Troubleshooting Airflow Scheduler issues

This page provides troubleshooting steps and information for common issues with the Airflow Scheduler.

Identify the source of the issue

To begin troubleshooting, identify if the issue happens at DAG parse time or while processing tasks at execution time. For more information about parse time and execution time, read Difference between DAG parse time and DAG execution time.

Inspecting DAG parse times

To verify if the issue happens at DAG parse time, follow these steps.

Console

In the Cloud Console, go to the Environments page.
Open the Environments page
Select your environment from the list.
In the Monitoring tab, review the Total parse time for all DAG files chart in the DAG runs section and identify possible issues.

gcloud

Use the list_dags command with the -r flag to see the parse time for all your DAGs.

gcloud composer environments run ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
  --location ENVIRONMENT_LOCATION \
  list_dags -- -r

Replace the following:

ENVIRONMENT_NAME: The name of your environment
ENVIRONMENT_LOCATION: The region of your environment

The output of the command looks similar to the following:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
DagBag loading stats for /home/airflow/gcs/dags
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of DAGs: 5
Total task number: 13
DagBag parsing time: 0.6765180000000001
-----------+----------+---------+----------+-----------------------
file       | duration | dag_num | task_num | dags
-----------+----------+---------+----------+-----------------------
/dag_1.py  | 0.6477   |       1 |        2 | ['dag_1']
/dag_2.py  | 0.018652 |       1 |        2 | ['dag_2']
/dag_3.py  | 0.004024 |       1 |        6 | ['dag_3']
/dag_4.py  | 0.003476 |       1 |        2 | ['dag_4']
/dag_5.py  | 0.002666 |       1 |        1 | ['dag_5']
-----------+----------+---------+----------+-----------------------

Look for the DagBag parsing time value. A large value might indicate that one of your DAGs is not implemented in an optimal way. From the output table, you can identify which DAGs have a long parsing time.

Monitoring running and queued tasks

To check if you have tasks stuck in a queue, follow these steps.

In the Cloud Console, go to the Environments page.
Open the Environments page
Select the project from the list.
In the Monitoring tab, review the Running and queued tasks chart in the DAG runs section and identify possible issues.

Troubleshooting issues at DAG parse time

The following sections describe symptoms and potential fixes for some common issues at DAG parse time.

Limited number of threads

Allowing the DAG processor manager (the part of the Scheduler that processes DAG files) to use only a limited number of threads might impact your DAG parse time. To solve the issue, apply the following changes to the airflow.cfg configuration file:

For Airflow 1.10.12 and earlier versions, use the max_threads parameter:
```
[scheduler]
max_threads = <NUMBER_OF_CORES_IN_MACHINE - 1>
```
For Airflow 1.10.14 and later versions, use the parsing_processes parameter:
```
[scheduler]
parsing_processes = <NUMBER_OF_CORES_IN_MACHINE - 1>
```

Replace NUMBER_OF_CORES_IN_MACHINE with the number of cores in the worker nodes machines.

Number and time distribution of tasks

Airflow is known for having problems with scheduling a large number of small tasks. In such situations, you should opt for a smaller number of more consolidated tasks.

Scheduling a large number of DAGs or tasks at the same time might also be a possible source of issues. To avoid this problem, distribute your tasks more evenly over time.

Troubleshooting issues with running and queued tasks

The following sections describe symptoms and potential fixes for some common issues with running and queued tasks.

Task queues are too long

In some cases, a task queue might be too long for the Scheduler. For information about how to optimize worker and celery parameters, read about scaling your Cloud Composer environment together with your business.

Limited cluster resources

You might experience performance issues if the GKE cluster of your environment is too small to handle all your DAGs and tasks. In this case, try one of the following solutions:

Create a new environment with a machine type that provides more performance and migrate your DAGs to it.
Create more Cloud Composer environments and split the DAGs between them.
Change the machine type for GKE nodes, as described in Upgrading the machine type for GKE nodes. Since this procedure is error-prone, it is the least recommended option.
Upgrade the machine type of the Cloud SQL instance that runs the Airflow database in your environment, for example using the gcloud composer environments update commands. Low performance of the Airflow database might be the reason why the Scheduler is slow.

Avoid task scheduling during maintenance windows

You can define specific maintenance windows for your environment. During these time periods, maintenance events for Cloud SQL and GKE take place.

Avoid scheduling DAG runs during maintenance windows because this might cause scheduling or execution issues.

Make the Airflow scheduler ignore unnecessary files

You can improve performance of the Airflow scheduler by skipping unnecessary files in the DAGs folder. Airflow scheduler ignores files and folders specified in the .airflowignore file.

To make the Airflow scheduler ignore unnecessary files:

Create an .airflowignore file.
In this file, list files and folders that should be ignored.
Upload this file to the /dags folder in your environment's bucket.

For more information about the .airflowignore file format, see Airflow documentation

Airflow scheduler processes paused DAGs

Airflow users pause DAGs to avoid their execution. This saves Airflow workers processing cycles.

Airflow scheduler will continue parsing paused DAGs. If you really want to improve Airflow schduler performance, use .airflowignore or delete paused DAGs from DAGs folder.