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Filesystem Layouts and Apache Performance

Learn how system administrators can improve Apache performance through hardware optimizations, filesystem layouts, and website design strategies. Discover best practices for server configurations that lead to enhanced performance and efficiency.

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Filesystem Layouts and Apache Performance

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  1. Filesystem Layouts and Apache Performance • Jeff D. Almeida • spud@spudzeppelin.com

  2. Foreword • Convention used throughout: • Our sample site is “puppysurprise.com”, a hypothetical advertiser-supported content site where professional football players share their favorite dog stories from each year of their careers. • Acknowledgements/Apologies-in-advance: • Dean Gaudet • Christopher Alexander • The Grateful Dead

  3. The Proposition • System Administrators can directly impact how their webservers perform by decisions they make when initially configuring systems. 1

  4. The Mission • Teach system administrators about “best practices” for system installations that lead to optimum performance. • Enable system administrators to make informed decisions regarding trade-offs among performance and other constraints (e.g. security, multiple users, available hardware). 2

  5. The Destination • Apache webservers on optimally configured hardware. • Apache performing at its best. • Hardware not taxed unnecessarily. 3

  6. The Origin • Default installation for Apache is suboptimal. • Many vendor-provided installs are even worse. • Default/”standard” hardware configurations exacerbate the problem. • Many times, site design decisions contribute as well. 4

  7. A Long, Strange Trip • Until “recently” performance wasn’t much of a consideration. • Old. proven ways of thinking among Unix admins. • Resulting DocumentRoot: • /usr/local/apache/htdocs • /usr/local/web/sites/puppysurprise/docs • /var/web/puppysurprise/docs 5

  8. Vendor Paradox • In theory, not selling high-performance webservers. • In practice, web services have been the “killer app” for Linux, FreeBSD, etc. • A lot of this appears to be whimsy. Resulting DocumentRoot: • /home/httpd/sites/puppysurprise/docs • /usr/share/webdocs/puppysurprise • /usr/users/httpd/htdocs

  9. Hardware Vendors • Old guard, traditional Unix vendors slowest to adapt. • High-density rackmount Intel/Linux vendors doing better. • Webservers are their bread-and-butter • Problems arise from the disk configuration.

  10. Site Design Problems • Traditional thinking favors “deep” websites. • /teams/1997/Pats/qbs/Drew_Bledsoe/index.html • Traditional thinking favors designer-configurable access controls • .htaccess files

  11. The Timeless Way of Building Webservers • Optimized hardware configuration • Optimized filesystem layouts • Optimized Apache configuration • Optimized website design 6

  12. Patterns for Successful Server Design • Not a “one-size-fits-all” sort of solution • Different environments and requirements call for different solutions • Learn to make installation-time decisions that optimize aspects of server configuration. • Patterns are manifestations of “the way”. 7

  13. Hardware Optimizations I • Avoiding Device Contention • Three things looking for disk seeks: docs, logs, swap • In order of decreasing efficiency, keep the three on separate: • Buses (unlikely on Intel hardware) • Controllers • Channels • Spindles • Partitions • Avoid clutter to speed seeks

  14. Hardware Optimizations II • Make the right purchasing decisions • Enough RAM to never swap • Disks and controllers • Hardware RAID 0+1 • Lesson from the database gurus • Smooth out spikes • Superior to Software RAID, RAID 5 • SCSI not IDE • SCSI is non-blocking

  15. Filesystem Layouts I • Understand the way Apache opens files for reading • Not a bug, actually proper behavior • Example: • Docroot /usr/local/web/sites/puppysurprise/docs • File /teams/1997/Pats/qbs/Drew_Bledsoe/index.html • 12 layers of parent directories!

  16. Filesystem Layouts II • Based on this, put our docroot at /puppysurprise • Why not? Worst case, it’s on a separate partition anyway at this point, right?

  17. Apache Configuration I • We’re focusing on those performance-tuning tips that are filesystem-specific. Plenty of others exist. • Options +FollowSymLinks • AllowOverride None • Don’t use suexec (or UserDir at all, if possible)

  18. Apache Configuration II • Can you afford to log in some other fashion? • Unless docs and logs are on separate buses, there’s always going to be some contention. • Logging options: • disable it altogether • buffered logging • remote syslog • remote database • conjectures: named pipe? netpipe?

  19. Site Design • Performance favors the horizontal • Let the sysadmin set the access controls in httpd.conf • Akamai? Or at least Aka-me?

  20. Conclusions • File /puppysurprise/97Pats/Drew_Bledsoe.html is in a performance-optimized location. • Putting /puppysurprise/ on it’s own RAID 0+1 controller is a hardware performance optimization. • Server logs are on their own partition (at worst) or another machine altogether.

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