Hi Andreas,

See https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/GSIP-201 “Cloud Native 
GeoServer Project Donation”.

-Jukka Rahkonen-

Lähettäjä: Andreas Neumann <andr...@qgis.org>
Lähetetty: perjantai 23. huhtikuuta 2021 18.36
Vastaanottaja: geoserver-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Aihe: [Geoserver-users] Small study on "Cloud optimized OGC WMS Servers"

Hi,

For a small project as part of the Swiss National Geodata Infrastructure (grant 
project) several people worked on a study document called "Cloud-optimized OGC 
WMS Server" where we analyzed problems that can arise when you install an OGC 
web server in the cloud (e.g. docker image deployed via Kubernetes, OpenShift 
or the likes). This work had a focus on QGIS Server with it's own set of 
problems - but some of the issues studied in this document also matter for 
other OGC WMS servers, like UMN Mapserver or Geoserver, such as the load 
balancing problem, how to share resources, etc.

Here is the link to the document (not in final form yet, but close to being 
final): 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cOUWgzalRx7CHWTFgHz6-uyScsCcoaEmYC0VBHdZShQ/edit#heading=h.c7gq4lie7ys2

I wonder if any similar work has been done specifically around problems, 
challenges and solutions when you deploy Geoserver in cloud environments? Do 
you know of any work?

We came across this project here: http://geoserver.org/geoserver-cloud/ - this 
is probably the closest system compared to what we have in mind. Can you share 
a bit of experience with this system? How well does it work in practice? What 
are the challenges/problems and what works well?

One major problem that probably all installations of an OGC WMS server have is 
how to deploy a more intelligent load balancing system? (the "Gateway" in the 
above mentioned Geoserver system architecture diagram). Often, the default load 
balancer is some kind of round robin load balancer system, but this frequently 
leads to inferior results where "cheap and short" requests (such as a simple 
GetFeatureInfo or GetLegendGraphics request) can be queued behind a 
long-running GetMap request or PDF generation task (potentially with many 
layers, many features and a high-dpi, such as 600dpi, where the request can 
take several seconds to process. Meanwhile, the GetFeatureInfo might still wait 
behind a long-running request, while parallel instances would have free 
resources, because they have just finished their own task.

As mentioned in our study document it is of course possible to separate the 
requests to dedicated instances for short requests and potentially long 
requests, to avoid the above mentioned scenario, but we are not so satisfied 
with the solution, as it is  a bit inflexible and also a bit harder to 
maintain. Ideally, we would like to have a more intelligent load balancer with 
incoming queue that holds back requests as long as all WMS server instances are 
busy. This would avoid the situation where a "less intelligent" load balancer 
would simply forward the requests to instances based on Round-Robin principle.

Do you know of any additional work in the Geoserver community regarding cloud 
deployment, cloud optimization, intelligent load balancing and resource sharing?

In our study document I'd like to also include the perspective of other WMS 
servers besides QGIS server, so any input would be welcome.

Thanks,
Andreas

--
Andreas Neumann
QGIS.ORG<http://QGIS.ORG> board member (treasurer

--
Andreas Neumann
QGIS.ORG<http://QGIS.ORG> board member (treasurer)
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