Delivering High Performance Websites with NGINX
- 1. Delivering High-Performance Web Sites with NGINX June 7, 2017
- 3. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM The average attention span of a human being dropped from 12 seconds in 2000, to 8.25 seconds in 2013. http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/
- 4. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Why does Performance matter?
- 6. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Web Page Weight Weight (kB) Weight (objects)
- 7. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Typical user wait time (seconds)
- 8. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM How are delays perceived by users? 0.1 s 0.25 s 1.0 s 10 s Instantaneous: < 0.1 s Typical reaction time: < 0.25 s Concentration span: < 1.0 s Attention span: < 10 s source: Jacob Nielsen, Usability Engineering
- 9. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Some tales from the field… 500ms delay 20% decrease in ad clickthroughs 100ms delay 1% decrease in revenue per customer 2.2s improvement 15% increase in downloads 60% improvement 14% increase in donations
- 10. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Lab Benchmarks do not predict real-world performance
- 11. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Four Fallacies of Benchmarking 1. Benchmark tools may not count network errors, only successful requests • Sometimes they do count fast, application errors and this skews the results! 2. A fast, local network eliminates the effects of slow connections and packet loss 3. Desktop-class operating systems are not tuned for real-world performance 4. Benchmark traffic does not resemble real-world traffic
- 12. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM 1. I use benchmarking tool X because it gives better (higher) results than Y? 2. It got 1,000 RPS in the lab, but it’s struggling to get more than 100 RPS in production? Have you ever heard…?
- 13. So, what is benchmarking good for?
- 14. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM How can I reliably improve my site performance?
- 15. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Internet 4 opportunities to optimize performance Python Ruby node.js Java Client Device Network Application Stack Code
- 16. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Internet Python Ruby node.js Java Client Device Network Code Application Stack 4 opportunities to optimize performance
- 17. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX: Part of your Application Stack NGINX Plus Load Balancing Tier SSL decrypt Internal Load Balancing Groups of web and application servers Application Platform Typical application stacks are not optimized for performance in the face of unpredictable, slow internet traffic. NGINX and NGINX Plus are optimized for real- world traffic
- 18. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX: What makes NGINX different? NGINX philosophy Alternative Products Architecture Event driven • Massively scalable • No hard limit on concurrency Process or thread per connection • Each connection is expensive • Fixed concurrency limit Features Simple, lightweight • Web server and cache • Reverse proxy and load balancer Rich, but heavyweight • Web and application server • High memory and CPU footprint Purpose Application Acceleration • Focus on performance first, features second Rich application server • Focus on functionality and developer productivity
- 19. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM How does NGINX help you?
- 20. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX: Three things it can do for your app Offload HTTP “Heavy Lifting” Cache common responses Deliver secure content faster with HTTP/2
- 21. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM What is HTTP heavy lifting? Hundreds of concurrent connections… require hundreds of heavyweight threads or processes… competing for limited CPU and memory Client-side: Slow network Multiple connections HTTP Keepalives Server-side: Limited concurrency
- 22. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM What is HTTP heavy lifting? Hundreds of concurrent connections… handed by a small number of multiplexing processes,… typically one process per core
- 23. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Let’s see the effect on a typical web app SlowHTTPTest code.google.com/p/slowhttptest/ WordPress Standard install :80 Measure capacity of application using a simple benchmarking tool (ab) Repeat the test after using slowhttptest to simulate a number of slow internet users
- 24. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Repeat, using NGINX to do the heavy lifting Measure capacity of application using a simple benchmarking tool (ab) Repeat the test after using slowhttptest to simulate a number of slow internet users SlowHTTPTest code.google.com/p/slowhttptest/ NGINX+ and WordPress Standard install with sample content :8080
- 25. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM How did we do this? server { listen 8080; location / { proxy_pass http://wp-servers; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Connection ""; } } upstream wp-servers { server localhost:80; keepalive 10; } Listen for traffic on port 8080 Pass it to the wp-servers upstream group, while upgrading the internal connection to HTTP/1.1 keepalives Load-balance to one server – localhost:80 – and maintain a maximum of 10 idle keepalive connections
- 26. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX: Three things it can do for your app Offload HTTP “Heavy Lifting” Cache common responses Deliver secure content faster with HTTP/2
- 27. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM What is the purpose of caching?
- 28. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Let’s see it in action Measure capacity of application using a simple benchmarking tool (ab) Compare with and without caching ab Measure performance difference NGINX+ (caching) and WordPress Standard install :8082
- 29. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM How did we do this? proxy_cache_path /tmp/cache keys_zone=cache:10m levels=1:2 inactive=600s max_size=100m; server { listen 8082; location / { proxy_pass http://wp-servers; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Connection ""; proxy_cache cache; proxy_cache_valid 200 1s; proxy_cache_lock on; proxy_cache_use_stale updating; } } Configure a local disk/memory cache Listen on port 8082 Proxy all traffic to wp-servers Cache responses for 1 second, and update in the background
- 30. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX: Three things it can do for your app Offload HTTP “Heavy Lifting” Cache common responses Deliver secure content faster with HTTP/2
- 31. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM HTTP/1 connection HTTP/2 connection
- 32. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 Compared Browsers typically makes 6 connections per domain with HTTP/1.x
- 33. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM HTTP/1 waterfall HTTP/2 waterfall
- 34. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Use of HTTP/2 Source: https://w3techs.com/technologies/breakdown/ce-http2/ranking
- 35. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Use of HTTP/2 Source: https://w3techs.com/technologies/segmentation/ce-http2/web_server
- 36. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM HTTP/2: Summary of Features • Request Multiplexing – multiple, parallel requests in the same TCP connection • Binary Header – Smaller header size • Request Prioritization – Define what objects should be prioritized • Header Compression – HPACK header compression reduces size of HTTP/2 header • Mandatory SSL – Not mandated by RFC but Chrome and Firefox won’t support without it • More secure websites • Higher search rankings for encrypted sites
- 37. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Typical HTTP/2 configuration server { listen 80; return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } server { listen 443 ssl http2; ssl_certificate server.crt; ssl_certificate_key server.key; … } Capture and redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS Enable http2 with the http2 keyword
- 40. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX: Three things it can do for your app Offload HTTP “Heavy Lifting” Cache common responses Deliver secure content faster with HTTP/2
- 41. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX open source NGINX reverse proxy • Rules Language • Rate Limits • Access Control • Proxying and Balancing • Logging • Caching • Direct response HTTP HTTPS HTTP/2 TCP UDP
- 42. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM NGINX Plus NGINX Plus • Rules Language • Rate Limits • Access Control • Proxying and Balancing • Logging • Adv. Load Balancing • Web App Firewall • Service Discovery • Authentication • Load Balancing Config API • Extended Status API • Caching and Purging • Direct response HTTP HTTPS HTTP/2 TCP UDP
- 43. MORE INFORMATION AT NGINX.COM Where to find more? Past webinars: nginx.com/webinars NGINX Trial: nginx.com Questions – Q&A panel in webex Thank you