RE: Hardware recommendations for HAProxy on large-scale site

[Daniel Wilson]

Thanks for the reply, Steven.

I think we are looking at a 2-arm NAT mode, but I'm not certain yet.

We do expect to handle a lot of sessions.  From what I've read on the HAProxy 
site, 108,000 connections/second is the current record for a single HAProxy 
instance.  As I understand it, that's limited by the NIC.  But will 8-16 GB of 
RAM allow us to get the most out of our server?  Or should we look at a lot 
more?

Daniel

-Original Message-
From: Steven Le Roux [mailto:ste...@le-roux.info] 
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 4:28 AM
To: Daniel Wilson
Cc: haproxy
Subject: Re: Hardware recommendations for HAProxy on large-scale site

Hi,

Multicore would be certainly not wasted since you could bind NICs IRQ on some 
core and haproxy on others.
1 or 2 NIC depends on your architecture. Are you one arm mode ? two arm ?

For RAM, will your service need many session handling ?

Even for hardware it's really a per infra/service configuration.


On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 2:35 AM, Daniel Wilson  
wrote:
> What resources should we look to maximize when building a server to 
> get the most out of HAProxy?  I read in some forums that more than a 
> 2-core processor would be wasted on HAProxy.  Is that true? Should we 
> get the most RAM we can (e.g. 100+ GB)?  Or would some other resource 
> saturate much faster?  Perhaps the NICs? Speaking of NICs, what do you 
> recommend?  I’m looking at 10 Gbps NIC’s, but should I look at 2?  Or 
> more?  Any particular brand well-proven?  Or any to avoid?
>
>
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
>
>
> Daniel Wilson
>
> Lead Software Developer
>
> The eWhiteboard Company
>
>



--
Steven Le Roux
Jabber-ID : ste...@jabber.fr
0x39494CCB 
2FF7 226B 552E 4709 03F0  6281 72D7 A010 3949 4CCB

Re: Hardware recommendations for HAProxy on large-scale site

[Steven Le Roux]

Hi,

Multicore would be certainly not wasted since you could bind NICs IRQ
on some core and haproxy on others.
1 or 2 NIC depends on your architecture. Are you one arm mode ? two arm ?

For RAM, will your service need many session handling ?

Even for hardware it's really a per infra/service configuration.


On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 2:35 AM, Daniel Wilson
 wrote:
> What resources should we look to maximize when building a server to get the
> most out of HAProxy?  I read in some forums that more than a 2-core
> processor would be wasted on HAProxy.  Is that true? Should we get the most
> RAM we can (e.g. 100+ GB)?  Or would some other resource saturate much
> faster?  Perhaps the NICs? Speaking of NICs, what do you recommend?  I’m
> looking at 10 Gbps NIC’s, but should I look at 2?  Or more?  Any particular
> brand well-proven?  Or any to avoid?
>
>
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
>
>
> Daniel Wilson
>
> Lead Software Developer
>
> The eWhiteboard Company
>
>



-- 
Steven Le Roux
Jabber-ID : ste...@jabber.fr
0x39494CCB 
2FF7 226B 552E 4709 03F0  6281 72D7 A010 3949 4CCB

Hardware recommendations for HAProxy on large-scale site

[Daniel Wilson]

What resources should we look to maximize when building a server to get the
most out of HAProxy?  I read in some forums that more than a 2-core
processor would be wasted on HAProxy.  Is that true? Should we get the most
RAM we can (e.g. 100+ GB)?  Or would some other resource saturate much
faster?  Perhaps the NICs? Speaking of NICs, what do you recommend?  I'm
looking at 10 Gbps NIC's, but should I look at 2?  Or more?  Any particular
brand well-proven?  Or any to avoid?

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Daniel Wilson

Lead Software Developer

The eWhiteboard Company  

 

Re: Hardware recommendations

[Holger Just]

On 2010-04-28 19:10, Alex Forrow wrote:
> We're looking to upgrade our HAProxy hardware soon. Does anyone have any
> recommendations on the things we should be looking for? e.g. Are there
> any NICs we should use/avoid?

Hi Alex,

I'm just writing down here what comes to my mind. Sorry if it looks a
bit unorganized...

Haproxy itself is not very demanding. A two core system will suffice.
Check to have enough RAM to hold all your sessions, but since it's
rather cheap to get 4 or 8 Gigs you should be safe here :)

Always think about the resource demands of the TCP stack. ON large
loadbalancer instances (esp. with many short connections), the TCP stack
will consume much more resources than your Haproxy.

Some NICs allow to offload some of the responsibilities like calculation
of packet checksums to silicon. Interrupt mitigation is something you
most probably want to have. Normaly, each packet will trigger an
interrupt which will eat away all your ressources if there are many of
them. Some NICs allow to cap the number of interrupts per second which
might increase latency a bit but saves your load balancer from dying :)

Make really sure your intended NIC is very well supported by your
intended OS. Many show suprising behaviour under stress. So the best
advice would possibly be to have a look in the vendors hardware support
lists and ask in the respective channels.

You most probably want to stay away from most on-board NICs from vendors
like Broadcom or SiS. Dedicated PCIe NICs from Intel are normally safe
(you find them also on some server boards from e.g. Supermicro). But
make sure to check the individual capabilities.

As a loadbalancer is always IO bound, check your data paths. Most
interestingly is the speed from and to the NIC (in a way that the
network-line is always the bottleneck) and between memory (ECC of
course) and CPU. Harddisks are obviously uninteresting :)

Hope this helps,
--Holger

Hardware recommendations

[Alex Forrow]

Hi,

We're looking to upgrade our HAProxy hardware soon. Does anyone have any
recommendations on the things we should be looking for? e.g. Are there any
NICs we should use/avoid?

Our site primarily serves lots of small objects.


Kind regards,

Alex