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LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

highscalability.com

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Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#61

Post by fleitz »

Smudge wrote: post #10
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #3

If you are thinking about using node.js for this reason[1] on most sites, you are optimizing poorly. LinkedIn didn't worry about this until after they were a public company. If Python/Djando or Ruby/Rails can get your app out the door and into customer hands faster, it is almost always the right thing to use. 1. There are certainly other, very valid, technical reasons for choosing node.js over other technologies earl…

I'm sure LinkedIn could have cut servers without switching to node. Take your first, crappy implementation and rewrite it in the same language and you'll probably still see at least 10x improvement, if not 20.

Yeah as the article notes the old version used HTML and the new version uses binary blobs.

This is hardly surprising.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#62

Post by knewter »

ericf wrote: post #16
hnriot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that would be wrong, the server legitiamtely moved from rails to node. Just because node is JavaScript doesn't mean that it automatically runs on the client, JavaScript is a perfectly viable server language too. The title could be improved by reflecting that this is for LinkedIn mobile, but the rails->node is correct.

Not wrong, a lot of their performance gains were a result of caching their templates client side and having their servers only return data. That is a much smaller load on the server and easily could account for the reduction in servers. The title makes it sound as if they reduced their servers and increased their performance simply by migrating from ruby to node.

This. Many rails apps spend much of their time rendering views, and even a decent caching strategy on the server can increase performance tons.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#63

Post by tedunangst »

dmorgan wrote: post #52
pdelgallego wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Take your first, crappy implementation and rewrite it in the same language and you'll probably still see at least 10x improvement. You will probably will get the same mess. There is plenty of literature about that. I.e: A complete rewrite is what killed Netscape

> You will probably will get the same mess. There is plenty of literature about that. I.e: A complete rewrite is what killed Netscape That's a meme started by a Joel Spolsky article, and maybe an allusion to the "second system effect" (which is about something else altogether). Hardly "plenty of literature about that". Actually, the complete rewrite might killed Netscape, but it saved Mozilla and Firefox. And Netscap…

the complete rewrite might killed Netscape, but it saved Mozilla and Firefox.

What do you mean?

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#64

Post by tedunangst »

Devilboy wrote: post #38
pdelgallego wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Take your first, crappy implementation and rewrite it in the same language and you'll probably still see at least 10x improvement. You will probably will get the same mess. There is plenty of literature about that. I.e: A complete rewrite is what killed Netscape

Is moving from Rails to Node not a complete rewrite?

It doesn't count as a rewrite when the rewrite is in a language that's cooler than the original version.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#65

Post by pragmatic »

fomojola wrote: post #42

Ah, odd math point, but was I the only one who noticed this sentence: "focus on simplicity, ease of use, and reliability; using a room metaphor; 30% native, 80% HTML; embedded lightweight HTTP server; "

It's mangled from the original article.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#66

Post by pragmatic »

The original article:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/a-behi...

And this is really intersting:

Finally LinkedIn tested, and ultimately chose to adopt, something surprising. The company embedded an extremely lightweight HTTP server in the application itself. The HTTP server exposes native functionality through a very simple REST API that can be consumed in the embedded HTML controls through standard JavaScript HTTP requests. Among other things, this server also provides access to the user’s contacts, calendar, and other underlying platform functionality.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#67

Post by rorrr »

Ruby is one of the slowest languages you can think of, while Javascript on V8 is only 2.3X slower than C++ (median).

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programs-are-fas...

What I'm really surprised is that they got such a huge gain. Most projects I've worked on are DB or I/O bound. Maybe they store everything in RAM.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#68

Post by markmm »

andybak wrote: post #60
markmm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would spend a little extra time upfront and save many many expensive rewrites latter on. Use C from the start, you won't need to rewrite just scale with hardware. This argument that using Ruby (or any language that makes programming easy but runs like treacle) to get something out the door a few months earlier is bullshit, I would rather release something a few months later that I didn't have to totally rewrite dow…

I look forward to seeing C as the go-to web-development language. Really? C for a problem that is largely string manipulation and database access?

Why are they moving from Ruby if it's just "string manipulation and database access"?

The problem is folks, as soon as you get a large number of users every compromise you made by using a toy language or database is magnified 1000 times. Google didn't implement in some scripting language to get to the market a few months early.

Re: LinkedIn Mobile Moved from Rails to Node: 27 Servers Cut and Up to 20x Faster

#70

Post by jamesaguilar »

rorrr wrote: post #67

Ruby is one of the slowest languages you can think of, while Javascript on V8 is only 2.3X slower than C++ (median). http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programs-are-fas... What I'm really surprised is that they got such a huge gain. Most projects I've worked on are DB or I/O bound. Maybe they store everything in RAM.

They probably fixed query design issues at the same time as they moved implementations. It strikes me as hilariously unlikely that LinkedIn was CPU-bound.
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