To move to 0.92.0, all you need to do is shutdown your cluster, replace your hbase 0.90.x with hbase 0.92.0 binaries (be sure you clear out all 0.90.x instances) and restart (You cannot do a rolling restart from 0.90.x to 0.92.x -- you must restart). On startup, the .META. table content is rewritten removing the table schema from the info:regioninfo column. Also, any flushes done post first startup will write out data in the new 0.92.0 file format, HFile V2. This means you cannot go back to 0.90.x once you’ve started HBase 0.92.0 over your HBase data directory.

In 0.92.0, the hbase.hregion.memstore.mslab.enabled flag is set to true (See Section 14.3.1.1, “Long GC pauses”). In 0.90.x it was false. When it is enabled, memstores will step allocate memory in MSLAB 2MB chunks even if the memstore has zero or just a few small elements. This is fine usually but if you had lots of regions per regionserver in a 0.90.x cluster (and MSLAB was off), you may find yourself OOME'ing on upgrade because the thousands of regions * number of column families * 2MB MSLAB (at a minimum) puts your heap over the top. Set hbase.hregion.memstore.mslab.enabled to false or set the MSLAB size down from 2MB by setting hbase.hregion.memstore.mslab.chunksize to something less.

Previous, WAL logs on crash were split by the Master alone. In 0.92.0, log splitting is done by the cluster (See See “HBASE-1364 [performance] Distributed splitting of regionserver commit logs” or see the blog post Apache HBase Log Splitting). This should cut down significantly on the amount of time it takes splitting logs and getting regions back online again.

In 0.92.0, Section H.2, “ HBase file format with inline blocks (version 2) ” indices and bloom filters take up residence in the same LRU used caching blocks that come from the filesystem. In 0.90.x, the HFile v1 indices lived outside of the LRU so they took up space even if the index was on a ‘cold’ file, one that wasn’t being actively used. With the indices now in the LRU, you may find you have less space for block caching. Adjust your block cache accordingly. See the Section 9.6.4, “Block Cache” for more detail. The block size default size has been changed in 0.92.0 from 0.2 (20 percent of heap) to 0.25.

Run 0.92.0 on Hadoop 1.0.x (or CDH3u3 when it ships). The performance benefits are worth making the move. Otherwise, our Hadoop prescription is as it has been; you need an Hadoop that supports a working sync. See Section 2.1.1, “Hadoop”.

If running on Hadoop 1.0.x (or CDH3u3), enable local read. See Practical Caching presentation for ruminations on the performance benefits ‘going local’ (and for how to enable local reads).

If you can, upgrade your zookeeper. If you can’t, 3.4.2 clients should work against 3.3.X ensembles (HBase makes use of 3.4.2 API).

In 0.92.0, we’ve added an experimental online schema alter facility (See hbase.online.schema.update.enable). Its off by default. Enable it at your own risk. Online alter and splitting tables do not play well together so be sure your cluster quiescent using this feature (for now).

The webui has had a few additions made in 0.92.0. It now shows a list of the regions currently transitioning, recent compactions/flushes, and a process list of running processes (usually empty if all is well and requests are being handled promptly). Other additions including requests by region, a debugging servlet dump, etc.

We now ship with two tarballs; secure and insecure HBase. Documentation on how to setup a secure HBase is on the way.

0.92.0 adds two new features: multi-slave and multi-master replication. The way to enable this is the same as adding a new peer, so in order to have multi-master you would just run add_peer for each cluster that acts as a master to the other slave clusters. Collisions are handled at the timestamp level which may or may not be what you want, this needs to be evaluated on a per use case basis. Replication is still experimental in 0.92 and is disabled by default, run it at your own risk.

If an OOME, we now have the JVM kill -9 the regionserver process so it goes down fast. Previous, a RegionServer might stick around after incurring an OOME limping along in some wounded state. To disable this facility, and recommend you leave it in place, you’d need to edit the bin/hbase file. Look for the addition of the -XX:OnOutOfMemoryError="kill -9 %p" arguments (See [HBASE-4769] - ‘Abort RegionServer Immediately on OOME’)

0.92.0 stores data in a new format, Section H.2, “ HBase file format with inline blocks (version 2) ”. As HBase runs, it will move all your data from HFile v1 to HFile v2 format. This auto-migration will run in the background as flushes and compactions run. HFile V2 allows HBase run with larger regions/files. In fact, we encourage that all HBasers going forward tend toward Facebook axiom #1, run with larger, fewer regions. If you have lots of regions now -- more than 100s per host -- you should look into setting your region size up after you move to 0.92.0 (In 0.92.0, default size is now 1G, up from 256M), and then running online merge tool (See “HBASE-1621 merge tool should work on online cluster, but disabled table”).