4 ms·

Basecamp, now with more vroom

25 points by adamhowell 17y ago

datums 17y ago
Having faster CPUs and removing the Virtualization layer, your results are as expected. With the exact hardware you will have better results without the virtualization layer. Virtualization is not about performance. If you're moving to a cloud (vps/virtualized hardware) infrastructure take into consideration, there's no exact equivalent on the cloud/shared environment.
- joshwa 17y ago
  Virtualization: it's not about performance, it's about provisioning.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- tdavis 17y ago
  Since moving from private virtualization to the cloud, our site performance has degraded exponentially. So... it can always be even worse ;)
  - datums 17y ago
    What technology (xen/openvz/vmware) did you move from ?
    - tdavis 17y ago
      Xen
omouse 17y ago
Did they test the hardware by putting it in production or did they run a series of benchmarking tests (so that the experiment can be duplicated)?
- trafficlight 17y ago
  From my understanding of the article, it looks like they added the new machines into their cluster and directed a higher percentage of traffic to them (to account for the 8 cores instead of 4 cores being used in the virtual machines).
  - imbriaco 17y ago
    That's exactly right. I'm not a big believer in synthetic benchmarks, and I'm not concerned with repeatability of my experiments. The purpose of my test was to determine, for our specific workload, how much of a difference we would see if we went to dedicated hardware -- and even further, what is the difference between a couple of very specific hardware configurations with that workload. I think it accomplished that nicely.
    - omouse 17y ago
      The purpose of my test was to determine, for our specific workload, Define "specific workload". The workload depends on how many users are using the system, what parts of the website they're hitting (some may require more backend processing than others), etc. By not telling us the specifics and by killing the repeatability of this benchmark, you can only say with a minimal amount of certainty that the dedicated hardware improved performance. I love how the industry functions on magic, whether it's on the software or hardware side.
      - teej 17y ago
        > By not telling us the specifics and by killing the repeatability of this benchmark, you can only say with a minimal amount of certainty that the dedicated hardware improved performance. I can agree that this test only has a small amount of certainty that actual performance of the application was higher on the new hardware. So what? It's is possible to use correlated metrics, such as engagement, time on site, and pageviews per user to determine if the move was "successful". 37signals' end goal was most likely to -improve user experience-. If you can confidently say that a valid random sample of users on A servers have a better experience than those on B servers, raw speed numbers don't matter. I guess my point is: Test everything on your own. In the end, it's your users happiness that matters the most, not server speed.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
smithjchris 17y ago
Why do people virtualize the hardware and OS? Shouldn't it be a software architectural thing? That's why we have web clusters, load balancers, content-based caches, database clusters, distributed hash tables etc and not big iron mainframe style partitions. Look at Google! I am slightly biased against this as I run a large ESX deployment with about 100 virtual hosts. Performance sucks compared to native and it purely shifts the management effort from one concern to another saving a grand total of nothing. Blades however have some credibility. Usually by now someone mentions security to which a certain Mr Theo De Raadt concisely debunks: "x86 virtualization is about basically placing another nearly full kernel, full of new bugs, on top of a nasty x86 architecture which barely has correct page protection. Then running your operating system on the other side of this brand new pile of shit. You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes."

25 points by adamhowell 17y ago

Having faster CPUs and removing the Virtualization layer, your results are as expected. With the exact hardware you will have better results without the virtualization layer. Virtualization is not about performance. If you're moving to a cloud (vps/virtualized hardware) infrastructure take into consideration, there's no exact equivalent on the cloud/shared environment.

joshwa 17y ago
Virtualization: it's not about performance, it's about provisioning.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
tdavis 17y ago
Since moving from private virtualization to the cloud, our site performance has degraded exponentially. So... it can always be even worse ;)
- datums 17y ago
  What technology (xen/openvz/vmware) did you move from ?
  - tdavis 17y ago
    Xen

omouse 17y ago

Did they test the hardware by putting it in production or did they run a series of benchmarking tests (so that the experiment can be duplicated)?

trafficlight 17y ago
From my understanding of the article, it looks like they added the new machines into their cluster and directed a higher percentage of traffic to them (to account for the 8 cores instead of 4 cores being used in the virtual machines).
- imbriaco 17y ago
  That's exactly right. I'm not a big believer in synthetic benchmarks, and I'm not concerned with repeatability of my experiments. The purpose of my test was to determine, for our specific workload, how much of a difference we would see if we went to dedicated hardware -- and even further, what is the difference between a couple of very specific hardware configurations with that workload. I think it accomplished that nicely.
  - omouse 17y ago
    The purpose of my test was to determine, for our specific workload, Define "specific workload". The workload depends on how many users are using the system, what parts of the website they're hitting (some may require more backend processing than others), etc. By not telling us the specifics and by killing the repeatability of this benchmark, you can only say with a minimal amount of certainty that the dedicated hardware improved performance. I love how the industry functions on magic, whether it's on the software or hardware side.
    - teej 17y ago
      > By not telling us the specifics and by killing the repeatability of this benchmark, you can only say with a minimal amount of certainty that the dedicated hardware improved performance. I can agree that this test only has a small amount of certainty that actual performance of the application was higher on the new hardware. So what? It's is possible to use correlated metrics, such as engagement, time on site, and pageviews per user to determine if the move was "successful". 37signals' end goal was most likely to -improve user experience-. If you can confidently say that a valid random sample of users on A servers have a better experience than those on B servers, raw speed numbers don't matter. I guess my point is: Test everything on your own. In the end, it's your users happiness that matters the most, not server speed.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

smithjchris 17y ago

Why do people virtualize the hardware and OS? Shouldn't it be a software architectural thing? That's why we have web clusters, load balancers, content-based caches, database clusters, distributed hash tables etc and not big iron mainframe style partitions. Look at Google! I am slightly biased against this as I run a large ESX deployment with about 100 virtual hosts. Performance sucks compared to native and it purely shifts the management effort from one concern to another saving a grand total of nothing. Blades however have some credibility. Usually by now someone mentions security to which a certain Mr Theo De Raadt concisely debunks: "x86 virtualization is about basically placing another nearly full kernel, full of new bugs, on top of a nasty x86 architecture which barely has correct page protection. Then running your operating system on the other side of this brand new pile of shit. You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes."