[Feature] [Performance] [Docs] Disabling object spilling is not documented

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python

Research direction

Start with the object-spilling configuration documentation and the automatic_object_spilling_enabled definition in src/ray/common/ray_config_def.h. Confirm whether the RAY_automatic_object_spilling_enabled environment variable or the corresponding configuration setting is the supported way to disable spilling. Done means the documentation clearly describes the guaranteed configuration and its limitations.

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Description

bug core P1 performance
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Description

Object spilling is a useful feature of Ray. However, certain use cases require the object spilling to be disabled and the way to do so is not obvious whatsoever.

Disabling object spilling is not even mentioned in the docs, which describe only the ways of configuring object spilling and specifying its configuration.

From an investigation of the source code, it seems like setting the environment variable RAY_automatic_object_spilling_enabled to false (or otherwise specifying automatic_object_spilling_enabled to false) should be sufficient (https://github.com/ray-project/ray/blob/619478331240612f408a90a445bb3dea56d13696/src/ray/common/ray_config_def.h#L391). It is however unclear whether this is a preferred or guaranteed way to disable spilling.

Can we please look to explicitly describe how to disable object spilling in the docs?

Use case

There are use cases for Ray where spilling objects onto disk might cause errors or simply not be an option for security reasons. A clearly defined way to disable object spilling can improve feasibility of Ray in high-security applications.

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