(kafkaProperties)
.withKafkaTopicSelector(new ODTopicSelector())
.withTridentTupleToKafkaMapper(new ODTupleToKafkaMapper());
existingObject.partitionPersist(stateFactory, new Fields(RESULT_FIELD, OBJECT_FIELD), new TridentKafkaUpdater(), new Fields(OBJECT_FIELD));
return topology.build();
}
and config created as:
private static Config createConfig(boolean local) {
Config conf = new Config();
conf.setMaxSpoutPending(1); // Also tried 2..6
conf.setNumWorkers(4);
return conf;
}
Is there anything we can do to improve the performance, either by increasing the number of parallel tasks or/and avoiding starvation while finishing to process a batch?

Answer 1

I found an old post on storm-users by Nathan Marz regarding setting parallelism for Trident:
I recommend using the "name" function to name portions of your stream
so that the UI shows you what bolts correspond to what sections.
Trident packs operations into as few bolts as possible. In addition,
it never repartitions your stream unless you've done an operation
that explicitly involves a repartitioning (e.g. shuffle, groupBy,
partitionBy, global aggregation, etc). This property of Trident
ensures that you can control the ordering/semi-ordering of how things
are processed. So in this case, everything before the groupBy has to
have the same parallelism or else Trident would have to repartition
the stream. And since you didn't say you wanted the stream
repartitioned, it can't do that. You can get a different parallelism
for the spout vs. the each's following by introducing a repartitioning
operation, like so:
stream.parallelismHint(1).shuffle().each(…).each(…).parallelismHint(3).groupBy(…);
I think you might want to set parallelismHint for your spout as well as your .each.
Regarding processing multiple batches concurrently, you are right that that is what maxSpoutPending is for in Trident. Try checking in Storm UI that your max spout pending value is actually picked up. Also try enabling debug logging for the MasterBatchCoordinator. You should be able to tell from that logging whether multiple batches are in flight at the same time or not.
When you say that multiple batches are not processed concurrently, do you mean by ProcessTask? Keep in mind that one of the properties of Trident is that state updates are ordered with regard to batches. If you have e.g. maxSpoutPending=3 and batch 1, 2 and 3 in flight, Trident won't emit more batches for processing until batch 1 is written, at which point it'll emit one more. So slow batches can block emitting more, even if 2 and 3 are fully processed, they have to wait for 1 to finish and get written.
If you don't need the batching and ordering behavior of Trident, you could try regular Storm instead.
More of a side note, but you might want to consider migrating off storm-kafka to storm-kafka-client. It's not important for this question, but you won't be able to upgrade to Kafka 2.x without doing it, and it's easier before you get a bunch of state to migrate.