Author: spierzchala

  • GrabPERF: TailRank back on, and behaving well

    Got an e-mail from Kevin Burton of TailRank this weekend saying that he had found some issue with the system’s infrastructure and that he should be back to normal performance.

    Looking at this graph, I agree with him.

    TailRank Performance (7 Days) -- Aug 07, 2006

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  • GrabPERF: Some bad data leaked in

    I was trying yesterday to debug an issue that was appeared to be affecting the PubSub Agent — yes, I re-started it at the request of their sysadmin.

    The issue was that it was showing data that appeared to have no relationship with the data appearing from all of the other measurement locations. I tried blocking it off using IPTables, MySQL restrictions, etc.

    This afternoon, I figured out the problem.

    Yesterday, I had been using this query to diagnose the problem:

    select
           *
    from
        data
    where
        agent_id = 11
        and date between subdate(now(),interval 30 minute) and now()
    order by
        date DESC

    And everytime I looked, there was new data. I couldn’t seem to stop the agent from delivering data. Then I had a flash.

    select
           count(*)
    from
        data
    where
        agent_id = 11
        and date > now()

    157,000 rows of data. From the future.

    Thankfully I know the guy who is responsible for keeping the PubSub servers running, and he is going to adjust the time, etc. But he makes no promises about how long the agent machine will stay running.

    I apologize for the bad data.

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  • Server Stuff: Upgraded to Apache 2.2.3

    I took the big leap today and upgraded the base Web server to Apache 2.2.3. This required some finagling with httpd.conf file, and a re-build of PHP, but once that was done, the app bounced up happy as a clam.

    As usual, let me know if you see anything unusual — with the server, not with the author.

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  • Web Performance: Some posts of interest

    This morning’s bounty of posts brought in two that will make you think.

    First was Port80 Software’s comments on using the Cache-Control mechanism embedded in all browsers. This is interesting to read, as I have been trying to get companies to use this mechanism more intelligently for a number of years. I know that the Port80 team gets it, but it is always nice to have some outside validation of a position you have tried to evangelize for a long time.

    The second was Tim O’Reilly’s post on Cal Henderson’s new book on Web scalability. While I am likely to purchase the book for a professional interest, I have one problem with Flickr’s current configuration: static.flickr.com does not use HTTP persistence, something I noted last week. This strikes me as weird.

    It’s always good to see Web performance rear its head.

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  • GrabPERF: TailRank measurements getting turned off

    In the next 10 minutes, I will be turning off the TailRank Measurements. The performance has been abysmal for the last month.

    TailRank Performance -- Last 30 Days

    I’ll check back in a couple of weeks to see if they snap back.

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  • Upgrade to WordPress 2.0.4

    In the last three days I have gone from WordPress 2.0.2 to 2.0.3, then from 2.0.3 to 2.0.4. All went seamlessly, and the blog working as expected.

    Upgrades in both cases took less than 5 minutes.

    I love WordPress. I now know why Moveable Type is tanking so hard.

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  • GrabPERF: Original Web Server Sold

    At our garage sale today, I sold off the original GrabPERF Web server. Sad to see it go, but it was time.

    I am still trying to sell the database server. But I might turn it into a file server with a couple of massive drives.

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  • Why it’s time to go home to Canada…part infinity

    It appears that I will likely have to be fingerprinted every time I come into the US from now on. [here and here]

    I love being an “enemy alien”.

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  • GrabPERF: Measurement Cleanup

    Over the last 12 months, GrabPERF has added a lot of measurements, especially from folks who thought that the system was cool, looked at the data a few times, and never returned.
    So, I have looked at the logs for the last few weeks, and determined that there are definitely a large number measurements that no one looks at. In order to absorb the load on the system and to free up space in the database, I inactivated approximately 30 measurements in the last hour.
    If I inactivated a measurement you were using, please let me know. If there is a measurement you want added, please let me know.
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  • GrabPERF: The old servers are on Craigslist

    If you want to own a piece of GrabPERF history, let me know.

    grabperf_server_sale

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