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Tune

This section describes tuning knobs that have a notable effect on system performance.

Batching: Table Slices​

VAST processes events in batches. Because the structured data has the shape of a table, we call these batches table slices. The following options control their shape and behavior.

Implementation Note

Table slices are implemented as Record Batches in Apache Arrow.

Size​

Most components in VAST operate on table slices, which makes the table slice size a fundamental tuning knob on the spectrum of throughput and latency. Small table slices allow for shorter processing times, resulting in more scheduler context switches and a more balanced workload. But the increased pressure on the scheduler comes at the cost of throughput. Conversely, a large table slice size creates more work for each actor invocation and makes them yield less frequently to the scheduler. As a result, other actors scheduled on the same thread may have to wait a little longer.

The option vast.import.batch-size sets an upper bound for the number of events per table slice. It defaults to 65,536.

The option controls the maximum number of events per table slice, but not necessarily the number of events until a component forwards a batch to the next stage in a stream. The CAF streaming framework uses a credit-based flow-control mechanism to determine buffering of tables slices.

caution

Setting vast.import.batch-size to 0 causes the table slice size to be unbounded and leaves it to vast.import.batch-timeout to produce table slices. This can lead to very large table slices for sources with high data rates, and is not recommended.

Import Timeout​

The vast.import.batch-timeout option sets a timeout for forwarding buffered table slices to the remote VAST node. If the timeout fires before a table slice reaches vast.import.batch-size, then the table slice will contain fewer events and ship immediately.

The vast.import.read-timeout option determines how long a call to read data from the input will block. After the read timeout elapses, VAST tries again at a later. The default value is 10 seconds.

Persistent Storage​

VAST arranges data in horizontal partitions for sharding. The persistent representation of partition is a single file consists containing a set table slices all having the same schema. The store plugin defines the on-disk format. VAST currently ships with three implementations:

  1. Feather: writes Apache Feather V2 files
  2. Parquet: writes Apache Parquet files
  3. Segment: writes Apache Arrow IPC with a thin wrapper (deprecated, read-only)

VAST defaults to the feather store. Enable the Parquet store by loading the plugin and adjusting vast.store-backend:

vast:
  plugins:
    - parquet
  store-backend: parquet

There's an inherent space-time tradeoff between the stores that affects CPU, memory, and storage characteristics. Compared to the Feather and Segment stores, Parquet differs as follows:

  1. Parquet files occupy ~40% less space, which also reduces I/O pressure during querying.
  2. Parquet utilizes more CPU cycles during ingest (~10%) and querying.

Parquet has the major advantage that it's the de-facto standard for encoding columnar data in modern data architectures. This allows other applications that support reading from Parquet native access to the data.

Recommendation

Use Parquet when:

  1. Storage is scarce, and you want to increase data retention
  2. Workloads are I/O-bound and you have available CPU
  3. Reading data with with off-the-shelf data science tools is a use case

VAST supports rebuilding the entire database in case you want to switch to a different store format. However, VAST works perfectly fine with a mixed-storage configuration, so a full rebuild is not required.

Compression​

VAST compresses partitions using Zstd for partitions at rest. To fine-tune the space-time trade-off, VAST offers a setting, vast.zstd-compression-level to allow fine-tuning the compression level:

vast:
  zstd-compression-level: 1

Currently, the default value is taken from Apache Arrow itself, using arrow::util::Codec::DefaultCompressionLevel(arrow::Compression::ZSTD)

tip

We have a blog post that does an in-depth comparison of various compression levels and storage formats.

Memory usage and caching​

The amount of memory that a VAST server process is allowed to use can currently not be configured directly as a configuration file option. Instead of such a direct tuning knob, the memory usage can be influenced through the configuration of the caching, catalog and disk monitor features.

Caching​

VAST groups table slices with the same schema in a partition. When building a partition, the parameter vast.max-partition-size sets an upper bound on the number of records in a partition, across all table slices. The parameter vast.active-partition-timeout provides a time-based upper bound: once reached, VAST considers the partition as complete, regardless of the number of records.

A LRU cache of partitions accelerates queries to recently used partitions. The parameter vast.max-resident-partitions controls the number of partitions in the LRU cache.

note

Run vast flush to force VAST to write all active partitions to disk immediately. The command returns only after all active partitions were flushed to disk.

Catalog​

The catalog manages partition meta data and is responsible for deciding whether a partition qualifies for a certain query. It does so by maintaining sketch data structures (e.g., Bloom filters, summary statistics) for each partition. Sketches are highly space-efficient at the cost of being probabilistic and yielding false positives.

Due to this characteristic sketches can grow sub-linear, doubling the number of events in a sketch does not lead to a doubling of the memory requirement. Because the catalog must be traversed in full for a given query it needs to be maintained in active memory to provide high responsiveness.

As a consequence, the overall amount of data in a VAST instance and the max-partition-size determine the memory requirements of the catalog. The option max-partition-size is inversely linked to the number of sketches in the catalog. That means increasing the max-partition-size is an effective method to reduce the memory requirements for the catalog.

Tune sketch parameters​

A false positive can have substantial impact on the query latency by materializing irrelevant partitions, which involves unnecessary I/O. Based on the cost of I/O, this penalty may be substantial. Conversely, reducing the false positive rate increases the memory consumption, leading to a higher resident set size and larger RAM requirements.

You can control this space-time trade-off in the configuration section vast.index by specifying index rules. Each rule corresponds to one sketch and consists of the following components:

  • targets: a list of extractors to describe the set of fields whose values to add to the sketch.
  • fp-rate: an optional value to control the false-positive rate of the sketch.

VAST does not create field-level sketches unless a dedicated rule with a matching target configuration exists.

Example​

vast:
  index:
    # Set the default false-positive rate for type-level synopses
    default-fp-rate: 0.001
    rules:
      - targets:
          # field synopses: need to specify fully qualified field name
          - suricata.http.http.url
        fp-rate: 0.005
      - targets:
          - :ip
        fp-rate: 0.1

This configuration includes two rules (= two sketches), where the first rule includes a field extractor and the second a type extractor. The first rule applies to a single field, suricata.http.http.url, and has false-positive rate of 0.5%. The second rule creates one sketch for all fields of type addr that has a false-positive rate of 10%.

Skip partition index creation​

Partition indexes improve query performance at the cost of database size. Operators can disable the creation of partition indexes for specific fields or types in the configuration section vast.index. By default, VAST creates partition indexes for all fields.

Example​

vast:
  index:
    rules:
        # Don't create partition indexes the suricata.http.http.url field.
      - targets:
          - suricata.http.http.url
        partition-index: false
        # Don't create partition indexes for fields of type addr.
      - targets:
          - :ip
        partition-index: false

Shutdown​

The stop command gracefully brings down a VAST server that has been started with the start command.

It is also possible to send a signal SIGINT(2) to the vast process instead of using vast stop, but in only works on the same machine that runs the server process. We recommend using vast stop, as it also works over the wire.

The stop command blocks until the server process has terminated, and returns a zero exit code upon success, making it suitable for use in launch system scripts.

note

The server waits for ongoing import processes to terminate before shutting down itself. In case an import process is hanging, you can always terminate the hanging process manually to shutdown the server.

Logging​

The VAST server writes log files into a file named server.log in the database directory by default. Set the option vast.log-file to change the location of the log file.

VAST client processes do not write logs by default. Set the option vast.client-log-file to enable logging. Note that relative paths are interpreted relative to the current working directory of the client process.

Server log files rotate automatically after 10 MiB. The option vast.disable-log-rotation allows for disabling log rotation entirely, and the option vast.log-rotation-threshold sets the size limit when a log file should be rotated.

VAST processes log messages in a dedicated thread, which by default buffers up to 1M messages for servers, and 100 for clients. The option vast.log-queue-size controls this setting.

Rebuild Partitions​

The rebuild command re-ingests events from existing partitions and replaces them with new partitions. This makes it possible to upgrade persistent state to a newer version, or recreate persistent state after changing configuration parameters, e.g., switching from the Feather to the Parquet store backend. The following diagram illustrates this "defragmentation" process:

Rebuild Rebuild

Rebuilding partitions also recreates their sketches. The process takes place asynchronously in the background. Control this behavior in your vast.yaml configuration file, to disable or adjust the resources to spend on automatic rebuilding:

vast:
  # Automatically rebuild undersized and outdated partitions in the background.
  # The given number controls how much resources to spend on it. Set to 0 to
  # disable. Defaults to 1.
  automatic-rebuild: 1
Upgrade from VAST v1.x partitions

You can use the rebuild command to upgrade your VAST v1.x partitions to v2.x, which yield better compression and have a streamlined representation. We recommend this to be able to use newer features that do not work with v1.x partitions.

This is how you run it manually:

vast rebuild start [--all] [--undersized] [--parallel=<number>] [--max-partitions=<number>] [--detached] [<expression>]

A rebuild is not only useful when upgrading outdated partitions, but also when changing parameters of up-to-date partitions. Use the --all flag to extend a rebuild operation to all partitions. (Internally, VAST versions the partition state via FlatBuffers. An outdated partition is one whose version number is not the newest.)

The --undersized flag (implies --all) causes VAST to only rebuild partitions that are under the configured partition size limit vast.max-partition-size.

The --parallel options is a performance tuning knob. The parallelism level controls how many sets of partitions to rebuild in parallel. This value defaults to 1 to limit the CPU and memory requirements of the rebuilding process, which grow linearly with the selected parallelism level.

The --max-partitions option allows for setting an upper bound to the number of partitions to rebuild.

An optional expression allows for restricting the set of partitions to rebuild. VAST performs a catalog lookup with the expression to identify the set of candidate partitions. This process may yield false positives, as with regular queries, which may cause unaffected partitions to undergo a rebuild. For example, to rebuild outdated partitions containing suricata.flow events older than 2 weeks, run the following command:

vast rebuild start '#type == "suricata.flow" && #import_time < 2 weeks ago'

To stop an ongoing rebuild, use the vast rebuild stop command.