wal: reduce in-use bytes in scenarios with many (and possibly large) …

…writes (#562)

* wal: remove reference to logRequest when popping from slice

This allows the GC to collect logRequests that are not in use.

* wal: size batches according to segment size and track WAL queue

Previously, we weren't controlling the total size of WAL entries written at
once to the WAL. The underlying WAL does not rotate a file until after a batch
is written, so could allocate a lot (we've seen >GB in production) for the
commit buffer.

This commit should alleviate in-use bytes for cases where lots of [large]
entries are written.

wal/wal.go

@@ -64,6 +64,7 @@ type fileWALMetrics struct {
 	walRepairs            prometheus.Counter
 	walRepairsLostRecords prometheus.Counter
 	walCloseTimeouts      prometheus.Counter
+	walQueueSize          prometheus.Gauge
 }
 
 const dirPerms = os.FileMode(0o750)
@@ -90,6 +91,10 @@ type FileWAL struct {
 		nextTx uint64
 	}
 
+	// segmentSize indicates what the underlying WAL segment size is. This helps
+	// the run goroutine size batches more or less appropriately.
+	segmentSize int
+
 	cancel       func()
 	shutdownCh   chan struct{}
 	closeTimeout time.Duration
@@ -118,6 +123,10 @@ func (q *logRequestQueue) Pop() any {
 	old := *q
 	n := len(old)
 	x := old[n-1]
+	// Remove this reference to a logRequest since the GC considers the popped
+	// element still accessible otherwise. Since these are sync pooled, we want
+	// to defer object lifetime management to the pool without interfering.
+	old[n-1] = nil
 	*q = old[0 : n-1]
 	return x
 }
@@ -132,7 +141,8 @@ func Open(
 	}
 
 	reg = prometheus.WrapRegistererWithPrefix("frostdb_wal_", reg)
-	logStore, err := wal.Open(path, wal.WithLogger(logger), wal.WithMetricsRegisterer(reg))
+	segmentSize := wal.DefaultSegmentSize
+	logStore, err := wal.Open(path, wal.WithLogger(logger), wal.WithMetricsRegisterer(reg), wal.WithSegmentSize(segmentSize))
 	if err != nil {
 		return nil, err
 	}
@@ -181,8 +191,13 @@ func Open(
 				Name: "close_timeouts_total",
 				Help: "The number of times the WAL failed to close due to a timeout",
 			}),
+			walQueueSize: promauto.With(reg).NewGauge(prometheus.GaugeOpts{
+				Name: "queue_size",
+				Help: "The number of unprocessed requests in the WAL queue",
+			}),
 		},
-		shutdownCh: make(chan struct{}),
+		segmentSize: segmentSize,
+		shutdownCh:  make(chan struct{}),
 	}
 
 	w.protected.nextTx = lastIndex + 1
@@ -242,7 +257,8 @@ func (w *FileWAL) run(ctx context.Context) {
 		case <-ticker.C:
 			batch := batch[:0]
 			w.protected.Lock()
-			for w.protected.queue.Len() > 0 {
+			batchSize := 0
+			for w.protected.queue.Len() > 0 && batchSize < w.segmentSize {
 				if minTx := w.protected.queue[0].tx; minTx != w.protected.nextTx {
 					if minTx < w.protected.nextTx {
 						// The next entry must be dropped otherwise progress
@@ -254,11 +270,14 @@ func (w *FileWAL) run(ctx context.Context) {
 							"found", minTx,
 						)
 						_ = heap.Pop(&w.protected.queue)
+						w.metrics.walQueueSize.Sub(1)
 					}
 					break
 				}
 				r := heap.Pop(&w.protected.queue).(*logRequest)
+				w.metrics.walQueueSize.Sub(1)
 				batch = append(batch, r)
+				batchSize += len(r.data)
 				w.protected.nextTx++
 			}
 			// truncateTx will be non-zero if we either are about to log a
@@ -319,7 +338,16 @@ func (w *FileWAL) run(ctx context.Context) {
 				}
 			}
 
-			for _, r := range batch {
+			// Remove references to a logRequest since the GC considers the
+			// popped element still accessible otherwise. Since these are sync
+			// pooled, we want to defer object lifetime management to the pool
+			// without interfering.
+			for i := range walBatch {
+				walBatch[i].Data = nil
+			}
+
+			for i, r := range batch {
+				batch[i] = nil
 				w.logRequestPool.Put(r)
 			}
 
@@ -380,6 +408,7 @@ func (w *FileWAL) Log(tx uint64, record *walpb.Record) error {
 
 	w.protected.Lock()
 	heap.Push(&w.protected.queue, r)
+	w.metrics.walQueueSize.Add(1)
 	w.protected.Unlock()
 
 	return nil
@@ -438,6 +467,7 @@ func (w *FileWAL) LogRecord(tx uint64, txnMetadata []byte, table string, record
 
 	w.protected.Lock()
 	heap.Push(&w.protected.queue, r)
+	w.metrics.walQueueSize.Add(1)
 	w.protected.Unlock()
 
 	return nil