Spark中RDD 持久化操作 cache与persist区别

环境/背景

Spark 2.3.0
Scala 2.11
Java 1.8

在进行RDD操作的时候，我们需要在接下来多个行动中重用同一个RDD，这个时候我们就可以将RDD缓存起来，可以很大程度的节省计算和程序运行时间。

接下来可以通过查看Spark的源码对比RDD.cache()与RDD.persist()的差别。

cache 与 persist 对比

首先从JavaRDD类中点进去看JavaRDD.cache()方法与JavaRDD.persist()方法:

JavaRDD.scala

  /**
   * Persist this RDD with the default storage level (`MEMORY_ONLY`).
   */
  def cache(): JavaRDD[T] = wrapRDD(rdd.cache())

  /**
   * Set this RDD's storage level to persist its values across operations after the first time
   * it is computed. This can only be used to assign a new storage level if the RDD does not
   * have a storage level set yet..
   */
  def persist(newLevel: StorageLevel): JavaRDD[T] = wrapRDD(rdd.persist(newLevel))

在JavaRDD中说得挺明白：

• cache()只是缓存到默认的缓存级别：只使用内存
• persist()可以自定义缓存级别

我们再点进去看看RDD.scala的描述:

RDD.scala

  /**
   * Set this RDD's storage level to persist its values across operations after the first time
   * it is computed. This can only be used to assign a new storage level if the RDD does not
   * have a storage level set yet. Local checkpointing is an exception.
   */
  def persist(newLevel: StorageLevel): this.type = {
    if (isLocallyCheckpointed) {
      // This means the user previously called localCheckpoint(), which should have already
      // marked this RDD for persisting. Here we should override the old storage level with
      // one that is explicitly requested by the user (after adapting it to use disk).
      persist(LocalRDDCheckpointData.transformStorageLevel(newLevel), allowOverride = true)
    } else {
      persist(newLevel, allowOverride = false)
    }
  }

  /**
   * Persist this RDD with the default storage level (`MEMORY_ONLY`).
   */
  def persist(): this.type = persist(StorageLevel.MEMORY_ONLY)

  /**
   * Persist this RDD with the default storage level (`MEMORY_ONLY`).
   */
  def cache(): this.type = persist()

如果我们直接调用cache()或者没有入参的persist()，效果是一样的，都是使用默认的storage level
如果需要自定义缓存级别，可以通过传入StorageLevel类里面的设置好的对象使用。

缓存级别

我们再点进去StorageLevel.scala里面看看是怎么定义的：

StorageLevel.scala

其中StorageLevel的构造函数如下：

/**
 * :: DeveloperApi ::
 * Flags for controlling the storage of an RDD. Each StorageLevel records whether to use memory,
 * or ExternalBlockStore, whether to drop the RDD to disk if it falls out of memory or
 * ExternalBlockStore, whether to keep the data in memory in a serialized format, and whether
 * to replicate the RDD partitions on multiple nodes.
 *
 * The [[org.apache.spark.storage.StorageLevel]] singleton object contains some static constants
 * for commonly useful storage levels. To create your own storage level object, use the
 * factory method of the singleton object (`StorageLevel(...)`).
 */
@DeveloperApi
class StorageLevel private(
    private var _useDisk: Boolean,
    private var _useMemory: Boolean,
    private var _useOffHeap: Boolean,
    private var _deserialized: Boolean,
    private var _replication: Int = 1)
  extends Externalizable {

可以看到StorageLevel类的主构造器包含了5个参数：

• useDisk：使用硬盘（外存）
• useMemory：使用内存
• useOffHeap：使用堆外内存，这是Java虚拟机里面的概念，堆外内存意味着把内存对象分配在Java虚拟机的堆以外的内存，这些内存直接受操作系统管理（而不是虚拟机）。这样做的结果就是能保持一个较小的堆，以减少垃圾收集对应用的影响。
• deserialized：反序列化，其逆过程序列化（Serialization）是java提供的一种机制，将对象表示成一连串的字节；而反序列化就表示将字节恢复为对象的过程。序列化是对象永久化的一种机制，可以将对象及其属性保存起来，并能在反序列化后直接恢复这个对象
• replication：备份数（在多个节点上备份）

举个栗子：

val MEMORY_AND_DISK_SER_2 = new StorageLevel(true, true, false, false, 2) 

就表示使用这种缓存级别的RDD将存储在硬盘以及内存中，使用序列化（在硬盘中），并且在多个节点上备份2份（正常的RDD只有一份）

另外还注意到有一种特殊的缓存级别

val OFF_HEAP = new StorageLevel(false, false, true, false)

使用了堆外内存，StorageLevel 类的源码中有一段代码可以看出这个的特殊性，它不能和其它几个参数共存。

if (useOffHeap) {
  require(!useDisk, "Off-heap storage level does not support using disk")
  require(!useMemory, "Off-heap storage level does not support using heap memory")
  require(!deserialized, "Off-heap storage level does not support deserialized storage")
  require(replication == 1, "Off-heap storage level does not support multiple replication")
}