Replacing Badger with Pebble DB

[j1010001]

Why

1. Badger DB is a project that is not maintained anymore. At some point it will not be compatible with a new version of Go and will block the upgrade of flow-go to newer version of Go language.
2. Badger has caused memory spikes and performance issues in the past (so far mitigated with more aggressive GC GoMemLimit setting) and as the load on the DB grows these issues are likely to reoccur in the future.
3. Badger DB does not support data pruning, so on long-running network removing unused data requires node downtime.

We have identified 4 project phases that complete the work of removing flow-go dependency on Badger DB.

Priority/phase 1

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1. Chunk Data pack Pruner #6516
   1 of 18
   Execution +1
   

Priority/Phase 2

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1. Replace Badger with Pebble DB - Execution data #6527
   0 of 3
   Execution +1

Tasks

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1. Priority/Phase 3
2. Replace Badger with Pebble DB - Protocol data #6528
   0 of 2
   +0

Phase 4

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1. Database Operation Transition: From Badger to Pebble #6523
   +0

[fxamacker]

Badger DB is a project that is not maintained anymore.

@j1010001 did you mean that BadgerDB v2 and v3 are not maintained anymore (instead of entire BadgerDB project)?

BadgerDB released v4.0 in Feb 2023 and v4.3 in Aug 2024.

• v4.3.0 (Aug 28, 2024)
• v3.2103.5 (Dec 15, 2022) is the last v3.
• v2.2007.4 (Aug 25, 2021) is the last v2 and version currently used by flow-go (go.mod).

More details and other releases at BadgerDB releases.

[zhangchiqing]

Issues for this epic:

• Chunk Data pack Pruner #6516
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Access Node-related data #6518
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Verification Node-related data  #6519
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Execution Node-related data  #6520
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Collection Node-related data #6521
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Protocol-related data  #6522
• Database Operation Transition: From Badger to Pebble #6523

[j1010001]

Issues for this epic:

• Chunk Data pack Pruner #6516
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Access Node-related data #6518
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Verification Node-related data  #6519
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Execution Node-related data  #6520
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Collection Node-related data #6521
• Replace Badger Transaction with Batch updates - Protocol-related data  #6522
• Database Operation Transition: From Badger to Pebble #6523

All the issues above have been linked to the relevant phases

[bluesign]

did you have any preliminary results with running nodes with pebble instead of badger? I am using pebble and pretty happy so far, but was thinking to check badger for faster writes, though I am scared on memory usage etc a bit.

[zhangchiqing]

Unfortunately , we didn’t gather metrics for the proof-of-concept benchmark, as our focus was on ensuring execution correctness. Once this issue is completed, I will collect metrics for comparison.