Swap rebalance is an automatic feature that optimizes the movement of data when you are adding and removing the same number of nodes within the same operation.

The swap rebalance optimizes the rebalance operation by moving data directly from the nodes being removed to the nodes being added. This is more efficient than standard rebalancing which would normally move data across the entire cluster.

Swap rebalance occurs automatically if the number of nodes being added and removed are identical. For example, two nodes are marked to be removed and another two nodes are added to the cluster. There is no configuration or selection mechanism to force a swap rebalance. If a swap rebalance cannot take place, then a normal rebalance operation is used instead. When a swap rebalance takes place, the rebalance operates as follows:

• Data is moved directly from a node being removed to a node being added on a one-to-one basis. This eliminates the need to restructure the entire vBucket map.

• Active vBuckets are moved, one at a time, from a source node to a destination node.

• Replica vBuckets are created on the new node and populated with existing data before being activated as the live replica bucket. This ensures that if there is a failure during the rebalance operation, that your replicas are still in place.

For example, if you have a cluster with 20 nodes in it, and configure two nodes (X and Y) to be added, and two nodes to be removed (A and B):

• vBuckets from node A are moved to node X.

• vBuckets from node B are moved to node Y.

The benefits of swap rebalance are:

• Reduced rebalance duration. Since the move takes place directly from the nodes being removed to the nodes being added.

• Reduced load on the cluster during rebalance.

• Reduced network overhead during the rebalance.

• Reduced chance of a rebalance failure if a failover occurs during the rebalance operation, since replicas are created in tandem on the new hosts while the old host replicas still remain available.

• Because data on the nodes are swapped, rather than performing a full rebalance, the capacity of the cluster remains unchanged during the rebalance operation, helping to ensure performance and failover support.

The behavior of the cluster during a failover and rebalance operation with the swap rebalance functionality affects the following situations:

• Stopping a rebalance

  If rebalance fails, or has been deliberately stopped, the active and replica vBuckets that have been transitioned will be part of the active vBucket map. Any transfers still in progress will be canceled. Restarting the rebalance operation will continue the rebalance from where it left off.

• Adding back a failed node

  When a node has failed, removing it and adding a replacement node, or adding the node back, will be treated as swap rebalance.