Rails - Jul 2006 - Apache2.2 + Mongrel: what do you think about these perfs?

Hi all,

I''ve been spending quite a lot of time trying to install a decent RoR 
server on my dedicated server (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS), and now, everything 
works.

However, the performances are not really what I had expected... I would 
like to know what you think about it.

Here is my config: 2GHz VIA proc, 1Gb RAM, SATA-II HD.

I have apt-got ruby 1.8.4, mysql5 and installed rails 1.1.4 by means of 
rubygems (0.9.0). Then I installed the mysql extension (2.7}, mongrel 
(0.3.13.3) and mongrel cluster (0.2.0) and uploaded my app.

Here is my mongrel_cluster.yml:
---
port: "8000"
environment: production
pid_file: log/mongrel.pid
servers: 3

Then, I compiled Apache2.2. Here are my configure options:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-modules=''alias asis 
auth_basic auth_digest authn_file authz_user autoindex access cgi cgid 
charset_lite dir env http imagemap include log_config mime negotiation 
setenvif status deflate info proxy proxy_balancer rewrite so headers''

Not too much, and static only... I don''t see how I could improve
this...

Now, here is my vhost config:

 <VirtualHost *>
     ServerName dedibox
	DocumentRoot /home/noe/cukv3/public
  <Directory "/home/noe/cukv3/public">
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
  <Proxy balancer://cukv3>
	 BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8000
	 BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8001
	 BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:8002
  </Proxy>
	ProxyPass /images !
	ProxyPass /stylesheets !
	ProxyPass /javascripts !
	ProxyPass / balancer://cukv3/
	ProxyPassReverse / balancer://cukv3/
 </VirtualHost>

The whole thing works, however, as I have said, I am not satisfied by 
the performances... Here is what I get for a middle-complexity action, 
which returns 10 articles from a given category (n-to-n relationship). 
(In fact, mysql''s CPU usage never gets > 3%, so it is clearly ruby
that
slows it down...)

These benches have been realized with apache bench, from the box itself. 
So there is no delay due to the network. I know httperf is better, but I 
couldn''t manage to get it to work, because it took too much CPU.

So, here are the results:

1) Direct connexion to a mongrel server:

   1.1) Dynamic

   ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1:8000/articles/list?category_id=2
   Result: 5.70 #/s

   1.2) Static

   ab -n 10000 -c 10 127.0.0.1:8000/stylesheets/img/logo.gif
   Result: 439 #/s

2) Through Apache2.2 and mod_proxy_balancer

   2.1) Dynamic

   ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1/articles/list?category_id=2
   Result: 6.38 #/s

   2.2) Static

   ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1/stylesheets/img/logo.gif
   Result: 1703 #/s

Which seems to be unsufficient for production use...

So, what do you think? Is it normal? Did I do something wrong? In fact, 
I would be interested in points of comparison, and thoughts about these 
results.

Thank you very much!

Nauhaie

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Just as a sanity check, I have an under-development app that I switched over
to production mode on a MacBook Pro (not the fastest server on earth) and
httperf shows a single Mongrel serving up somewhere around 27 req/s for
dynamic pages. Remember, this is a *laptop* I''m benchmarking. Your
server
should outpunch it by a significant amount.


Nauhaie wrote:
> 
>    ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1:8000/articles/list?category_id=2
>    Result: 5.70 #/s
> 
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Sent from the RubyOnRails Users forum at Nabble.com.

On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 00:09 +0200, Nauhaie wrote:

Everything looks fine from first glance.

<snip>
> So, here are the results:
> 
> 1) Direct connexion to a mongrel server:
> 
>    1.1) Dynamic
> 
>    ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1:8000/articles/list?category_id=2
>    Result: 5.70 #/s
> 
>    1.2) Static
> 
>    ab -n 10000 -c 10 127.0.0.1:8000/stylesheets/img/logo.gif
>    Result: 439 #/s
> 
> 2) Through Apache2.2 and mod_proxy_balancer
> 
>    2.1) Dynamic
> 
>    ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1/articles/list?category_id=2
>    Result: 6.38 #/s
> 
>    2.2) Static
> 
>    ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1/stylesheets/img/logo.gif
>    Result: 1703 #/s
You should do one more test:

1) Create a small controller named "test_controller.rb" and put an
index
action in it that render_text "test" as the only thing it does.
2) Re-run your above test and see what kind of performance you get.  

This is most likely your max Rails performance, if other pages aren''t
at
this level then you have to work on the Rails side to get them faster.
If this measurement is the same as your /articles test then you''ve got
something configured wrong since it has to be faster.

Check out ruby-prof as a way to get good performance tuning measurements
for that specific action:

http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-prof

Specifically the part about using the ruby-prof library to measure one
function.


-- 
Zed A. Shaw
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.railsmachine.com/ -- Need Mongrel support?

Hi!
> 1) Create a small controller named "test_controller.rb" and put
an index
> action in it that render_text "test" as the only thing it does.
> 2) Re-run your above test and see what kind of performance you get.
You are right, I should probably have done that in the first place... 
So, here are my results:

Direct to Mongrel:

ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1:8000/test ==> 45#/s

Through Apache to 3 Mongrels:

ab -n 100 -c 10 127.0.0.1/test ==> 45#/s, too

Does it seem you right?

Thank you!

Nauhaie

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

If it might help, I have tried it with the same 3 Mongrels and Pound 
instead of Apache2.2 + mod_proxy_balancer.

I get 6.14 #/s (I had 6.38 with last config) with my script. With the 
simple Hello World, I get 40.86 (45 with last config). It appears that 
Pound is no better than Apache2.2... Can someone confirm that please?

I would really be interested in what performances you guys get, because 
I have pretty much nothing to compare with...

Thank you!

Nauhaie

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 23:10 +0200, Nauhaie wrote:
> If it might help, I have tried it with the same 3 Mongrels and Pound 
> instead of Apache2.2 + mod_proxy_balancer.
> 
> I get 6.14 #/s (I had 6.38 with last config) with my script. With the 
> simple Hello World, I get 40.86 (45 with last config). It appears that 
> Pound is no better than Apache2.2... Can someone confirm that please?
> 
> I would really be interested in what performances you guys get, because 
> I have pretty much nothing to compare with...
Yep, basically you''re putting your efforts in the wrong place.  If you
run a test controller and you get 40.86, and then your page gets 6.14,
then changing out the balancer will do absolutely nothing for you.
You''ve got to work on making your rails actions faster.  Nothing can
save you.  You''re doomed.  Time to work on the real problem. :-)

Check out ruby-prof for some hints, also look at some earlier posts by
Stefan Kaes and Scott Barron for other tools.  Otherwise, just keep
benching and tweaking until you find out the problem.  Your
production.log is the key to your problem.


-- 
Zed A. Shaw
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.railsmachine.com/ -- Need Mongrel support?

Ok thank you. I will try to see what I can do. At least, I am glad my 
configuration is ok ;-)

Nauhaie

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.