2017-08-11-performance-of-asset-manager-on-ec2.md

Comparing performance of different serving mechanisms

Instructions for setting up Asset Manager on EC2 are in https://gist.github.com/chrisroos/bf9e60642395c84e76cb0ecc1cd1272d.

Set-up

# Create 1MB file
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=1MB.dat  bs=1M count=1

# Upload file
$ curl http://asset-manager.ec2.gov.uk/assets/ \
--form "asset[file]=@1MB.dat"

The tests

# Sendfile
$ ab -n500 http://asset-manager.ec2.gov.uk/media/598dc47f0cec2d1065d18e4d/1MB.dat

# Rails proxy
$ ab -n500 http://asset-manager.ec2.gov.uk/media/598dc47f0cec2d1065d18e4d/1MB.dat?stream_from_s3=true

# Nginx proxy (with and without cache)
$ ab -n500 http://asset-manager.ec2.gov.uk/media/598dc47f0cec2d1065d18e4d/1MB.dat?proxy_via_nginx=true

# Redirect
# Note: I don't think ab follows the redirect
$ ab -n500 http://asset-manager.ec2.gov.uk/media/598dc47f0cec2d1065d18e4d/1MB.dat?redirect_to_s3=true

Summary

Mechanism	Req/sec -n500 -c1	Req/sec -n500 -c5
Sendfile	300	580
Rails proxy	5	9
Nginx proxy	4.6	23
Nginx proxy + cache	200	420
Redirect	237	450