Author: spierzchala

Not many of you were likely reading this blog when I turned down the GrabPERF Web Performance Monitoring System a few months back (here). Well, today, I decided that I needed something to hold my interest and keep me busy, so I re-initialized the system.
It’s live here. Heck, I even fixed a couple of long-standing annoyances with the aggregation tables in the database.
I am trying to keep the targets limited to interesting, and likely performance-challenged, Web 2.0 companies. If you would like to see a (your?) site added to the system, drop me a comment.
Enjoy!
UPDATE: Found a bug in the PHP 5.1.0b2 release I was using that caused the dates extracted from the database to be mangled when they were passed to PHPlot. I returned to the release version PHP (5.04) and all charting is now working normally.

Technorati: web performance, GrabPERF System, Internet, Web 2.0

…and all she brought us was a basement full of water.
I love hurricane season on the East Cost.

You have noted that you are experiencing some performance issues related to high load (here). So I investigated and found that all the servers at the hostname www.technorati.com are responding with HTTP/1.0 headers and are explicitly closing the connections to the clients.
Why?
This will not relieve the performance problems. In fact, doing this may make the situation worse. The only way that this will not cause an issue is if you have tuned the kernel on these servers to go through an EXTREMELY fast TCP teardown process on the server side.
If you haven’t done this, go run a netstat -vanp on your www servers. See all the fin_wait, fin_wait2, closing and time_wait states? These are sockets that can’t be used again until the kernel releases them.
Now, Turning on keep-alives or persistent connections on the www servers will:

1. Reduce the total number of connections per client
2. Reduce the number of sockets “hung” in the teardown process
3. Improve performance by reducing the network overhead required by the client and the server

The only caveat is to reduce the keep-alive timeout to something like 4-5 seconds so that these connections don’t wait for traffic forever.
Improving performance through disabling persistent connections is a myth. HTTP/1.1 was adopted for a reason. Use it wisely and your will reap the rewards.

Technorati: web performance, HTTP, Technorati, Apache, PHP

Like this needs to be explained any further.
As has been said elsewhere, the high-priced turnaround team seems to be getting the job done…
…as long as the job was to send Siebel into a shotgun marriage to keep it alive.

Technorati: Siebel, CRM

David Wenberger posted this. I have often wondered the same thing.
The comments give you the answer…DOH!

Technorati: shower, cold water, plumbing

Geeks in the audience should get this in a flash! Especially Dave Winer!

Technorati: Google Earth, Dave Winer, Geeks

I am not sure what the overall American reaction to today’s bombing in London is. I hope it’s not the usual American response: didn’t happen here, so it’s not important.
I hope that I am wrong.
I am extremely upset. I am feel a connection to all of humanity, and to see the wanton destruction of human life for reasons of hate makes me ill.
Do I want to be a part of this species?

Niall Kennedy posted that the performance degradation at Technorati this morning was not due to traffic resulting from the London Attacks, but due to maintenance on their systems. [here]
Just unfortunate timing. It happens.

My favourite vintner, and maker of the famous Two-Buck Chuck, has released a new wine. Our Two-Buck Chuck 2001 Cabernet has aged very nicely, and after 4 years is a pleasant wine to drink.
Two-buck Chuck maker offers $4 Napa version

Technorati: two buck chuck, wine