I forgot to mention, lighttpd consumes about 12 megs of RAM with my config. It's very small because it uses non-blocking sockets to do everything with a single thread.
On Nov 6, 2007 1:17 PM, Mark Maunder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I can't overstate the efficiency gains from a reverse proxy config with > mod_perl and a very light front-end reverse proxy. As I mentioned I'm using > lighttpd as the front-end and apache 2.2 with mod_perl 2 as the back end. > Here are two screenshots to illustrate what I'm talking about. > > The first is the lighttpd status page from a very busy server of mine. The > instant this page loaded, the server was serving 146 concurrent requests > which is normal for this time of day: > http://markmaunder.com/light_status.gif > > Most of those requests are routed via mod_proxy on lighttpd to the > back-end mod_perl server. The mod_perl box is handling just under 30 > requests per second with only 5 prefork processes. Usually only one of those > is busy. > http://markmaunder.com/apache_status.gif > > Without the front-end proxy, mod_perl might have to handle those 140+ > concurrent connections with one process per connection. I have keepalive > enabled on the front-end server, so this isn't a fair statement, but you see > what I'm getting at. > > The memory used by each of those apache processes is around 30 Megabytes, > although it's actually less because some of it is shared: > http://markmaunder.com/apache_top.gif > > Both these servers are running on the same machine. I don't have any fancy > load sharing gear and this works perfectly on a single box with very little > hardware. I do have a small cluster, but each of my machines runs both the > reverse proxy and mod_perl server. I'm handling 30 mod_perl requests per > second with less than 150 Megs of memory and a not-insubstantial mod_perl > app. I leave most of my 2 Gigabytes of RAM free on these boxes for filesytem > caching by Linux. The app is very filesystem intensive. > > FYI, lighttpd is configured with mod_proxy and mod_rewrite enabled. Both > are incredibly simple to configure under lighttpd (and incredibly > inflexible), but combined with mod_rewrite on your back-end mod_perl server > you can do just about any config. > > BTW, this config is common for other app servers like Ruby/Mongrel and > PHP. Most app servers are memory hungry and don't like slow clients. > > Mark. > > > > > > > On Nov 6, 2007 10:41 AM, Gary Sewell < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hi again, > > > > As I mentioned we run 4 mod perl servers, theya re all apache 1.3 , 2 > > are > > 64-bit 2 are 32-bit machines. > > > > The discrepancies I mentioned in the size of each of our apache > > instances is > > something I don't think I personally be able to get to the bottom of, I > > have > > attempted Apache::Status, this gives out our loaded modules etc but not > > specific sizes, so its hard to find what I taking up the 200mb. Lets put > > that to the side. > > > > I am interested in the reverse proxy idea. We currently also run a > > static > > image/js/css server and a static php server that runs the static pages > > we > > are able to crate which is very few, 99% of our pages are dynamic and > > change > > every second. Due to the bulk of our code (100Mb @ 32-bit & 200Mb @ > > 64-bit) > > we are only able to set Max Clients to 40. After arriving at a static > > php > > homepage we refer subsequent pages randomly to one of the modperl > > servers to > > share the stress. > > > > Is our php server acting similar to a reverse-proxy or am I missing out > > on > > something, would a reverse-proxy help us with our setup. We are unable > > to > > cache content and hit live databases for every dynamic page we serve. > > Images, js and css are all served from a slimmed down apache server so > > these > > aren't a problem. > > > > Thanks for the input. > > GS > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Frank Wiles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ] > > Sent: 06 November 2007 18:08 > > To: Mark Maunder > > Cc: Perrin Harkins; Darryl Miles; Gary Sewell; modperl@perl.apache.org > > Subject: Re: 32 & 64 bit memory differences > > > > On Sun, 4 Nov 2007 21:28:34 -0800 > > "Mark Maunder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > I run lighttpd as reverse proxy in front of mod_perl configured with > > > prefork. I average 100 to 200 concurrent connections on lighttpd and > > > need 4 mod_perl processes with keepalive disabled to service all > > > those requests. [thanks Perrin for suggesting this config!!] > > > > That's actually a pretty common ratio of front to backend servers. > > I *highly* recommend a reverse proxy for all but the smallest > > environments. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > > Frank Wiles, Revolution Systems, LLC. > > Personal : [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wiles.org > > Work : [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.revsys.com > > > > > > > > > -- Mark Maunder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://markmaunder.com/ +1-206-6978723
