Category Archives: misc

Example using Cassandra with Thrift in C++

The only somewhat useful example of using Cassandra with C++ one can find online is this, but due to the API changes, this is now outdated (it’s still worth a read).
So in the hope that nobody else will have to spend the better part of a day piecing things together to achieve even the most basic thing, here’s an example which works with Cassandra 0.7 and Thrift 0.6. Continue reading

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Development, just as important as dual NICs

So after you’ve demanded dual power feeds to your rack, bonded NICs and a gazillion physical paths to your dual controller SAN, it would make sense to apply the same attitude towards your developers. After all, they are carbon based humans and are far more likely to break than your silicon NIC. Continue reading

Posted in misc | 3 Comments

GlusterFS tcp_nodelay patch update

As mentioned in my previous post, I wrote a patch for GlusterFS to increase its performance when operating on many smaller files. Someone told me the other day that this functionality has been pushed to the git repository. Continue reading

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Improving GlusterFS performance

Then I tried many frequent filesystem operations, untarring the 2.6.9 linux kernel from and onto the mount. Not so brilliant! It took 23-24 minutes from start to finish. The 2.6.9 kernel contain 17477 files and the average size is just a few kilobytes. This is obviously a lot of smaller bursts of network traffic! Continue reading

Posted in misc | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Multiple backends with Varnish

So as of now, you can safely use one varnish instance for several front-ends, thus eliminate double-caching (memory waste, unnecessary load on back-ends), reduce network traffic, do rudimentary load balancing, ease management etc.
With the obscene amount of traffic Varnish can push without putting a fairly basic system under any load worth mentioning, you can use a single front-end to serve several nodes in most setups. Continue reading

Posted in misc, Webservers | Tagged , , | 2 Comments