Re: MX Stability

[Matt Robertson]

Nicholas Watson wrote:
>I think it's a ColdFusion server problem. If this is what JAVA is all 
>about, using massive amounts of memory for very little code, I may be 
>looking for another technolgy.

Offhand your situation sounds over the edge.  I seldom climb over 250 mb on a box 
hosting about 3 dozen sites.  But again this is all 100% dependent on what it is you 
are up to, and how you are going about it.

And I know this isn't what you wanted to hear, but if moving to cfc's 'caused' the 
problem, I'd look to the code and not the server.  On the face of it changes to an 
existing app that merely separate logic from presentation -- i.e. rearrange the same 
code -- shouldn't make much if any difference in memory consumption.

--
---
 Matt Robertson, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 MSB Designs, Inc. http://mysecretbase.com
---

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Re: MX Stability

[Jochem van Dieten]

Watson, Nicholas wrote:
> 
> For example, if I load a query into a application scope variable that
> contains 200 records, and I use the query to build the navigation on my site
> each time a page is hit, will ColdFusion be able to handle the access to
> that data under load?

Why cache the query when you can also cache the navigation itself?

Jochem



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MX Stability

[Nicholas Watson]

One of my biggest problems right now is ColdFusion and it's memory usage. 

The app that is currently giving me problems, at one time had all the CF code 
(business logic) coded in the templates. I moved all my buisness logic an queries in 
to CFCs, in order to clean up my front end code. Now all of the sudden memory usage is 
up over 600% under load. jrun used to use around 100mb of memory and now, under load, 
will top out at 625mb. I had query caching and used cfsavecontent, but removed all of 
this code due to memory usage.

I think it's a ColdFusion server problem. If this is what JAVA is all about, using 
massive amounts of memory for very little code, I may be looking for another technolgy.

>You aren't going to know the answer to that until you try it ... on a 
>dev server with load testing, of course :D
>
>Still, if we're talking about 200 titles and 200 urls, 100 characters 
>each, then thats roughly 40k?  Not so bad if you've got loads of extra 
>memory and know its going to stay that way.  Certtainly if the time 
>ever came to optimize your memory this would be an obvious candidate 
>for the axe.
>
>The rub is: what else is going on in your app?  Will this be just 
>another drop in a big bucket or is the bucket full already?
>
>
 
>Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com
>
>
>
>
>--
>---
 
>Matt Robertson, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>MSB Designs, Inc. http://mysecretbase.com
>---
>
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RE: MX Stability

[Barney Boisvert]

Cache the generated HTML, if you can, and save yourself converting
query=>HTML as well.  Even if it's only 20ms to do it, that adds up quick
under load.

Someone (Dave Watts, maybe?) stated on here that CF apps tend to be CPU
bound.  That's been my experiences as well, so I generally assume that I'll
run out of clock cycles before I run out of RAM.  I'm not going to build my
database in RAM and use it from there, that's the RDBMS's job, but if I can
cache generated information, I will.

The main app I develop usually holds somewhere between 1-5MB of cached HTML
navigation and layout, depending on usage of the different sites within the
app.  I also cache a lot of other things, be it other HTML blocks, raw
queries, or user information.  Add to that the CF template cache, and
whatever else it holds, and there's a lot of crap in memory, and I haven't
had any problems with it since going to CFMX last fall.  Like Matt said, you
have to try it to know for sure, but memory is cheap, so use it when you
can.

barneyb

---
Barney Boisvert, Senior Development Engineer
AudienceCentral
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice : 360.756.8080 x12
fax   : 360.647.5351

www.audiencecentral.com


> -Original Message-
> From: Matt Robertson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 1:09 PM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: RE: MX Stability
>
>
> You aren't going to know the answer to that until you try it ...
> on a dev server with load testing, of course :D
>
> Still, if we're talking about 200 titles and 200 urls, 100
> characters each, then thats roughly 40k?  Not so bad if you've
> got loads of extra memory and know its going to stay that way.
> Certtainly if the time ever came to optimize your memory this
> would be an obvious candidate for the axe.
>
> The rub is: what else is going on in your app?  Will this be just
> another drop in a big bucket or is the bucket full already?
>
> 
>  Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>  MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com
> 
>
>
>
> --
> ---
>  Matt Robertson, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>  MSB Designs, Inc. http://mysecretbase.com
> ---
>
> --
> 
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RE: MX Stability

[Matt Robertson]

You aren't going to know the answer to that until you try it ... on a dev server with 
load testing, of course :D

Still, if we're talking about 200 titles and 200 urls, 100 characters each, then thats 
roughly 40k?  Not so bad if you've got loads of extra memory and know its going to 
stay that way.  Certtainly if the time ever came to optimize your memory this would be 
an obvious candidate for the axe.

The rub is: what else is going on in your app?  Will this be just another drop in a 
big bucket or is the bucket full already?


 Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com




--
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 Matt Robertson, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 MSB Designs, Inc. http://mysecretbase.com
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RE: MX Stability

[Watson, Nicholas]

How much is too much information in memory? If memory was not an obejct, at
what point would ColdFusion become unstable?

For example, if I load a query into a application scope variable that
contains 200 records, and I use the query to build the navigation on my site
each time a page is hit, will ColdFusion be able to handle the access to
that data under load?




-Original Message-
From: Barney Boisvert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 2:57 PM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: RE: MX Stability


Another way to handle it is to cache content blocks (menu, page content,
side bar, whatever), either in memory or the file system, and expire those
caches as needed.  Then your actual pages will dynamically assemble the
pages from the cached content.  Still a HUGE performance increase, but you
maintain control over exactly what's cached.  This is great for applications
where certain pieces of all your pages MUST remain dynamic (like a shopping
cart), but you don't want to have to hit the DB for stuff that doesn't
change (like product listings).  With a bit of additional work, you can even
make user-specific caches for shopping carts and stuff.

Beniot Hediard has a good application framework white paper here:
   http://www.benorama.com/coldfusion/index.htm
It touches on a lot of topics, and while I don't like some of it, I'm a big
fan of the pagelet/caching mechanism, and have built several caching systems
based on what he lays out.

cheers,
barneyb

---
Barney Boisvert, Senior Development Engineer
AudienceCentral
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice : 360.756.8080 x12
fax   : 360.647.5351

www.audiencecentral.com


> -Original Message-
> From: Matt Robertson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 11:43 AM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: RE: MX Stability
>
>
> >Doesn't cfcache
> >accomplish this? Or does your content management system compile and
> publish
> >the static cfm files on the Web site?
>
> The latter.  The cms publishes a physical static page that has nothing
> but html in it and a .cfm extension.  This can be done versus a .html
> extension for the simplest of reasons: so a user's session doesn't
> expire.  If you get fancy you can refine the process so that sections of
> the page remain 'live' CF, thereby reducing the CF load but preserving
> your ability to run code.  It all depends on your app design, but either
> way 'going static' will dramatically reduce server load.
>
> In this case cfcache may or may not be the right tool for the job.
> You'd have to test it to see if shifting the load from CFPoint A to
> CFPoint B solved the problem acceptably.
>
> 
>  Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>  MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com
> 
>
> 

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RE: MX Stability

[Barney Boisvert]

Another way to handle it is to cache content blocks (menu, page content,
side bar, whatever), either in memory or the file system, and expire those
caches as needed.  Then your actual pages will dynamically assemble the
pages from the cached content.  Still a HUGE performance increase, but you
maintain control over exactly what's cached.  This is great for applications
where certain pieces of all your pages MUST remain dynamic (like a shopping
cart), but you don't want to have to hit the DB for stuff that doesn't
change (like product listings).  With a bit of additional work, you can even
make user-specific caches for shopping carts and stuff.

Beniot Hediard has a good application framework white paper here:
   http://www.benorama.com/coldfusion/index.htm
It touches on a lot of topics, and while I don't like some of it, I'm a big
fan of the pagelet/caching mechanism, and have built several caching systems
based on what he lays out.

cheers,
barneyb

---
Barney Boisvert, Senior Development Engineer
AudienceCentral
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
voice : 360.756.8080 x12
fax   : 360.647.5351

www.audiencecentral.com


> -Original Message-
> From: Matt Robertson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 11:43 AM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: RE: MX Stability
>
>
> >Doesn't cfcache
> >accomplish this? Or does your content management system compile and
> publish
> >the static cfm files on the Web site?
>
> The latter.  The cms publishes a physical static page that has nothing
> but html in it and a .cfm extension.  This can be done versus a .html
> extension for the simplest of reasons: so a user's session doesn't
> expire.  If you get fancy you can refine the process so that sections of
> the page remain 'live' CF, thereby reducing the CF load but preserving
> your ability to run code.  It all depends on your app design, but either
> way 'going static' will dramatically reduce server load.
>
> In this case cfcache may or may not be the right tool for the job.
> You'd have to test it to see if shifting the load from CFPoint A to
> CFPoint B solved the problem acceptably.
>
> 
>  Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>  MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com
> 
>
> 
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RE: MX Stability

[Matt Robertson]

>Doesn't cfcache
>accomplish this? Or does your content management system compile and
publish
>the static cfm files on the Web site?

The latter.  The cms publishes a physical static page that has nothing
but html in it and a .cfm extension.  This can be done versus a .html
extension for the simplest of reasons: so a user's session doesn't
expire.  If you get fancy you can refine the process so that sections of
the page remain 'live' CF, thereby reducing the CF load but preserving
your ability to run code.  It all depends on your app design, but either
way 'going static' will dramatically reduce server load.

In this case cfcache may or may not be the right tool for the job.
You'd have to test it to see if shifting the load from CFPoint A to
CFPoint B solved the problem acceptably.


 Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com


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RE: MX Stability

[Watson, Nicholas]

When you say publish to *static* cfm pages what do you mean. Doesn't cfcache
accomplish this? Or does your content management system compile and publish
the static cfm files on the Web site?



-Original Message-
From: Matt Robertson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 1:48 PM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: RE: MX Stability


You can also throttle connections with IIS very effectively.

In IIS properties for the web site, click the Performance tab.  Check
"enable bandwidth throttling" and be prepared to scale the speed WAY
back.  I had it down to 1 or 2 kbps once on a low-traffic site and no
humans noticed any difference, but the SE hitting it with 850k reads per
day was forced down to an acceptable level.  

This is one of the places where the benefits of using CF to publish to
static HTML rather than assembling pages on request becomes really
obvious.  Wipes CF and your db out of the processing picture.  

A slight alteration on the same technique is to publish a *static* page
with a .cfm extension.  This will keep Application.cfm and
OnRequestEnd.cfm still in the picture but eliminate all CF/DB processing
in between.


 Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com



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RE: MX Stability

[Matt Robertson]

You can also throttle connections with IIS very effectively.

In IIS properties for the web site, click the Performance tab.  Check
"enable bandwidth throttling" and be prepared to scale the speed WAY
back.  I had it down to 1 or 2 kbps once on a low-traffic site and no
humans noticed any difference, but the SE hitting it with 850k reads per
day was forced down to an acceptable level.  

This is one of the places where the benefits of using CF to publish to
static HTML rather than assembling pages on request becomes really
obvious.  Wipes CF and your db out of the processing picture.  

A slight alteration on the same technique is to publish a *static* page
with a .cfm extension.  This will keep Application.cfm and
OnRequestEnd.cfm still in the picture but eliminate all CF/DB processing
in between.


 Matt Robertson   [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 MSB Designs, Inc.  http://mysecretbase.com


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Re: MX Stability

[Thomas Chiverton]

On Tuesday 15 Jul 2003 15:22 pm, Watson, Nicholas wrote:
> 620MB

Sounds normal enough for a J2EE engine to me.
You can try triming the JVM memory settings down.

> 2. My thread count gets gotten over 300 while being crawled. I've read on
> other posts CF become unstable at 125 or so. How do eliminate threads being
> created by ColdFusion.

Place a proxy betwen JRun and the world, and throttle connections with that.
Squid or Apache would be up to this.

-- 
Thomas C
Advanced ColdFusion Programmer

HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This Email Contains Minute Electrically Charged 
Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles Per 
Hour.
PLEASE ALSO NOTE: I don't speak for the company that sent this.

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MX Stability

[Watson, Nicholas]

have a web site that uses ColdFusion MX (updater 3), IIS 5 and SQL2000. The
box that the site is on is a dual 1.0 Ghz PIIIs machine with 1 gig of ram.
The database sits on a quad proccessor box with Xeons (Over 1 Ghz each, more
than enough horsepower for the site).

When my site gets crawled by a search engine, or any other kind of crawler
(we use a program that check for dead links in the site), the memory shoots
up and the thread count gets near 300. This causes the system to crash.

The site is coded with all queries and buisness logic wrapped in to CFC's
that interface with templates that build the UI.

Our previous site had no problems, which did not use CFC's had no problems
dealing with the traffic created by crawlers and our link checker.

Now, we also use cfcache extensively to reduce overhead for pages that never
change (90% of the site). 

1. Why does my memory usage skyrocket? I've had JRun.exe use 620 MB on one
box, and 520 MB on another box. This seems outragous to me. 

2. My thread count gets gotten over 300 while being crawled. I've read on
other posts CF become unstable at 125 or so. How do eliminate threads being
created by ColdFusion.

3. What performance tuning measures can I take to make the site more stable
during load?

4. Why does ColdFusion completely die when the connection with the our
database server is broken? I've used CFCATCH tags to catch errors, but the
server hangs and the CF service has to be restarted. 

Under normal operating loads, the site is stable. As mentioned before our
previous site, was very stable and never had problems with load issues.

Thanks,

Nicholas W. Watson
Software Engineer
Concurrent Technologies Corporation
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: (814) 269-2653

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Macromedia Update on ColdFusion MX Stability Issues

[Phil Costa]

I wanted to give everyone an update on the status of our research into reported Linux 
and Unix stability issues with ColdFusion MX. 
 
Since releasing ColdFusion MX, our support and engineering teams have been working 
closely with a number of customers to identify and address problems they've 
experienced with Unix, Linux, and Apache. As a result of this research, we have 
uncovered some significant issues as well as published several fixes. Now, we want to 
make sure all customers are aware of them so they can benefit. 
 
We believe the changes indicated below will address the majority of the stability 
issues encountered by users with Linux/Unix and Apache. We continue to work with 
customers to research some remaining issues and will update you when we have more 
actionable information. In the meantime, we ask that any user running ColdFusion MX on 
Linux or Solaris take the following steps:
 
1) Apply Updater 2, available at: 
http://dynamic.macromedia.com/bin/MM/software/trial/hwswrec.jsp?product=cfmx_updater 
 
2) Apply the recently released connector patches for Linux and Solaris (released after 
Updater 2). Download links and installation instructions are available at 
http://www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=23524 
 
3) Change the settings in the jrun.xml file to the recommended settings detailed at: 
http://www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=23524 
 
4) As always, try this first on a test server before deploying into production.
 
Best,
 
Philip Costa
Sr. Product Manager, ColdFusion
Macromedia 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   

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