This project has retired. For details please refer to its Attic page.
Falcon - Hive Mirroring

Hive Mirroring

Overview

Falcon provides feature to replicate Hive metadata and data events from source cluster to destination cluster. This is supported for both secure and unsecure cluster through Falcon extensions.

Prerequisites

Following is the prerequisites to use Hive Mirrroring

  • Hive 1.2.0+
  • Oozie 4.2.0+

Note: Set following properties in hive-site.xml for replicating the Hive events on source and destination Hive cluster:

    <property>
        <name>hive.metastore.event.listeners</name>
        <value>org.apache.hive.hcatalog.listener.DbNotificationListener</value>
        <description>event listeners that are notified of any metastore changes</description>
    </property>

    <property>
        <name>hive.metastore.dml.events</name>
        <value>true</value>
    </property>

Use Case

* Replicate data/metadata of Hive DB & table from source to target cluster

Limitations

* Currently Hive doesn't support create database, roles, views, offline tables, direct HDFS writes without registering with metadata and Database/Table name mapping replication events. Hence Hive mirroring extension cannot be used to replicate above mentioned events between warehouses.

Usage

Bootstrap

Perform initial bootstrap of Table and Database from source cluster to destination cluster

  • Database Bootstrap
For bootstrapping DB replication, first destination DB should be created. This step is expected, since DB replication definitions can be set up by users only on pre-existing DB’s. Second, Export all tables in the source db and Import it in the destination db, as described in Table bootstrap.

  • Table Bootstrap
For bootstrapping table replication, essentially after having turned on the DbNotificationListener on the source db, perform an Export of the table, distcp the Export over to the destination warehouse and do an Import over there. Check the following Hive Export-Import for syntax details and examples. This will set up the destination table so that the events on the source cluster that modify the table will then be replicated.

Setup source and destination clusters

    $FALCON_HOME/bin/falcon entity -submit -type cluster -file /cluster/definition.xml

Hive mirroring extension properties

Extension artifacts are expected to be installed on HDFS at the path specified by "extension.store.uri" in startup properties. hive-mirroring-properties.json file located at "<extension.store.uri>/hive-mirroring/META/hive-mirroring-properties.json" lists all the required and optional parameters/arguments for scheduling Hive mirroring job.

Submit and schedule Hive mirroring extension

    $FALCON_HOME/bin/falcon extension -submitAndSchedule -extensionName hive-mirroring -file /process/definition.xml

Please Refer to Falcon CLI and REST API for more details on usage of CLI and REST API's.