1. 1 Real World Performance Tuning Ask Bjørn Hansen OSCON 2001

2. 2 Performance Tuning Show more pages Faster With less resources Design the architecture right Optimize the code (in that order!)

3. 3 Memory usage N connections = N fat mod_p erl processes Fat processes doing little other than buffering to slow clients

4. 4 Memory usage 20 connections per second + Each request takes 3 seconds to write to the network = 60 active mod_perl processes + 15 spare processes for peaks = 75 active mod_perl processes * 20MB-12MB shared = 8MB memory = 600MB memory

5. 5 Reverse proxy Offload the buffering to a reverse proxy Can –Do caching –Serve static content –Distribute requests to different backend processes All in a slim process

6. 6 Reverse proxies squid –best caching –not as flexible for a "reverse proxy" as mod_proxy apache/mod_proxy –simple to configure –known environment –can cache –mod_rewrite

7. 7 apache/mod_proxy Specify what to pass through RewriteRule ^/(foo/.*) http://localhost:8001/$1 [P] Specify what NOT to pass through RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/images/ RewriteRule /(.*) http://localhost:8002/$1 [P] Allow fix up of $r->connection->remote_ip LoadModule proxy_add_forward_module modules/mod_proxy_add_forward.so

8. 8 Memory Usage with apache/mod_proxy mod_proxy 20 connections per second + Each request takes 3 seconds to write to the network = 60 active mod_proxy processes + 15 spare = 75 running mod_proxy processes 75 mod_proxy processes (300KB each) = ~25MB memory

9. 9 Memory Usage with apache/mod_proxy mod_perl 20 connections per second + Each request takes <.05 seconds to write to the proxy = 1-2 active mod_perl processes + 3 spare = 5 running mod_perl processes 5 mod_perl processes (8MB non-shared each) = 40MB memory

10. 10 Memory Usage with apache/mod_proxy 25+40MB = 65MB total memory usage >500MB less than the mod_perl alone!

11. 11 Basic httpd.conf tuning mod_proxy MaxClients 512 StartServers 50 MinSpareServers 20 MaxSpareServers 100 mod_perl MaxClients 5 StartServers 3 MinSpareServers 1 MaxSpareServers 5 Port 80 Listen 8001

12. 12 mod_status ExtendedStatus on SetHandler server-status Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 1.2.3.5

13. 13 configuration NameVirtualHost 1.2.3.4 ServerName jobs.perl.org... RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(gif|png|jpg)$ RewriteRule /(.*) http://localhost:8010/$1 [P] ServerName onion.perl.org ServerAlias learn.perl.org... RewriteRule /(.*) http://localhost:8020/$1 [P]

14. 14 URI configuration RewriteRule /(bar/.*) http://localhost:8030/$1 [P] RewriteRule /(foo/.*) http://otherhost:8040/$1 [P] Each backend process can run as a different user –A process per developer –A process per customer –A process per site Backends can run on different machines

15. 15 Focus on code quality The mod_perl guide recommends not using the IO:: modules or use vars qw(%foo); I say use them if you would like to –far fewer mod_perl processes use Exporter to export your function names as needed Of course, don't go crazy and use POSIX and CGI.pm everywhere

16. 16 Load balancing mod_rewrite can do simple load balancing the mod_perl processes can be behind a load balancer, RewriteRule /(foo/.*) http://modperl.farm.foo.com:8030/$1 [P] mod_backhand

17. 17 Caching Browsers/end user proxies can cache from servers –set the right headers, content-length, last-modified Reverse proxies –you set the rules, if complete documents can be cached Application can cache from other parts of the system (eg database) –even the database can cache some of what it has done

18. 18 HTTP headers Expires: Content-Length: Cache-Control: Pragma: (old "Cache-Control") When the complete documents can be cached. If-Modified-Since: –304 response

19. 19 Application caching Generate static content every N minutes –for small set of files Save results from the SQL database –in a local BerkeleyDB or similar Generate a Storable or BerkeleyDB file centrally and rsync it to each mod_perl server Create summary tables in the database –to lighten the load of heavy queries Mix and match for fragments

20. 20 Caching summary Decide for how long data can be considered "fresh enough" Cache fragments of pages where possible Make each part of the system cache and aggregate as much as possibly Make SQL queries as simple and fast as possibly

21. 21 Databases Databases are hard(er) to scale Reverse proxy minimizes the need for many concurrent database connections Apache::DBI minimizes the number of new connections made Caching minimizes the number of lookups Summary tables can make the lookups faster

22. 22 Summary Architecture more important than code Use many proxies –Allowing fewer heavy backends Caching is fundamental

23. 23 Resources The mod_perl guide's performance section –http://perl.apache.org/guide/performance.html –lot's of nitty gritty details DBI and mod_perl –http://www.saturn5.com/~jwb/dbi-performance.html Database performance –Tims Advanced DBI Tutorial –http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/TIMB/DBI_Talk5_2001.tar.gz These slides –http://develooper.com/modperl/