Deploy and use shared-data StarRocks

This topic describes how to deploy and use a shared-data StarRocks cluster.

The shared-data StarRocks cluster is specifically engineered for the cloud on the premise of separation of storage and compute. It allows data to be stored in object storage that is compatible with the S3 protocol (for example, AWS S3 and MinIO). You can achieve not only cheaper storage and better resource isolation, but elastic scalability for your cluster. The query performance of the shared-data StarRocks cluster aligns with that of a classic cluster in case of local cache hits.

Compared to the classic StarRocks architecture, separation of storage and compute offers a wide range of benefits. By decoupling these components, StarRocks provides:

• Inexpensive and seamlessly scalable storage.
• Elastic scalable compute. Because data is no longer stored in BE nodes, scaling can be done without data migration or shuffling across nodes.
• Local disk cache for hot data to boost query performance.
• Adjustable time-to-live (TTL) for cached hot data. StarRocks automatically removes the expired cached data to save the local disk space.
• Asynchronous data ingestion into object storage, allowing a significant improvement in loading performance.

The architecture of the shared-data StarRocks cluster is as follows:

This feature is supported from v3.0.

Deploy a shared-data StarRocks cluster

The deployment of a shared-data StarRocks cluster is similar to that of a classic StarRocks cluster. The only difference is the parameters in the configuration files of FE and BE fe.conf and be.conf. This section only lists the FE and BE configuration items you need to add to the configuration files when you deploy a shared-data StarRocks cluster. For detailed instructions on deploying a StarRocks cluster, see Deploy StarRocks.

Configure FE nodes for shared-data StarRocks

Before starting FEs, add the following configuration items in the FE configuration file fe.conf:

• If you use AWS S3

  • If you use the default authentication credential of AWS SDK to access S3, add the following configuration items:

    run_mode = shared_data
    cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
    cloud_native_storage_type = S3
    aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
    aws_s3_region = <region>
    aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
    aws_s3_use_aws_sdk_default_behavior = true

  • If you use IAM user-based credential (Access Key and Secret Key) to access S3, add the following configuration items:

    run_mode = shared_data
    cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
    cloud_native_storage_type = S3
    aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
    aws_s3_region = <region>
    aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
    aws_s3_access_key = <access_key>
    aws_s3_secret_key = <secret_key>

  • If you use Instance Profile to access S3, add the following configuration items:

    run_mode = shared_data
    cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
    cloud_native_storage_type = S3
    aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
    aws_s3_region = <region>
    aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
    aws_s3_use_instance_profile = true

  • If you use Assumed Role to access S3, add the following configuration items:

    run_mode = shared_data
    cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
    cloud_native_storage_type = S3
    aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
    aws_s3_region = <region>
    aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
    aws_s3_use_instance_profile = true
    aws_s3_iam_role_arn = <role_arn>

  • If you use Assumed Role to access S3 from an external AWS account, add the following configuration items:

    run_mode = shared_data
    cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
    cloud_native_storage_type = S3
    aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
    aws_s3_region = <region>
    aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
    aws_s3_use_instance_profile = true
    aws_s3_iam_role_arn = <role_arn>
    aws_s3_external_id = <external_id>

• If you use GCP Cloud Storage:

  run_mode = shared_data
  cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
  cloud_native_storage_type = S3
  aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
  
  # For example: us-east-1
  aws_s3_region = <region>
  
  # For example: https://storage.googleapis.com
  aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
  
  aws_s3_access_key = <access_key>
  aws_s3_secret_key = <secret_key>

• If you use MinIO:

  run_mode = shared_data
  cloud_native_meta_port = <meta_port>
  cloud_native_storage_type = S3
  aws_s3_path = <s3_path>
  
  # For example: us-east-1
  aws_s3_region = <region>
  
  # For example: http://172.26.xx.xxx:39000
  aws_s3_endpoint = <endpoint_url>
  
  aws_s3_access_key = <access_key>
  aws_s3_secret_key = <secret_key>

Configure BE nodes for shared-data StarRocks

Before starting BEs, add the following configuration items in the BE configuration file be.conf:

starlet_port = <starlet_port>
storage_root_path = <storage_root_path>

NOTE

The data is cached under the directory <storage_root_path>/starlet_cache.

Use your shared-data StarRocks cluster

The usage of shared-data StarRocks clusters is also similar to that of a classic StarRocks cluster. The only difference is that you must create a special table to use object storage for your data.

Create a table

After connecting to your shared-data StarRocks cluster, create a database and then table in the database. Currently, shared-data StarRocks clusters support the following table types:

• Duplicate Key table
• Aggregate table
• Unique Key table

NOTE

Currently, Primary Key table is not supported on StarRocks shared-data clusters.

The following example creates a database cloud_db and a table detail_demo based on Duplicate Key table type, enables the local disk cache, sets the cache expiration time to 30 days, and disables asynchronous data ingestion into object storage:

CREATE DATABASE cloud_db;
USE cloud_db;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS detail_demo (
    recruit_date  DATE           NOT NULL COMMENT "YYYY-MM-DD",
    region_num    TINYINT        COMMENT "range [-128, 127]",
    num_plate     SMALLINT       COMMENT "range [-32768, 32767] ",
    tel           INT            COMMENT "range [-2147483648, 2147483647]",
    id            BIGINT         COMMENT "range [-2^63 + 1 ~ 2^63 - 1]",
    password      LARGEINT       COMMENT "range [-2^127 + 1 ~ 2^127 - 1]",
    name          CHAR(20)       NOT NULL COMMENT "range char(m),m in (1-255) ",
    profile       VARCHAR(500)   NOT NULL COMMENT "upper limit value 65533 bytes",
    ispass        BOOLEAN        COMMENT "true/false"
)
DUPLICATE KEY(recruit_date, region_num)
DISTRIBUTED BY HASH(recruit_date, region_num) BUCKETS 96
PROPERTIES (
    "enable_storage_cache" = "true",
    "storage_cache_ttl" = "2592000",
    "enable_async_write_back" = "false"
);

In addition to the regular table PROPERTIES, you need to specify the following PROPERTIES when creating a table for shared-data StarRocks cluster:

View table information

You can view the information of tables in a specific database using SHOW PROC "/dbs/<db_id>". See SHOW PROC for more information.

Example:

mysql> SHOW PROC "/dbs/xxxxx";
+---------+-------------+----------+---------------------+--------------+--------+--------------+--------------------------+--------------+---------------+------------------------------+
| TableId | TableName   | IndexNum | PartitionColumnName | PartitionNum | State  | Type         | LastConsistencyCheckTime | ReplicaCount | PartitionType | StoragePath                  |
+---------+-------------+----------+---------------------+--------------+--------+--------------+--------------------------+--------------+---------------+------------------------------+
| 12003   | detail_demo | 1        | NULL                | 1            | NORMAL | CLOUD_NATIVE | NULL                     | 8            | UNPARTITIONED | s3://xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/1/12003/ |
+---------+-------------+----------+---------------------+--------------+--------+--------------+--------------------------+--------------+---------------+------------------------------+

The Type of a table in shared-data StarRocks cluster is CLOUD_NATIVE. In the field StoragePath, StarRocks returns the object storage directory where the table is stored.

Load data into a shared-data StarRocks cluster

Shared-data StarRocks clusters support all loading methods provided by StarRocks. See Overview of data loading for more information.

Query in a shared-data StarRocks cluster

Tables in a shared-data StarRocks cluster support all types of queries provided by StarRocks. See StarRocks SELECT for more information.