Comments on: Solaris Web Stack Optimizations

By: Rodrigo

Rodrigo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:34:39 +0000

I totaly agree I have the FFMPEG on background but, I have to take the images out of the video and I do that without background because of some internal issues, then I send it to cue.

But it was an example it can be many others like mailing list or some big query it can apply to anything.

By: victori

victori — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:25:18 +0000

@Rodrigo

Your looking at the problem wrong, ffmpeg encoding should not tie up a request, it should be an asynchronous process. Consider rewriting your solution to background ffmpeg encoding. The 503 errors I experience has to do with the TCP “tricks” Varnish does that are not solaris friendly.

By: Rodrigo

Rodrigo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:52:44 +0000

I had lots of problems with the 503 as well more on the backend like ffmpeg coding and waiting for stuff. A temp solution that seem to work was this one:

.first_byte_timeout = 3000s;

The thing with the 503 is that when it waits for the first byte to arrive and nothing happens most of the time php is working and it wont give anything back until it finishes. So varnish thinks the server is down. So making it wait more for the first byte it worked quite well for us.

By: Igor Minar

Igor Minar — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:25:42 +0000

I’m afraid that I can’t achieve the same caching strategy with squid as I can with a nifty vlc for varnish.

I experienced several other weird issues with varnish on solaris that just don’t let me trust it. I’m considering using opensolaris + xen + linux in DomU + varnish or abandoning varnish altogether.

By: victori

victori — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:03:50 +0000

Well, at least there is squid. Squid-2.7 runs *perfect* on solaris. Nginx+Squid == Varnish

I use the combo to get the same results that I do with varnish.

By: Igor Minar

Igor Minar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:16:01 +0000

thanks for the answer. the solution is not quite what I wanted to hear, but at least I know that I’m not alone with this issue.

By: victori

victori — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:18:53 +0000

Igor,

Yes I have dealt with the issues you have described. For 503 requests, switching varnish to connect_timeout 0 solves the issue. Concerning requests taking forever, there is only one work around for this; place nginx in front to fail over to backend when this happens.

By: Igor Minar

Igor Minar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:07:01 +0000

hi there, thanks for the post. You didn’t mention what version of varnish you finally got running and if/how you compiled it.

I’ve given varnish (2.0.1 – 2.0.4) several tries on Solaris10 and OpenSolaris and it still doesn’t work as expected. I’ve seen crashes, 503s from backend and other issues and was able to work around those, but the “last” thing I’m stuck with is intermittent latency issues. One out of every 10 or so requests takes “forever” (5-15sec) to fulfill even when it is a cache hit. Have you dealt with that issue?

thanks,
Igor