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Web Server Architectures: CS 4244: Internet Programming Dr. Eli Tilevich

This document discusses different web server architectures. It describes the design goals of performance, quality of service, ease of development. It then explains the functions of a basic web server and reviews single-threaded, multi-process, multi-threaded, single process event-driven and asymmetric multi-process event-driven architectures. It evaluates these architectures based on performance, memory usage, scalability and ability to handle blocking operations like disk I/O. A hybrid staged event-driven approach is also introduced.

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Mohinder Singh
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99 views

Web Server Architectures: CS 4244: Internet Programming Dr. Eli Tilevich

This document discusses different web server architectures. It describes the design goals of performance, quality of service, ease of development. It then explains the functions of a basic web server and reviews single-threaded, multi-process, multi-threaded, single process event-driven and asymmetric multi-process event-driven architectures. It evaluates these architectures based on performance, memory usage, scalability and ability to handle blocking operations like disk I/O. A hybrid staged event-driven approach is also introduced.

Uploaded by

Mohinder Singh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Web Server

Architectures

CS 4244: Internet Programming


Dr. Eli Tilevich
Based on “Flash: An Efficient and Portable Web Server,” Vivek S. Pai, Peter
Druschel, and Willy Zwaenepoel, 1999 Annual Usenix Technical Conference,
Monterey, CA, June 1999.
Design Goals
„ Performance & Quality of Service (Systems)
… Good responsiveness; low latency
… Good concurrency
„ Can support multiple clients simultaneously
… High throughput
… Graceful degradation
… Low memory consumption

„ Ease of development (Software Engineering)


… Simple to understand, fine-tune, add new features,
debug, etc.
What Web Servers Do
„ In response to a Web client request
(e.g., http://google.com/index.html) a Web server:
… Accepts network connection
… Parses the request (index.html)
… Reads file from disk or runs a dynamic content
generator
… Sends content (headers and body) back
Single-Threaded Web Server
Accept Parse HTTP Read File or
generate content
Send Data
Connection Request

„ One process sequentially handles all client connections


„ Simple –requires no synchronization
„ Does not scale (one client at a time)
Optimizations?
„ Caching
… Pathname translation
… Some dynamic content
… File operations
Additional Features of Web Servers

„ Logging
„ Security (e.g., access control)
„ Traffic analysis
„ Require centralized data structures to implement
Main Server Architectures
„ Multi-process (Apache on Unix)
„ Multi-threaded (Apache on NT/XP)
„ Single process event driven (Zeus, thttpd)
„ Asymmetric multi-process event-driven (Flash)
Multi-Process Architecture
Process 1
Accept Parse HTTP Read File or
generate content
Send Data
Connection Request

…
Process N
Accept Parse HTTP Read File or
generate content
Send Data
Connection Request

„ Utilizes multiple processors


„ Easy to debug
„ Can pre-fork a pool of processes

„ Inter Process Communication is difficult and expensive


„ High memory cost, context switches
Multi-Threaded Architecture
Accept Parse HTTP Read File or
generate content
Send Data
Connection Request

„ Utilizes multiple threads, good performance


„ Easy to change threading policies

„ Need to synchronize, to avoid data races


„ Resources utilization (kernel and user-level):
… memory consumption, context switches, startup
„ Blocking I/O can cause deadlocks
Single Process Event-Driven
Accept Parse HTTP Read File or
generate content
Send Data
Connection Request

Event Dispatcher

„ Use a selector to check for ready file descriptors


„ Uses a finite state machine to determine how to move to the next
processing stage
„ No context switching, no synchronization, single address space
„ Modern OS do not provide adequate support for asynchronous disk
operations
Asymmetric Multi-Process Event-Driven
Accept Parse HTTP Read File or
generate content
Send Data
Connection Request

Event Dispatcher

Helper 1 Helper N

„ Similar to Single Process Event-Driven but with helpers


for blocking I/O (e.g., disk requests)
Real Workload (On Solaris)
Performance in WAN
(Adding Clients)
Performance Comparison
MP MT SPED AMPED

Disk + + - (whole +
(only one server proc.
Blocking blocks)
proc.)
Memory - + + +
(separate
Cons. mem. space
per proc.)
Disk + + - (one disk +
request at a
Usage time)
Challenges of Using Threads
„ Need for synchronization
„ Deadlocks, starvation
„ Race conditions
„ Scheduling can be tricky
Challenges of Using Events
„ Only one process/thread is used
„ High latency for long running handlers
„ Control flow is obscure
„ Difficult to write, understand, and modify
Hybrid Approach
„ SEDA: Staged Event-Driven Architecture
… SEDA: An Architecture for Well-Conditioned, Scalable
Internet Services, Matt Welsh, David Culler, and Eric
Brewer. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth Symposium on
Operating Systems Principles (SOSP-18), Banff, Canada,
October, 2001.

„ Uses thread pools and events


„ Events organized into stages
„ Each stage has a thread pool
„ Load conditioning; graceful degradation

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