############################################# kawipiko -- blazingly fast static HTTP server ############################################# About ===== ``kawipiko`` is a simple static website HTTP server written in Go_, whose main purpose is to serve static website content as fast as possible. However "simple" doesn't imply "dumb" or "limited", instead it implies "efficiency" and removal of superfluous features, inline with UNIX's philosophy of `do one thing and do it well `__. As such ``kawipiko`` basically supports only ``GET`` (and ``HEAD``) requests and does not provide features like dynamic content, authentication, reverse proxying, etc. However, ``kawipiko`` does provide something unique, that no other HTTP server offers: the static website content is served from a CDB_ database with almost zero latency. Moreover, the static website content can be compressed (with either ``gzip`` or ``brotli``) ahead of time, thus reducing not only CPU but also bandwidth and latency. CDB_ databases are binary files that provide efficient read-only key-value lookup tables, initially used in some DNS and SMTP servers, mainly for their low overhead lookup operations, zero locking in multi-threaded / multi-process scenarios, and "atomic" multi-record updates. This also makes them suitable for low-latency static website content serving over HTTP, which this project provides. For those familiar with Netlify_, ``kawipiko`` is a "host-it-yourself" alternative featuring: * simple deployment and configuration; (i.e. just `fetch the binaries <#installation>`__ and use the `proper flags <#kawipiko-server>`__;) * low and constant resource consumption (both in terms of CPU and RAM); (i.e. you won't have surprises when under load;) * (hopefully) extremely secure; (i.e. it doesn't launch processes, it doesn't open any files, etc.; basically you can easily ``chroot`` it;) For a complete list of features please consult the `features section <#features>`__. Unfortunately, there are also some tradeoffs as described in the `limitations section <#limitations>`__ (although none are critical). With regard to performance, as described in the `benchmarks section <#benchmarks>`__, ``kawipiko`` is at least on-par with NGinx, sustaining over 100K requests / second with 0.25ms latency for 99% of the requests even on my 6 years old laptop. However the main advantage over NGinx is not raw performance, but deployment and configuration simplicity, plus efficient management and storage of large collections of many small files. .. contents:: :depth: 1 :backlinks: none :: +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ . . . __ __ . . /\ \ __ __ /\ \ . . \ \ \/'\ __ __ __ __ /\_\ _____ /\_\\ \ \/'\ ___ . . \ \ , < /'__`\ /\ \/\ \/\ \\/\ \ /\ '__`\\/\ \\ \ , < / __`\ . . \ \ \\`\ /\ \L\.\_\ \ \_/ \_/ \\ \ \\ \ \L\ \\ \ \\ \ \\`\ /\ \L\ \ . . \ \_\ \_\\ \__/.\_\\ \___x___/' \ \_\\ \ ,__/ \ \_\\ \_\ \_\\ \____/ . . \/_/\/_/ \/__/\/_/ \/__//__/ \/_/ \ \ \/ \/_/ \/_/\/_/ \/___/ . . \ \_\ . . \/_/ . . . . _ _ ___ ___ ___ ____ ____ ____ _ _ ____ ____ . . |__| | | |__] [__ |___ |__/ | | |___ |__/ . . | | | | | ___] |___ | \ \/ |___ | \ . . . . . +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Documentation ============= .. contents:: :depth: 2 :local: :backlinks: none Workflow -------- The project provides two binaries: * ``kawipiko-server`` -- which serves the static website content from the CDB file; * ``kawipiko-archiver`` -- which creates the CDB file from a source folder holding the static website content; Unlike most (if not all) other servers out-there, in which you just point your web server to the folder holding the static website content root, ``kawipiko`` takes a radically different approach. In order to serve the static website content, one has to first "compile" it into the CDB file through ``kawipiko-archiver``, and then one can "serve" it from the CDB file through ``kawipiko-server``. This two step phase also presents a few opportunities: * one can decouple the "building", "testing", and "publishing" phases of a static website, by using a similar CI/CD pipeline as done for other software projects; * one can instantaneously rollback to a previous version if the newly published one has issues; .. note :: As described in the `limitations section <#limitations>`__, at the moment, if one rebuilds the CDB file, the server has to be restarted. ``kawipiko-server`` ------------------- :: >> kawipiko-server --help :: Usage of kawipiko-server: --bind : --processes (of slave processes) --threads (of threads per process) --archive --archive-inmem (memory-loaded archive file) --archive-mmap (memory-mapped archive file) --archive-preload (preload archive file) --index-all --index-paths --index-data-meta --index-data-content --security-headers-tls --security-headers-disable --profile-cpu --profile-mem --debug --dummy Flags ..... ``--bind`` The IP and port to listen for requests. ``--processes`` and ``--threads`` The number of processes and threads per each process to start. It is highly recommended to use 1 process and as many threads as there are cores. Depending on the use-case, one can use multiple processes each with a single thread; this would reduce goroutine contention if it causes problems. (However note that if using ``--archive-inmem`` each process will allocate its own copy of the database in RAM; in such cases it is highly recommended to use ``--archive-mmap``.) ``--archive`` The path of the CDB file that contains the archived static website content. (It can be created with the ``kawipiko-archiver`` tool.) ``--archive-inmem`` Reads the CDB file in memory, and thus all requests are served from RAM. (This can be used if enough RAM is available to avoid swapping.) ``--archive-mmap`` The CDB file is `memory mapped <#mmap>`__. (**Highly recommended!**) ``--archive-preload`` Before starting to serve requests, read the CDB file so that its data is buffered by the OS. (**Highly recommended!**) ``--index-all``, ``--index-paths``, ``--index-data-meta``, and ``--index-data-content`` In order to serve a request: * the request URL's path is used to locate a resource's metadata (i.e. response headers) and data (i.e. response body) fingerprints; by using ``--index-paths`` an RAM-based hash-map is created to eliminate a CDB lookup operation for this purpose; * based on the resource's metadata fingerprint, the actual metadata (i.e. the response headers) is located; by using ``--index-data-meta`` a RAM-based hash-map is created to eliminate a CDB lookup operation for this purpose; * based on the resource's data fingerprint, the actual data (i.e. the response body) is located; by using ``--index-data-content`` a RAM-based hash-map is created to eliminate a CDB lookup operation for this purpose; * ``--index-all`` enables all these indices; * (depending on the use-case) it is highly recommended to use ``--index-paths``; if ``--exclude-etag`` was used during archival, one can also use ``--index-data-meta``; * it is highly recommended to use ``--archive-inmem`` or ``--archive-mmap`` or else (especially if data is indexed) the net effect is that of loading everything in RAM; ``--security-headers-tls`` Enables adding the ``Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000`` and ``Content-Security-Policy: upgrade-insecure-requests`` to the response headers. (Although at the moment ``kawipiko`` does not support HTTPS, it can be used behind a TLS terminator, load-balancer or proxy that do support HTTPS; therefore these headers instruct the browser to always use HTTPS for the served domain.) ``--security-headers-disable`` Disables adding a few security related headers: :: Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block X-Frame-Options: sameorigin ``--debug`` Enables verbose logging. (**Highly discouraged!**) ``--dummy`` It starts the server in "dummy" mode, ignoring all archive related arguments and always responding with ``hello world!\n`` and without additional headers except the HTTP status line and ``Content-Length``. This argument can be used to benchmark the raw performance of the underlying Go and ``fasthttp`` performance; this is the upper limit on the achievable performance given the underlying technologies. (From my own benchmarks ``kawipiko``'s adds only about ~15% overhead when actually serving the ``hello-world.cdb`` archive.) ``--profile-cpu`` and `--profile-mem`` Enables CPU and memory profiling using Go's profiling infrastructure. ``kawipiko-archiver`` --------------------- :: >> kawipiko-archiver --help :: Usage of kawipiko-archiver: --sources --archive --compress --exclude-index --exclude-strip --exclude-cache --include-etag --exclude-file-listing --include-folder-listing --debug Flags ..... ``--sources`` The path to the input folder that is the root of the static website content. ``--archive`` The path to the output CDB file that contains the archived static website content. ``--compress`` Each individual file (and consequently of the corresponding HTTP response body) is compressed with either ``gzip`` or Brotli_; by default (or alternatively ``identity``) no compression is used. Even if compression is explicitly requested, if the compression ratio is bellow a certain threshold (depending on the uncompressed size), the file is stored without any compression. (It's senseless to force the client to spend time and decompress the response body if that time is not recovered during network transmission.) ``--exclude-index`` Disables using ``index.*`` files (where ``.*`` is one of ``.html``, ``.htm``, ``.xhtml``, ``.xht``, ``.txt``, ``.json``, and ``.xml``) to respond to a request whose URL ends in ``/`` (corresponding to the folder wherein ``index.*`` file is located). (This can be used to implement "slash" blog style URL's like ``/blog/whatever/`` which maps to ``/blog/whatever/index.html``.) ``--exclude-strip`` Disables using a file with the suffix ``.html``, ``.htm``, ``.xhtml``, ``.xht``, and ``.txt`` to respond to a request whose URL does not exactly match an existing file. (This can be used to implement "suffix-less" blog style URL's like ``/blog/whatever`` which maps to ``/blog/whatever.html``.) ``--exclude-cache`` Disables adding an ``Cache-Control: public, immutable, max-age=3600`` header that forces the browser (and other intermediary proxies) to cache the response for an hour (the ``public`` and ``max-age=3600`` arguments), and furthermore not request it even on reloads (the ``immutable`` argument). ``--include-etag`` Enables adding an ``ETag`` response header that contains the SHA256 of the response body. By not including the ``ETag`` header (i.e. the default), and because identical headers are stored only one, if one has many files of the same type (that in turn without ``ETag`` generates the same headers), this can lead to significant reduction in stored headers, including reducing RAM usage. (At this moment it does not support HTTP conditional requests, i.e. the ``If-None-Match``, ``If-Modified-Since`` and their counterparts; however this ``ETag`` header might be used in conjuction with ``HEAD`` requests to see if the resource has changed.) ``--exclude-file-listing`` Disables the creation of an internal list of files that can be used in conjunction with the ``--index-all`` flag of the ``kawipiko-server``. ``--include-folder-listing`` Enables the creation of an internal list of folders. (Currently not used by the ``kawipiko-server`` tool.) ``--debug`` Enables verbose logging. It will log various information about the archived files (including compression statistics). Ignored files ............. * any file with the following prefixes: ``.``, ``#``; * any file with the following suffixes: ``~``, ``#``, ``.log``, ``.tmp``, ``.temp``, ``.lock``; * any file that contains the following: ``#``; * any file that exactly matches the following: ``Thumbs.db``, ``.DS_Store``; * (at the moment these rules are not configurable through flags;) ``_wildcard.*`` files ..................... By placing a file whose name matches ``_wildcard.*`` (i.e. with the prefix ``_wildcard.`` and any other suffix), it will be used to respond to any request whose URL fails to find a "better" match. These wildcard files respect the folder hierarchy, in that wildcard files in (direct or transitive) subfolders override the wildcard file in their parents (direct or transitive). Symlinks, hardlinks, loops, and duplicated files ................................................ You freely use symlinks (including pointing outside of the content root) and they will be crawled during archival respecting the "logical" hierarchy they introduce. (Any loop that you introduce into the hierarchy will be ignored and a warning will be issued.) You can safely symlink or hardlink the same file (or folder) in multiple places (within the content hierarchy), and its data will be stored only once. (The same applies to duplicated files that have exactly the same data.) Examples -------- * fetch and extract the Python 3.7 documentation HTML archive: :: curl \ -s -S -f \ -o ./python-3.7.3-docs-html.tar.bz2 \ https://docs.python.org/3/archives/python-3.7.3-docs-html.tar.bz2 \ # tar \ -x -j -v \ -f ./python-3.7.3-docs-html.tar.bz2 \ # * create the CDB archive (without any compression): :: kawipiko-archiver \ --archive ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-nozip.cdb \ --sources ./python-3.7.3-docs-html \ --debug \ # * create the CDB archive (with ``gzip`` compression): :: kawipiko-archiver \ --archive ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-gzip.cdb \ --sources ./python-3.7.3-docs-html \ --compress gzip \ --debug \ # * create the CDB archive (with ``brotli`` compression): :: kawipiko-archiver \ --archive ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-brotli.cdb \ --sources ./python-3.7.3-docs-html \ --compress brotli \ --debug \ # * serve the CDB archive (with ``gzip`` compression): :: kawipiko-server \ --bind 127.0.0.1:8080 \ --archive ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-gzip.cdb \ --archive-mmap \ --archive-preload \ --debug \ # * compare sources and archive sizes: :: du \ -h -s \ \ ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-nozip.cdb \ ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-gzip.cdb \ ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-brotli.cdb \ \ ./python-3.7.3-docs-html \ ./python-3.7.3-docs-html.tar.bz2 \ # 45M ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-nozip.cdb 9.7M ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-gzip.cdb 7.9M ./python-3.7.3-docs-html-brotli.cdb 46M ./python-3.7.3-docs-html 6.0M ./python-3.7.3-docs-html.tar.bz2 Installation ============ .. contents:: :depth: 2 :local: :backlinks: none Download binaries ----------------- .. warning :: No binaries are currently available for download! Please consult the `build from sources section <#build-from-sources>`__ for now. Build from sources ------------------ Install the prerequisites ......................... * Ubuntu / Debian: :: apt-get install git-core apt-get install golang apt-get install libbrotli-dev * OpenSUSE: :: zypper install git-core zypper install go zypper install libbrotli-devel * ``libbrotli-*`` is not required if building without Brotli support; (i.e. by adding ``-tags nobrotli`` to ``go build``); Prepare the environment ....................... :: mkdir -- \ /tmp/kawipiko \ /tmp/kawipiko/bin \ /tmp/kawipiko/src \ /tmp/kawipiko/go \ # Fetch the sources ................. Either clone the full Git repository: :: git clone \ -b development \ git://github.com/volution/kawipiko.git \ /tmp/kawipiko/src \ # Either fetch and extract the latest sources bundle: :: curl \ -s -S -f \ -o /tmp/kawipiko/src.tar.gz \ https://codeload.github.com/volution/kawipiko/tar.gz/development \ # tar \ -x -z -v \ -f /tmp/kawipiko/src.tar.gz \ -C /tmp/kawipiko/src \ --strip-components 1 \ # Compile the binaries .................... Compile the Go (dynamic) binaries: :: cd /tmp/kawipiko/src/sources env \ GOPATH=/tmp/kawipiko/go \ go build \ -ldflags 'all=-s' \ -gcflags 'all=-l=4' \ -o /tmp/kawipiko/bin/kawipiko-server \ ./cmd/server.go \ # env \ GOPATH=/tmp/kawipiko/go \ go build \ -ldflags 'all=-s' \ -gcflags 'all=-l=4' \ -o /tmp/kawipiko/bin/kawipiko-archiver \ ./cmd/archiver.go \ # Compile the Go (static) binaries (for archiver it removes Brotli support): :: cd /tmp/kawipiko/src/sources env \ GOPATH=/tmp/kawipiko/go \ go build \ -tags netgo \ -ldflags 'all=-s -extld=gcc -extldflags=-static' \ -gcflags 'all=-l=4' \ -o /tmp/kawipiko/bin/kawipiko-server \ ./cmd/server.go \ # env \ GOPATH=/tmp/kawipiko/go \ go build \ -tags 'netgo nobrotli' \ -ldflags 'all=-s -extld=gcc -extldflags=-static' \ -gcflags 'all=-l=4' \ -o /tmp/kawipiko/bin/kawipiko-archiver \ ./cmd/archiver.go \ # Deploy the binaries ................... (Basically just copy the two executables anywhere on the system, or any compatible remote system.) :: cp \ -t /usr/local/bin \ /tmp/kawipiko/bin/kawipiko-server \ /tmp/kawipiko/bin/kawipiko-archiver \ # Features ======== .. contents:: :depth: 2 :local: :backlinks: none Implemented ----------- The following is a list of the most important features: * (optionally) the static website content is compressed when the CDB database is created, thus no CPU cycles are used while serving requests; * (optionally) the static website content can be compressed with either ``gzip`` or Brotli_; * (optionally) in order to reduce the serving latency even further, one can preload the entire CDB database in memory, or alternatively mapping it in memory (mmap_); this trades memory for CPU; * "atomic" static website content changes; because the entire content is held in a single CDB database file, and because the file replacement is atomically achieved via the ``rename`` syscall (or the ``mv`` tool), all resources are "changed" at the same time; * ``_wildcard.*`` files (where ``.*`` are the regular extensions like ``.txt``, ``.html``, etc.) which will be used if an actual resource is not found under that folder; (these files respect the hierarchical tree structure, i.e. "deeper" ones override the ones closer to "root";) Pending ------- The following is a list of the most important features that are currently missing and are planed to be implemented: * support for HTTPS; (although for HTTPS it is strongly recommended to use a dedicated TLS terminator like HAProxy_;) * support for custom HTTP response headers (for specific files, for specific folders, etc.); (currently only ``Content-Type``, ``Content-Length``, ``Content-Encoding`` and optionally ``ETag`` is included; additionally ``Cache-Control: public, immutable, max-age=3600`` and a few security related headers are also included;) * support for mapping virtual hosts to key prefixes; (currently virtual hosts, i.e. the ``Host`` header, are ignored;) * support for mapping virtual hosts to multiple CDB database files; (i.e. the ability to serve multiple domains, each with its own CDB database;) * automatic reloading of CDB database files; * customized error pages (also part of the CDB database); Limitations ----------- As stated in the `about section <#about>`__, nothing comes for free, and in order to provide all these features, some corners had to be cut: * (TODO) currently if the CDB database file changes, the server needs to be restarted in order to pickup the changed files; * (won't fix) the CDB database **maximum size is 4 GiB**; (however if you have a static website this large, you are probably doing something extremely wrong, as large files should be offloaded to something like AWS S3 and served through a CDN like CloudFlare or AWS CloudFront;) * (won't fix) the server **does not support per-request decompression / recompression**; this implies that if the content was saved in the CDB database with compression (say ``gzip``), the server will serve all resources compressed (i.e. ``Content-Encoding: gzip``), regardless of what the browser accepts (i.e. ``Accept-Encoding: gzip``); the same applies for uncompressed content; (however always using ``gzip`` compression is safe enough as it is implemented in virtually all browsers and HTTP clients out there;) * (won't fix) regarding the "atomic" static website changes, there is a small time window in which a client that has fetched an "old" version of a resource (say an HTML page), but which has not yet fetched the required resources (say the CSS or JS files), and the CDB database was swapped, it will consequently fetch the "new" version of these required resources; however due to the low latency serving, this time window is extremely small; (**this is not a limitation of this HTTP server, but a limitation of the way the "web" is built;** always use fingerprints in your resources URL, and perhaps always include the current and previous version on each deploy;) Benchmarks ========== .. contents:: :depth: 2 :local: :backlinks: none Summary ------- Bottom line (**even on my 6 years old laptop**): * under normal conditions (16 concurrent connections), you get around 111k requests / second, at about 0.25ms latency for 99% of the requests; * under light stress conditions (128 concurrent connections), you get around 118k requests / second, at about 2.5ms latency for 99% of the requests; * under medium stress conditions (512 concurrent connections), you get around 106k requests / second, at about 10ms latency for 99% of the requests (meanwhile the average is 4.5ms); * **under high stress conditions (2048 concurrent connections), you get around 100k requests / second, at about 400ms latency for 99% of the requests (meanwhile the average is 45ms);** * under extreme stress conditions (16384 concurrent connections) (i.e. someone tries to DDOS the server), you get around 53k requests / second, at about 2.8s latency for 99% of the requests (meanwhile the average is 200ms); * (the timeout errors are due to the fact that ``wrk`` is configured to timeout after only 1 second of waiting while connecting or receiving the full response;) * (the read errors are due to the fact that the server closes a keep-alive connection after serving 256k requests;) * **the raw performance is at least on-par with NGinx**; (from my measurements ``kawipiko`` serves in fact 30% more requests / second than NGinx, at least for my "synthetic" benchmark;) however, especially for a "real world" scenarios (i.e. thousand of small files, accessed in a random patterns), I think ``kawipiko`` fares better; (not to mention how simple it is to configure and deploy ``kawipiko`` as compared to NGinx;) Results ------- Results values .............. .. note :: Please note that the values under *Thread Stats* are reported per thread. Therefore it is best to look at the first two values, i.e. *Requests/sec*. * 16 connections / 2 server threads / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 111720.73 Transfer/sec: 18.01MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/ 2 threads and 16 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 139.36us 60.27us 1.88ms 64.91% Req/Sec 56.14k 713.04 57.60k 91.36% Latency Distribution 50% 143.00us 75% 184.00us 90% 212.00us 99% 261.00us 3362742 requests in 30.10s, 541.98MB read * 128 connections / 2 server threads / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 118811.41 Transfer/sec: 19.15MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/ 2 threads and 128 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 1.03ms 705.69us 19.53ms 63.54% Req/Sec 59.71k 1.69k 61.70k 96.67% Latency Distribution 50% 0.99ms 75% 1.58ms 90% 1.89ms 99% 2.42ms 3564527 requests in 30.00s, 574.50MB read * 512 connections / 2 server threads / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 106698.89 Transfer/sec: 17.20MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/ 2 threads and 512 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 4.73ms 3.89ms 39.32ms 39.74% Req/Sec 53.71k 1.73k 69.18k 84.33% Latency Distribution 50% 4.96ms 75% 8.63ms 90% 9.19ms 99% 10.30ms 3206540 requests in 30.05s, 516.80MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 105, write 0, timeout 0 * 2048 connections / 2 server threads / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 100296.65 Transfer/sec: 16.16MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/ 2 threads and 2048 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 45.42ms 85.14ms 987.70ms 88.62% Req/Sec 50.61k 5.59k 70.14k 71.74% Latency Distribution 50% 16.30ms 75% 28.44ms 90% 147.60ms 99% 417.40ms 3015868 requests in 30.07s, 486.07MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 128, write 0, timeout 86 * 4096 connections / 2 server threads / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 95628.34 Transfer/sec: 15.41MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/ 2 threads and 4096 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 90.50ms 146.08ms 999.65ms 88.49% Req/Sec 48.27k 6.09k 66.05k 76.34% Latency Distribution 50% 23.31ms 75% 112.06ms 90% 249.41ms 99% 745.94ms 2871404 requests in 30.03s, 462.79MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 27, write 0, timeout 4449 * 16384 connections / 2 server threads / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 53548.52 Transfer/sec: 8.63MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/ 2 threads and 16384 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 206.21ms 513.75ms 6.00s 92.56% Req/Sec 31.37k 5.68k 44.44k 76.13% Latency Distribution 50% 35.38ms 75% 62.78ms 90% 551.33ms 99% 2.82s 1611294 requests in 30.09s, 259.69MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 115, write 0, timeout 2288 Results notes ............. * the machine was my personal laptop: 6 years old with an Intel Core i7 3667U (2 cores with 2 threads each); * the ``kawipiko-server`` was started with ``--processes 1 --threads 2``; (i.e. 2 threads handling the requests;) * the ``kawipiko-server`` was started with ``--archive-inmem``; (i.e. the CDB database file was preloaded into memory, thus no disk I/O;) * the ``kawipiko-server`` was started with ``--security-headers-disable``; (because these headers are not set by default by other HTTP servers;) * the ``kawipiko-server`` was started with ``--timeout-disable``; (because, due to a known Go issue, using ``net.Conn.SetDeadline`` has an impact of about 20% of the raw performance; thus the reported values above might be about 10%-15% smaller when used with timeouts;) * the benchmarking tool was wrk_; * both ``kawipiko-server`` and ``wrk`` tools were run on the same machine; * both ``kawipiko-server`` and ``wrk`` tools were pinned on different physical cores; * the benchmark was run over loopback networking (i.e. ``127.0.0.1``); * the served file contains ``Hello World!``; * the protocol was HTTP (i.e. no TLS), with keep-alive; * both the CDB and the NGinx folder were put on ``tmpfs`` (which implies that the disk is not a limiting factor); (in fact ``kawipiko`` performs quite well even on spinning disks due to careful storage management;) * see the `methodology section <#methodology>`__ for details; Comparisons ----------- Comparisons with NGinx ...................... * NGinx 512 connections / 2 server workers / 2 wrk thread: :: Requests/sec: 79816.08 Transfer/sec: 20.02MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt 2 threads and 512 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 6.07ms 1.90ms 19.83ms 71.67% Req/Sec 40.17k 1.16k 43.35k 69.83% Latency Distribution 50% 6.13ms 75% 6.99ms 90% 8.51ms 99% 11.10ms 2399069 requests in 30.06s, 601.73MB read * NGinx 2048 connections / 2 server workers / 2 wrk thread: :: Requests/sec: 78211.46 Transfer/sec: 19.62MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt 2 threads and 2048 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 27.11ms 20.27ms 490.12ms 97.76% Req/Sec 39.45k 2.45k 49.98k 70.74% Latency Distribution 50% 24.80ms 75% 29.67ms 90% 34.99ms 99% 126.97ms 2351933 requests in 30.07s, 589.90MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 11 * NGinx 4096 connections / 2 server workers / 2 wrk thread: :: Requests/sec: 75970.82 Transfer/sec: 19.05MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt 2 threads and 4096 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 70.25ms 73.68ms 943.82ms 87.21% Req/Sec 38.37k 3.79k 49.06k 70.30% Latency Distribution 50% 46.37ms 75% 58.28ms 90% 179.08ms 99% 339.05ms 2282223 requests in 30.04s, 572.42MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 187 * NGinx 16384 connections / 2 server workers / 2 wrk thread: :: Requests/sec: 43909.67 Transfer/sec: 11.01MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt 2 threads and 16384 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 223.87ms 551.14ms 5.94s 92.92% Req/Sec 32.95k 13.35k 51.56k 76.71% Latency Distribution 50% 32.62ms 75% 222.93ms 90% 558.04ms 99% 3.17s 1320562 requests in 30.07s, 331.22MB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 12596, write 34, timeout 1121 * the NGinx configuration file can be found in the `examples folder <./examples>`__; the configuration was obtained after many experiments to squeeze out of NGinx as much performance as possible, given the targeted use-case, namely many small files; * moreover NGinx seems to be quite sensitive to the actual path requested: * if one requests ``http://127.0.0.1:8080/``, and one has configured NGinx to look for ``index.txt``, and that file actually exists, the performance is quite a bit lower than just asking for that file; (perhaps it issues more syscalls, searching for the index file;) * if one requests ``http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt``, as mentioned above, it achieves the higher performance; (perhaps it issues fewer syscalls;) * if one requests ``http://127.0.0.1:8080/does-not-exist``, it seems to achieve the "best" performance; (perhaps it issues the least amount of syscalls;) (however this is not an actual "use-ful" corner-case;) * it must be noted that ``kawipiko`` doesn't exhibit this behaviour, the same performance is achieved regardless of the path variant; * therefore the benchmarks above use ``/index.txt`` as opposed to ``/``; Comparisons with others ....................... * darkhttpd_ 512 connections / 1 server process / 2 wrk threads: :: Requests/sec: 38191.65 Transfer/sec: 8.74MB Running 30s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt 2 threads and 512 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 17.51ms 17.30ms 223.22ms 78.55% Req/Sec 9.62k 1.94k 17.01k 72.98% Latency Distribution 50% 7.51ms 75% 32.51ms 90% 45.69ms 99% 53.00ms 1148067 requests in 30.06s, 262.85MB read Methodology ----------- * get the binaries (either `download <#download-binaries>`__ or `build <#build-from-sources>`__ them); * get the ``hello-world.cdb`` (from the `examples <./examples>`__ folder inside the repository); Single process / single threaded ................................ * this scenario will yield a "base-line performance" per core; * execute the server (in-memory and indexed) (i.e. the "best case scenario"): :: kawipiko-server \ --bind 127.0.0.1:8080 \ --archive ./hello-world.cdb \ --archive-inmem \ --index-all \ --processes 1 \ --threads 1 \ # * execute the server (memory mapped) (i.e. the "the recommended scenario"): :: kawipiko-server \ --bind 127.0.0.1:8080 \ --archive ./hello-world.cdb \ --archive-mmap \ --processes 1 \ --threads 1 \ # Single process / two threads ............................ * this scenario is the usual setup; configure ``--threads`` to equal the number of cores; * execute the server (memory mapped): :: kawipiko-server \ --bind 127.0.0.1:8080 \ --archive ./hello-world.cdb \ --archive-mmap \ --processes 1 \ --threads 2 \ # Load generators ............... * 512 concurrent connections (handled by 2 threads): :: wrk \ --threads 2 \ --connections 512 \ --timeout 1s \ --duration 30s \ --latency \ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt \ # * 4096 concurrent connections (handled by 2 threads): :: wrk \ --threads 2 \ --connections 4096 \ --timeout 1s \ --duration 30s \ --latency \ http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.txt \ # Methodology notes ................. * the number of threads for the server plus for ``wkr`` shouldn't be larger than the number of available cores; (or use different machines for the server and the client;) * also take into account that by default the number of "file descriptors" on most UNIX/Linux machines is 1024, therefore if you want to try with more connections than 1000, you need to raise this limit; (see bellow;) * additionally, you can try to pin the server and ``wrk`` to specific cores, increase various priorities (scheduling, IO, etc.); (given that Intel processors have HyperThreading which appear to the OS as individual cores, you should make sure that you pin each process on cores part of the same physical processor / core;) * pinning the server (cores ``0`` and ``1`` are mapped on physical core ``1``): :: sudo -u root -n -E -P -- \ \ taskset -c 0,1 \ nice -n -19 -- \ ionice -c 2 -n 0 -- \ chrt -r 10 \ prlimit -n262144 -- \ \ sudo -u "${USER}" -n -E -P -- \ \ kawipiko-server \ ... \ # * pinning the client (cores ``2`` and ``3`` are mapped on physical core ``2``): :: sudo -u root -n -E -P -- \ \ taskset -c 2,3 \ nice -n -19 -- \ ionice -c 2 -n 0 -- \ chrt -r 10 \ prlimit -n262144 -- \ \ sudo -u "${USER}" -n -E -P -- \ \ wrk \ ... \ # OpenStreetMap tiles ------------------- Scenario notes .............. As a benchmark much closer to the "real world" use-cases for ``kawipiko`` I've done the following: * downloaded from OpenStreetMap servers all tiles for my home town (from zoom level 0 to zoom level 19), which resulted in: * around ~250K PNG files totaling ~330 MiB; * with an average of 1.3 KiB and a median of 103B; (i.e. lots of extreemly small files;) * occupying actualy around 1.1 GiB of storage (on Ext4) due to file-system overheads; * created a CDB archive, which resulted in: * a single file totaling ~376 MiB (both "apparent" and "occupied" storage); (i.e. no storage space wasted;) * which contains only ~100K PNG files, due to elimination of duplicate PNG files; (i.e. at higher zoom levels, the tiles start to repeat;) * listed all the available tiles, and benchmarked both ``kawipiko`` and NGinx, with 16K concurrent connections; * the methodology is the same one described above, with the following changes: * the host used in benchmarks has a desktop-grade Intel Core i7 4770 (i.e. 4th generation, about 6 years old) with 4 physical cores and 32 GiB of RAM; * the files (both CDB and tiles folder) were put in ``tmpfs``; * both ``kawipiko``, NGinx and ``wrk`` were configured to use 8 threads / processes, and were pinned on two separate physical cores each; * (the host had almost nothing running on it except the minimal required services;) Results notes ............. Based on my benchmark the following are my findings: * ``kawipiko`` outperformed NGinx by ~25% in requests / second; * ``kawipiko`` outperformed NGinx by ~29% in average response latency; * ``kawipiko`` outperformed NGinx by ~40% in 90-percentile response latency; * ``kawipiko`` used ~6% less CPU while serving requests for 2 minutes; * ``kawipiko`` used ~25% less CPU per request; * NGinx used the least amount of RAM, meanwhile ``kawipiko`` (due to either in RAM loading or ``mmap`` usage) used around 1GiB of RAM; Results values .............. * ``kawipiko`` with ``--archive-inmem`` and ``--index-all`` (1 process, 8 threads): :: Requests/sec: 238499.86 Transfer/sec: 383.59MB Running 2m test @ http://127.9.185.194:8080/ 8 threads and 16384 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 195.39ms 412.84ms 5.99s 92.33% Req/Sec 30.65k 10.20k 213.08k 79.41% Latency Distribution 50% 28.02ms 75% 221.17ms 90% 472.41ms 99% 2.19s 28640139 requests in 2.00m, 44.98GB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 7032 * ``kawipiko`` with ``--archive-mmap`` (1 process, 8 threads): :: Requests/sec: 237239.35 Transfer/sec: 381.72MB Running 2m test @ http://127.9.185.194:8080/ 8 threads and 16384 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 210.44ms 467.84ms 6.00s 92.57% Req/Sec 30.77k 12.29k 210.17k 86.67% Latency Distribution 50% 26.51ms 75% 221.63ms 90% 494.93ms 99% 2.67s 28489533 requests in 2.00m, 44.77GB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 10730 * ``kawipiko`` with ``--archive-mmap`` (8 processes, 1 thread): :: Requests/sec: 248266.83 Transfer/sec: 399.29MB Running 2m test @ http://127.9.185.194:8080/ 8 threads and 16384 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 209.30ms 469.05ms 5.98s 92.25% Req/Sec 31.86k 8.58k 83.99k 69.93% Latency Distribution 50% 23.08ms 75% 215.28ms 90% 502.80ms 99% 2.64s 29816650 requests in 2.00m, 46.83GB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 15244 * NGinx (8 workers): :: Requests/sec: 188255.32 Transfer/sec: 302.88MB Running 2m test @ http://127.9.185.194:8080/ 8 threads and 16384 connections Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev Latency 266.18ms 538.72ms 5.93s 90.78% Req/Sec 24.15k 8.34k 106.48k 74.56% Latency Distribution 50% 34.34ms 75% 253.57ms 90% 750.29ms 99% 2.97s 22607727 requests in 2.00m, 35.52GB read Socket errors: connect 0, read 109, write 0, timeout 16833 Why CDB? ======== Until I expand upon why I have chosen to use CDB for service static website content, you can read about the `sparkey `__ from Spotify. Authors ======= Ciprian Dorin Craciun * `ciprian@volution.ro `__ or `ciprian.craciun@gmail.com `__ * ``__ * ``__ Notice (copyright and licensing) ================================ .. contents:: :depth: 2 :local: :backlinks: none Notice -- short version ----------------------- The code is licensed under AGPL 3 or later. If you **change** the code within this repository **and use** it for **non-personal** purposes, you'll have to release it as per AGPL. Notice -- long version ---------------------- For details about the copyright and licensing, please consult the `notice <./documentation/licensing/notice.txt>`__ file in the `documentation/licensing <./documentation/licensing>`__ folder. If someone requires the sources and/or documentation to be released under a different license, please send an email to the authors, stating the licensing requirements, accompanied with the reasons and other details; then, depending on the situation, the authors might release the sources and/or documentation under a different license. References ========== .. [Go] * `Go `__ (@WikiPedia); * `Go `__ (project); .. [CDB] * `CDB `__ (@WikiPedia); * `cdb `__ (project); * `cdb internals `__ (article); * `Benchmarking LevelDB vs. RocksDB vs. HyperLevelDB vs. LMDB Performance for InfluxDB `__ (article); * `Badger vs LMDB vs BoltDB: Benchmarking key-value databases in Go `__ (article); * `Benchmarking BDB, CDB and Tokyo Cabinet on large datasets `__ (article); * `TinyCDB `__ (fork project); * `tinydns `__ (DNS server using CDB); * `qmail `__ (SMTP server using CDB); .. [wrk] * `wrk `__ (project); * modern HTTP benchmarking tool; * multi threaded, with event loop and Lua support; .. [Brotli] * `Brotli `__ (@WikiPedia); * `Brotli `__ (project); * `Results of experimenting with Brotli for dynamic web content `__ (article); .. [Netlify] * `Netlify `__ (cloud provider); .. [HAProxy] * `HAProxy `__ (@WikiPedia); * `HAProxy `__ (project); * reliable high performance TCP/HTTP load-balancer; * multi threaded, with event loop and Lua support; .. [NGinx] * `NGinx `__ (@WikiPedia); * `NGinx `__ (project); .. [darkhttpd] * `darkhttpd `__ (project); * simple static HTTP server; * single threaded, with event loop and ``sendfile`` support; .. [mmap] * `Memory mapping `__ (@WikiPedia); * `mmap(2) `__ (Linux man page);