Will removing data from /apps/hbase/data/.hbck directory be a good option?

[#1]

The situation is that disk space has been pretty much used up. And we found the data size under HDFS folder '/apps/hbase/data/.hbck' is quite large.

We're thinking of removing these data but not sure if it's good or not?

I think these data are the backup for offline meta repair. If my understanding is correct, removing the data means we don't have the option to do offline meta repair later on.

[#2]

If in doubt, you could decrease the replication factor for that folder to 2 or even 1 (although this 1 is kind of risky).

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

yes you are right, .hbck is for offline meta repair. I guess you know the hbck tool:

To check to see if your HBase cluster has corruptions, run hbck against your HBase cluster:

$ ./bin/hbase hbck

At the end of the commands output it prints OK or tells you the number of INCONSISTENCIES present.

As you said after the deletion you don't have the option to do a offline meta repair, but in my opinion I would still keep the fail and delete some other stuff.