Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers

Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers

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  Beyond Apache: FasterWeb Servers Siddharth Vijayakrishnan mail@bluefireworks.net Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.1/11
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  About me • Application developer with Oracle India • Work on web servers in my free time • Contributor to Lighttpd Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.2/11
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  Executive summary • How does a web server work? • How can it made to work faster • Apache • Other web servers • Lighttpd • The road ahead Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.3/11
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  Let’s write aweb server • First try:socket(), bind(), listen(), accept(),sendresponse(), close() • Second try: socket(), bind(),listen(), accept(), fork() etc • Second try better than the first since it can handle multiple connections • A lot of web servers do just this and work just fine Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.4/11
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  What’s wrong then? • This model does not scale well • Model breaks down completely under overload conditions • Slashdot effect / "Thundering Herd" problem • Distributed Denial of Service attacks Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.5/11
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  Threads v/s EventDriven • Threads:- • Kernel schedulers are getting better at their job • Scales well on SMP systems • Throughput degrades drastically under heavy load Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.6/11
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  Threads v/s EventDriven • Event Driven:- • Avoids the nasty beasties - synchronization, dead lock, adaptive process spawning etc • Scales nicely under overload • A single process event driven design cannot take advantage of SMP • Blocking I/O can degrade performance of the event driven model Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.7/11
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  The Apache WebServer • Poster child of the OSS revolution • Feature rich • Module API allows extensions to server functionality • Apache2 supports multiple processing models • prefork • worker • experimental event driven mode Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.8/11
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  What Ails Apache? • Slow adoption of Apache2 (some stats here) • Apache 1.3 (the most popular version) suffers from generic multi process server scalability issues • Rich feature set can sometimes be a problem e.g • httpd.conf / rewrite / virtual hosting are not the easiest to get right • Support for .htaccess slows down processing Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.9/11
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  Others in thefray • thttpd • Really fast at serving static content • Not much support for anything else • zeus • Fast but not open source • Others: • gatling, cherokee, boa, nginx, mathopd • Matrix showing features present and lacking Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.10/11
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  Experimental Efforts • Tux (kernelspace httpd), Flash • Inspired by the Mindcraft survey that showed IIS to be faster than Apache • Tux was a nice experiment till sendfile() arrived • Flash • has an excellent specWEB 99 score • Hybrid design model - Asymmetric Multiprocess Event Driven • Judicious use of threads to get around the flaws in the event driven model • Lazy Asynchronous I/O Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.11/11
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  Lighttpd: A ViableAlternative • Began as an experiment to prove that a web server running as a single process could withstand the thundering herds • Stuff to be added here Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.12/11
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  Lighttpd: Features • Standard Set • HTTP/1.1 support, SSL, FastCGI,CGI,WebDAV, IPv6 • Module API available • Unique Features • Works with different event handlers • Memcache integration • Workarounds for most of the problems that event driven servers face • Really simple configuration Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.13/11
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  Lighttpd: Currently • 19,000 installations as per the last Netcraft survey • Phenomenal growth rate in the number of servers running lighty • Release 1.4.7 is out • Release early, Release often -> A release every two or three weeks • Enthusiastic response from the ’frameworks’ crowd • RoR users form the most vocal support group • Some popular sites running Lighttpd • www.nexopia.com • wikipedia image/download servers • Textdrive Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.14/11
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  Lighttpd: How DoesIt Compare • benchmark data goes here Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.15/11
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  Lighttpd: Future • Filters • Windows port (if someone gets the time) • Get the server into all major distributions • More and more modules (contributions will be gratefully accepted) Beyond Apache: Faster Web Servers – p.16/11