0001204: Dynamic apache configuration based on system resources - PacketFence

Bug Tracking System

View Issue Details [ Jump to Notes ]

[ Issue History ] [ Print ]

Project

Category

View Status

Date Submitted

Last Update

0001204

PacketFence

performance

public

2011-04-04 17:50

2011-10-25 09:01

Reporter

obilodeau

Assigned To

obilodeau

Priority

normal

Severity

minor

Reproducibility

random

Status

closed

Resolution

fixed

Platform

OS Version

Product Version

1.9.0

Target Version

2.2.0

Fixed in Version

2.2.0

Summary

0001204: Dynamic apache configuration based on system resources

Description

PacketFence runs on a lot of different systems out there and even though we have minimum hardware requirements we know that it runs in production from simple P3 with 1Gb of RAM (below our specs) up to dual octo-cores with 24Gb of RAM.

Our aging default apache configuration has not been re-evaluated since we've switched to mod_perl (a change which implied a dramatic performance gain at the cost of keeping more stuff in memory).

Lately, while running a 700 users registration sprint in an hour or so, we saw the consequence of our bad apache defaults. Apache spawned more childs than the memory could handle and the system started to swap which killed the box.

When I started to consider a fix I've quickly realized that we will need to dynamically adjust the number of childs based on system memory. A fixed configuration would have been over-utilizing modest hardware and under-using more capable systems.

So what I'll do is we'll check for an average memory consumption per thread in the systems we have access to and build a formula that will determine how to adjust httpd.conf's MaxClients, StartServers and MinSpareServers statements.

Additional Information

Need to think of:
x86 vs x86_64

ps -eo rss,cmd --sort -rss | less

Tags

No tags attached.

fixed in git revision

fixed in mtn revision

72f89c1e24c816eb856dfe0e829f02b9aa90d6ed

Attached Files

Relationships

Notes
(0002019) obilodeau (reporter) 2011-04-08 13:55	After some discussions / research: MaxClients = (total ram - (total ram x 0.25 + 300)) / 50 with a hard limit of 256. StartServers = MaxClients / 2 MinSpareServers = MaxClients / 4

(0002024) obilodeau (reporter) 2011-04-11 14:57	implemented as discussed earlier

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2011-04-04 17:50	obilodeau	New Issue
2011-04-04 17:50	obilodeau	Status	new => assigned
2011-04-04 17:50	obilodeau	Assigned To	=> obilodeau
2011-04-06 15:29	obilodeau	Additional Information Updated
2011-04-08 13:55	obilodeau	Note Added: 0002019
2011-04-11 14:57	obilodeau	mtn revision	=> 72f89c1e24c816eb856dfe0e829f02b9aa90d6ed
2011-04-11 14:57	obilodeau	Note Added: 0002024
2011-04-11 14:57	obilodeau	Status	assigned => resolved
2011-04-11 14:57	obilodeau	Fixed in Version	=> trunk
2011-04-11 14:57	obilodeau	Resolution	open => fixed
2011-05-04 11:33	obilodeau	Fixed in Version	trunk => 2.2.0
2011-05-04 11:40	obilodeau	Status	resolved => closed
2011-10-25 09:01	obilodeau	Target Version	+1 => 2.2.0