Summary:
MyRocks currently sets `max_write_buffer_number_to_maintain` in order to maintain enough history for transaction conflict checking. The effectiveness of this approach depends on the size of memtables. When memtables are small, it may not keep enough history; when memtables are large, this may consume too much memory.
We are proposing a new way to configure memtable list history: by limiting the memory usage of immutable memtables. The new option is `max_write_buffer_size_to_maintain` and it will take precedence over the old `max_write_buffer_number_to_maintain` if they are both set to non-zero values. The new option accounts for the total memory usage of flushed immutable memtables and mutable memtable. When the total usage exceeds the limit, RocksDB may start dropping immutable memtables (which is also called trimming history), starting from the oldest one.
The semantics of the old option actually works both as an upper bound and lower bound. History trimming will start if number of immutable memtables exceeds the limit, but it will never go below (limit-1) due to history trimming.
In order the mimic the behavior with the new option, history trimming will stop if dropping the next immutable memtable causes the total memory usage go below the size limit. For example, assuming the size limit is set to 64MB, and there are 3 immutable memtables with sizes of 20, 30, 30. Although the total memory usage is 80MB > 64MB, dropping the oldest memtable will reduce the memory usage to 60MB < 64MB, so in this case no memtable will be dropped.
Pull Request resolved: https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/pull/5022

Differential Revision: D14394062

Pulled By: miasantreble

fbshipit-source-id: 60457a509c6af89d0993f988c9b5c2aa9e45f5c5