Open Stack

On 10/9/13 8:28 PM, Shrinand Javadekar wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Objects in a swift container can be deleted by either explicitly
> deleting them or by setting a expiry timestamp on them. Is there a
> performance difference between the two? For example, when I want to
> delete an object, instead of deleting it, can I simply set the
> X-Delete-After attribute of that object to 0? Is one faster than the other?
>
> My guess is that setting the object expiry timestamp may be faster since
> that would only involve changing the xattrs of the object inode. Delete
> will require creation of a new version of the object, truncating it to a
> 0 byte file and renaming it to change the extension to ".ts".

Deletion creates a 0-byte tombstone (.ts) file and unlinks the old 
object (the .data file).  It doesn't "creat[e] a new version of the 
object" only to truncate it.

> Seems like
> less work is done when object expiration is set.

Depends on whether or not object POST-as-copy is in use. If it is, then 
you'll wind up copying the entire object to change its metadata.

Default for that is on, BTW, so if you haven't turned it off, you're 
using it.

Further, setting X-Delete-At requires updating a container in the 
special .expiring_objects account. The object expirer periodically walks 
those containers and deletes objects that have expired, so now you've 
got a full copy of the whole object *plus* a container update.

For large objects with POST-as-copy turned off, it might be faster to 
set X-Delete-At, but it is definitely more work for the cluster. If 
POST-as-copy is on, setting X-Delete-At will take longer than issuing a 
DELETE request *and* it'll be more work for the cluster.

Also note that setting X-Delete-At doesn't guarantee that your object is 
really deleted at that time. Requests for that object will get 404s 
after that time, but the disk space won't be reclaimed, nor will the 
container listing be updated, until the object expirer gets around to 
actually deleting the object.

> To try this out, I tried setting the X-Delete-After attribute using the
> swift command line client:
>
> $ swift post -m X-Delete-After: 1 <container-name> <object-name>
>
> After I did this, when I stat the object, I see the attribute "Meta
> X-Delete-After: 1". However, the object never got deleted. Any idea what
> I'm doing wrong?

The -m flag sets metadata on the object; metadata headers are prefaced 
by X-Object-Meta. The above command actually sent the header 
X-Object-Meta-X-Delete-After: 1, which does not trigger object expiration.