Data File Management

ZooKeeper stores its data in a data directory and its transaction log in a transaction log directory. By default these two directories are the same. The server can (and should) be configured to store the transaction log files in a separate directory than the data files. Throughput increases and latency decreases when transaction logs reside on a dedicated log devices.

The Data Directory

This directory has two or three files in it:

• myid - contains a single integer in human readable ASCII text that represents the server id.
• initialize - presence indicates lack of data tree is expected. Cleaned up once data tree is created.
• snapshot.<zxid> - holds the fuzzy snapshot of a data tree.

Each ZooKeeper server has a unique id. This id is used in two places: the myid file and the configuration file. The myid file identifies the server that corresponds to the given data directory. The configuration file lists the contact information for each server identified by its server id. When a ZooKeeper server instance starts, it reads its id from the myid file and then, using that id, reads from the configuration file, looking up the port on which it should listen.

The snapshot files stored in the data directory are fuzzy snapshots in the sense that during the time the ZooKeeper server is taking the snapshot, updates are occurring to the data tree. The suffix of the snapshot file names is the zxid, the ZooKeeper transaction id, of the last committed transaction at the start of the snapshot. Thus, the snapshot includes a subset of the updates to the data tree that occurred while the snapshot was in process. The snapshot, then, may not correspond to any data tree that actually existed, and for this reason we refer to it as a fuzzy snapshot. Still, ZooKeeper can recover using this snapshot because it takes advantage of the idempotent nature of its updates. By replaying the transaction log against fuzzy snapshots ZooKeeper gets the state of the system at the end of the log.

The Log Directory

The Log Directory contains the ZooKeeper transaction logs. Before any update takes place, ZooKeeper ensures that the transaction that represents the update is written to non-volatile storage. A new log file is started when the number of transactions written to the current log file reaches a (variable) threshold. The threshold is computed using the same parameter which influences the frequency of snapshotting (see snapCount and snapSizeLimitInKb above). The log file's suffix is the first zxid written to that log.

File Management

The format of snapshot and log files does not change between standalone ZooKeeper servers and different configurations of replicated ZooKeeper servers. Therefore, you can pull these files from a running replicated ZooKeeper server to a development machine with a stand-alone ZooKeeper server for troubleshooting.

Using older log and snapshot files, you can look at the previous state of ZooKeeper servers and even restore that state.

The ZooKeeper server creates snapshot and log files, but never deletes them. The retention policy of the data and log files is implemented outside of the ZooKeeper server. The server itself only needs the latest complete fuzzy snapshot, all log files following it, and the last log file preceding it. The latter requirement is necessary to include updates which happened after this snapshot was started but went into the existing log file at that time. This is possible because snapshotting and rolling over of logs proceed somewhat independently in ZooKeeper. See the maintenance section for more details on setting a retention policy and maintenance of ZooKeeper storage.

Recovery - TxnLogToolkit

More details can be found in this