optimizing your cloud applications in rightscale

1. Optimizing Your Cloud Applications in RightScale
October 13, 2011
Watch the video of this webinar

2. Your Panel Today
Presenting

Rafael H. Saavedra, VP Engineering, RightScale

3. Raphael Simon, Sr. Systems Architect, RightScale

Q&A
Jordan Evans, Account Manager, RightScale
Please use the Questions window to ask questions any time!

4. Agenda
Introduction
3-tier application architecture
Vertical & horizontal scaling
RightScale monitoringand cluster graphs
New Relic RPM
Support for optimizing DB performance
Load testing
Please use the Questions window to ask questions any time!

5. Multi-tenancy
Shared resource pooling
Geo-distribution and ubiquitous network access
Service oriented
Dynamic resource provisioning
Self-organizing
Utility based pricing
Cloud computing characteristics

6. No upfront investment
Lowering operating costs
Highly scalable
Easy access
Reduces business risk and maintenance costs
Enables process automation
Cloud computing advantages

7. 3-tier application architecture
Load balancers
An array of application servers
Master-slave

Vertical & Horizontal Scaling

9. Instance size (vertical scaling)
Instance autoscaling (horizontal scaling)
Server arrays
RightScale support for performance optimization
ServerTemplates are configured to capture performance data
CollectdRightScripts
Hardware & OS monitoring data
Specialized plugins MySQL, HAProxy, Apache, NgInx, IIS, etc
Monitoring graphs: individual, cluster, stacked, heat maps
Alerts & escalations
New Relic RPM
Cloud performance optimization

10. Compute units vs memory
Scaling up spectrum of instance sizes

11. Server arrays provide horizontal scaling

12. The array scales up or down based on performance votes
Tags allow scaling on an arbitrary decision set
Decision threshold controls reaction time
Sleep time allows new resources to have an impact
Scaling can be time dependent
Detailed setup instructions: http://bit.ly/c1oLr2
Fast response to changes in load conditions using alerts
Allocation of servers to availability zones based on weights
Deployment-based so configuration is consistent
Arrays can be pre-scaled to support anticipated demand
Server arrays provide horizontal scaling

Monitoring & Cluster Graphs
with RightScale

14. Server monitoring graphs

15. Cluster monitoring
Individual graphs
Good for a dozen servers
Displays all standard graphs with full detail
Stacked graphs
Displays the contribution of many servers to a total
Great to see the sum and variability of activity in a cluster
Difficult to make out individual servers
Examples: requests/sec, cpu busy cycles, I/O bytes/sec
Heat maps
Displays a bar for each server
Great to see uneven distribution across servers
Great to quickly spot performance problems across many servers
Difficult to read absolute values or see the total cluster activity

16. Cluster monitoring architecture
Architecture
Monitoring front-end serverspull data from storage servers
Up to 100 servers on one graph(to be increased)
monitoring
storage
servers
monitoring
front-end
servers
your servers

17. Cluster monitoring
Current cluster monitoring: one graph per server

18. Stacked graphs
Each color band shows contribution of one server
Servers are stacked on top of one another

19. Heat maps
Each horizontal strip shows one server
The color shows how hot the server is running

20. Heat map with 100 servers

21. Stacked graph of the same 100 servers

Application Performance Analytics with New Relic

23. Real-Time App Performance Analytics
Supports Ruby, PHP, Java & .Net
SQL & NoSQL performance
Web transaction tracing
Performance notifications
Availability monitoring
Scalability analysis
New Relic RPM

24. New Relic RPM
Direct access from RightScale dashboard

25. New Relic RPM
Historical statistics over a period of time

26. New Relic RPM
Distribution of the most time consuming requests

27. New Relic RPM
Statistics about response times from different countries

28. New Relic RPM
Detailed response times by browser

29. An expensive query
The N+1 query problem
New Relic RPM 2 Examples

Optimizing Database Performance

31. Optimizing DB performance
RightScale MySQLServerTemplates
Configuration files tailored to instance size
innodb_buffer_pool_size
key_buffer_size
thread_size
sort_buffer_size
The never ending task of identifying current bottlenecks
Disk seeks
Performance of disk operations
Scale up when working set cannot fit in memory avoid active swapping
Constant monitoring of performance graphs, logs and query
Schema considerations

32. Schema considerations
Lookups need to be indexed
Sorting requires an index
Joins need to be done on indices
Become slower as tables grow
Compounded indices should be used consistently
Do not abuse indices
Each index requires a disk write
Compact tables if they become fragmented
Deleted rows do not remove the corresponding index entries

33. Monitoring DB performance
Standard collectd statistics
User vs wait time (disk operations)
Performance of disk operations
Scale up when working set cannot fit in memory
MySQLcollectdplugin
Monitor INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE operations
The breakdown of read operations can indicate missing indices
Monitoring /var/log/mysqlslow.log file
Identify slow queries
Use MySQL EXPLAIN command to identify query plan

34. MySQLCollectdPlugin
Uses MySQL SHOW STATUS command to collect statistics
A large set of counters that are divided into 10 categories
Connections
IO Requests
Select Rates
Read Rates
Key Rates
Commands Rates
Query Cache
Tables
Memory
Misc.

35. MySQLCollectdPlugin
Uses MySQL SHOW STATUS command to collect statistics

36. Mysqlslow.log & explain command

37. MySQL performance depends on locality
Wait time should be minimum when working set fits in memory
Performance degrades once wait time is significant
wait time insignificant
user time dominates

38. MySQL reads graphs
Read-random-next represents a table scan
Read-next represents an index scan

Load Testing

40. Load testing using httperf
RightScale provides ServerTemplates in the marketplace
https://my.rightscale.com/library/server_templates/Httperf-Load-Tester/24714
Tutorial on httperf setup and configuration
http://support.rightscale.com/03-Tutorials/02-AWS/E2E_Examples/E2E_Gaming_Deployment/Adding_Httperf_Load_Tester

41. Getting Started and Q&A
Contact RightScale:
Next up in the Im in the Cloud Now What? series:
October 20
Automating Servers in the Cloud

Darryl Eaton, Dir. Product Management, RightScale

www.RightScale.com/now-what
(866) 720-0208
[email protected]
www.rightscale.com
More Info
Webinar archive: RightScale.com/webinars
Whitepapers: RightScale.com/whitepapers
Free Edition: RightScale.com/free
RightScale Conference
Nov 8-9 in Santa Clara, CA
www.RightScale.com/Conference

Attend technical breakout sessions

42. Talk with RightScale customers

43. Ask questions at the Genius Bar