topic Re: Best sequence of using Vacuum, optimize, fsck repair and refresh commands. in Data Engineering

Best sequence of using Vacuum, optimize, fsck repair and refresh commands.

Nis — Wed, 17 May 2023 14:01:35 GMT

I have a delta table whose size will increases gradually now we have around 1.5 crores of rows while running vacuum command on that table i am getting the below error.

ERROR: Job aborted due to stage failure: Task 7 in stage 491.0 failed 4 times, most recent failure: Lost task 7.4 in stage 481.0 (TID 4116) (10.154.64.26 executor 7): ExecutorLostFailure (executor 7 exited caused by one of the running tasks) Reason: Executor heartbeat timed out after 177186 ms

and also wanted to know the best order of using

VACUUM table RETAIN 168 HOURS

optimize table;

fsck repair table table;

REFRESH table table;

Re: Best sequence of using Vacuum, optimize, fsck repair and refresh commands.

jose_gonzalez — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:39:55 GMT

Do you have access to the Executor 7 logs? is there a high GC or some other events that is making the heartbeat timeout? would you be able to check the failed stages?

Re: Best sequence of using Vacuum, optimize, fsck repair and refresh commands.

alex307 — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 17:28:40 GMT

In my opinion Best order: Optimize → Vacuum → FSCK Repair → Refresh.
Your error is likely a timeout — try more cluster resources or a longer retention period.

Re: Best sequence of using Vacuum, optimize, fsck repair and refresh commands.

stephen4 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 11:05:15 GMT

The executor heartbeat timeout makes sense to investigate first, especially with a table that has grown to around 1.5 crore rows. I’d be interested to know whether increasing executor resources actually resolved the issue before changing the command sequence. Also, does running OPTIMIZE before VACUUM make a noticeable difference for a table of this size?