Hi, I am trying to understand the read path in Cassandra. I've read Cassandra's documentation and it seems that the read path is like this:
- Client contacts with a proxy node which performs the operation over certain object - Proxy node sends requests to every replica of that object - Replica nodes answers eventually if they are up - After the first R replicas answer, the proxy node returns value to the client. - If some of the replicas are non updated and readrepair is active, proxy node updates those replicas. Ok, so far so good. But now I found some incoherences that I don't understand: Let's suppose that we have a 5 node cluster: x1, x2, x3, x4 and x5 each with replication factor 3, read_repair_chance=0.0, autobootstrap=false and caching=NONE We have keyspace KS1 and colunfamily CF1. With this configuration, we know that if any node crashes and erases its data directories it will be necesary to run nodetool repair in that node in order to repair that node and gather information from its replica companions. So, let's suppose that x1, x2 and x3 are the endpoint which stores the data KS1.CF1['data1'] If x1 crashes (loosing all its data), and we execute get KS1.CF1['data1'] with consistency level ALL, the operation will fail. That is ok to my understanding. If we restart x1 node and doesn't execute nodetool repair and repeat the operation get KS1.CF1['data1'] using consistency ALL, we will obtain the original data! Why? one of the nodes doesn't have any data about KS1.CF1['data1']. Ok, let's suppose that as all the required nodes answer, even if one doesn't have data, the operation ends correctly. Now let's repeat the same procedure with the rest of nodes, that is: 1- stop x1, erase data, logs, cache and commitlog from x1 2- restart x1 adn don't repair it 3- stop x2, erase data, logs, cache and commitlog from x2 4- restart x2 adn don't repair it 5- stop x3, erase data, logs, cache and commitlog from x3 6- restart x3 adn don't repair it 7- execute get KS1.CF1['data1'] with consistency level ALL -> still return the correct data! Where did that data come from? the endpoint is supposed to be empty of data. I tried this using cassandra-cli and cassandra's ruby client and the result is always the same. What did I miss? Thank you for reading until the end, ;) Bye Carlos Pérez Miguel
