Re: [squid-users] squid on 32-bit system with PAE and 8GB RAM

Gavin McCullagh ha scritto:
> Hi,
>
> I don't mean to labour this, I'm just keen to understand better and
> obviously you guys are the experts on squid.

While I'm definitely not an expert on squid, I like this thread, so I'll
put another 2 (euro)cents on the table...

>
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2009, Marcello Romani wrote:
>
>>> Really? I would have thought the linux kernel's disk caching would be far
>>> less optimised for this than using a large squid cache_mem (whatever about
>>> a ramdisk).
>> As others have pointed out, squid's cache_mem is not used to serve
>> on-disk cache objects, while os's disk cache will hold those objects in
>> RAM after squid requests them for the first time.
>
> Agreed. I would have thought though that a large cache_mem would be a
> better way to increase the data served from RAM, compared to the OS disk
> caching.
>
> I imagine, perhaps incorrectly, that squid uses the mem_cache first for
> data, then when it's removed (by LRU or whatever), pushes it out to the
> disk cache. This sounds like it should lead to a pretty good

Maybe you have already seen this page, but I suggest nonetheless to have
a look at

http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/SquidMemory

which has detailed info about squid memory usage.

> mem_cache:disk_cache serving ratio. I don't have much to back this up, but
> the ratio in my own case is pretty high so squid appears not to just treat
> all caches (memory and disk) equally.
>
> http://deathcab.gcd.ie/munin/gcd.ie/watcher.gcd.ie-squid_cache_hit_breakdown.html

Looking at the graph I see an average 15% memory hit ratio vs. an
average 35% disk hit ratio. I would try to lower cache_mem to allow more
of that 35% to be served from disk cache ram, and see if this makes some
difference.

>
> By comparison, I would expect linux's disk caching, which has no
> understanding of the fact that this is a web proxy cache, to be less smart.
> Perhaps that's incorrect though, I'm not sure what mechanism linux uses.
>
>> So if you leave most of RAM to OS for disk cache you'll end up having
>> many on-disk object loaded from RAM, i.e. very quickly.
>
> Some, but I would imagine not as many as with mem_cache.

Squid keeps the hottest (i.e. the most requested) objects in cache_mem,
so if that value is too low, those objects will be served from disk.
But if your disk cache is big enough, then those objects will not be
read from the phisical disk, but from the disk cache, which is almost as
fast as cache_mem, imho (I guess cache_mem is faster, but on the kind of
hardware you have I don't think the speed difference would be visible
from users. This is only a guess, of course...)

>
>> Also, squid needs memory besides cache_mem, for its own internal
>> structures and for managing the on-disk repository. If its address space
>> is already almost filled up by cache_mem alone, it might have problems
>> allocating its own memory structures.
>
> Absolutely agreed and the crashes I've seen appear to be caused by this,
> though dropping to around 1.7GB mem_cache appears to cure this.

OK

>
> The question then is, which would be better, an extra cache based on a
> ramdisk, or just leaving it up to the kernel's disk caching.
>
>> OS's disk cache, on the other hand, is not allcated from squid's process
>> memory space and has also a variable size, automatically adjusted by the
>> OS when app memory needs grow or shrink.
>
> Right. A ramdisk is also not allocated from squid's process space either,
> but it doesn't shrink in the way linux disk caching would and that might
> cause swapping in a bad situation. That's a clear advantage for linux's
> caching. Simplicity is another clear advantage.
>
> The question I'm left with is, which of the two would better optimise the
> amount of data served from ram (thus lowering iowait), linux's caching or
> the ramdisk?
>
> I guess it's not a very normal setup, so maybe nobody has done this.
>
> Thanks for all the feedback,
> Gavin
>
>
>

Recently on this list someone suggested using more than one squid
process on the same server to make better use of SMP hardware and the
huge amount of ram a 32 bit squid cannot directly address. I don't
remember the thread title right now, but maybe some additional foot for
thought can be found in the recent archives.

I guess those were my last 2 cents. :-)

HTH

-- 
Marcello Romani