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Memcached Talk

A talk given to Ruby on Rails Oceania about how we use Memcache, and how it can be used in Rails and Ruby.

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quannum
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225 views35 pages

Memcached Talk

A talk given to Ruby on Rails Oceania about how we use Memcache, and how it can be used in Rails and Ruby.

Uploaded by

quannum
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Memcache

Rob Sharp
rob@sharp.id.au

Lead Developer
The Sound Alliance
About Memcached
• conceived by Brad Fitzpatrick as a
solution to the scaling issues faced
by Livejournal
• “memcached is a high-
performance, distributed memory
object caching system, generic in
nature, but intended for use in
speeding up dynamic web
applications by alleviating
database load”
Who we are
• Sydney-based online media
publishing
• Community and Content Sites
• Fasterlouder.com.au
• Inthemix.com.au
• Samesame.com.au
• Thoughtbythem - Marketing
Agency
Who we are
• Inthemix.com.au
• Australia’s busiest music website
• ~ 250,000 pages per day
• Plus two other busy sites!
• Maximum performance for the
hardware we have
Current
Architechture
• 3 Linux servers
• Apache
• Lighttpd
• Memcache
• 1 MySQL Master
Why do we use
memcached?
• CMS written in OO style, using
Activerecord
• PHP4 and objects don't mix too
well
• Activerecord gave us fast
development but reduced
performance
• Call us greedy, but we want both
• Use Rails Memcache!
Our Application
• CMS written from the ground up
• Effectively three sites running on
one codebase
• Uses three seperate databases,
but aiming to consolidate more
• Has data namespacing
implemented in most places
• But seperation is not quite there
yet!
Our Memcache
Setup
• We have 3 webservers running
memcache
• Each server runs three daemons
on separate ports - one for each
site (more on this later!)
Memcache Pool
• Each daemon knows about the
other 2 daemons and connects to
them over TCP
• This allows us to store data once,
and access it from any server,
whether in the pool or not
• Hashing algorithm means that a
given key maps to a single server
• Efficient use of memory
• Efficient for cache clearing
Memcache Pool
• But what if we lose a server? We
can
• Ignore it - we simply get misses
for any keys we attempt to
retrieve
• Remove it - our hashing
algorithm breaks... :(
• We can also add new servers to
the pool after data has been
stored, but the same hashing
Memcache Pool
• Consistent hashing will solve the
problem of removing or adding
servers once data has been
hashed
• Currently in its infancy - not really
production ready
• We simply monitor our daemons
and restart if required
• Available in most Linux distros
• packaged
Installing
for Fedora, RHEL4/5,
Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo and BSD
Memcached
• OSX? Use Ports!
• sudo port install memcache
• sudo gem install memcache-
client
• sudo gem install cached_model
Memcache and
Ruby

• We’ll use the memcache-client


gem
• Pure Ruby implementation
• Pretty fast!
Storing Stuff
rsharp$ sudo gem install memcache-client

require 'memcache'

memcache_options = {
:compression => true,
:debug => false,
:namespace => 'my_favourite_artists',
:readonly => false,
:urlencode => false
}

Cache = MemCache.new memcache_options


Cache.servers = 'localhost:11211'
Storing Stuff

Cache.set 'favourite_artist', 'Salvador Dali'


skateboarder = Cache.get 'favourite_artist'

Cache.delete 'favourite_artist'
Memcache
Namespaces
• Memcache doesn’t have
namespaces, so we have to
improvise
• Prefix your keys with a namespace
by setting the namespace when
you connect
• Our solution:
• Run multiple memcache
instances on different ports
• Makes it easier to clear out
Roll your own?

• Memcache-client provides basic


cache methods
• What if we extended ActiveRecord?
• We can, with active_model
Storing Stuff Part
Deux
rsharp$ sudo gem install cached_model

require 'cached_model'

memcache_options = {
:compression => true,
:debug => false,
:namespace => 'hifibuys',
:readonly => false,
:urlencode => false
}

CACHE = MemCache.new memcache_options


CACHE.servers = 'localhost:11211'
Storing Stuff Part
Deux

class Artist < CachedModel

end
cached_model
• Performance
CachedModel is not magic.
• CachedModel only accelerates simple
finds for single rows.
• CachedModel won’t cache every query
you run.
• CachedModel isn’t smart enough to
determine the dependencies between
your queries so that it can accelerate
more complicated queries. If you want to
cache more complicated queries you
Other options

• acts_as_cached provides a similar


solution
Memcache Storage

• Memcache stores blobs


• The memcache client handles
marshalling, so you can easily
cache objects
• This does however mean that the
objects aren’t necessarily cross-
language
Memcache Storage
• The most obvious things to store
are objects
• We cache articles
• We cache collections of articles
• We cache template data
• We cache fragments
• We don’t cache SQL queries
What we cache

• Our sites are fairly big and data-


rich communities
• Almost every page has editorially
controlled attributes along with
user generated content
• Like...
Our Example
Dataset
• Article
• Joins Artists
• Joins Locations
• Joins Genres
• Joins Related Content
• Joins Related Forum Activity
• Joins Related Gallery Data
Our Example
Dataset
• Article (continues)
• ...
• Joins Media Content

• Joins Comments
• Joins ‘Rollcalls’
• Joins other secret developments
Our Example
• An article requires many data
facets
• Most don’t change that often
• We also know when they change
• Yay for the Observer pattern
• User content changes much
more regularly
• Can be changed from outside
our controlled area (e.g.
Our Example
Summary
• Data Summary
can be loosely divided into
editorially controlled and user-
generated
• Cache editorially controlled
content separately from user-
generated content
• Simplest way to implement is in
fragment caching
Fragment Caching
• Memcache allows timed expiry of
fragments
• Identify areas that change
infrequently and cache
• Remember to measure
performance before and after
• Evidence suggests very large
gains!
• Use memcache_fragments
Caching Fragments
rsharp$ sudo gem install memcache_fragments

require 'memcache_fragments'

memcache_options = {
:compression => true,
:debug => false,
:namespace => 'hifibuys',
:readonly => false,
:urlencode => false
}

CACHE = MemCache.new memcache_options


CACHE.servers = 'localhost:11211'
Caching Fragments

ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store = :mem_cache_store ,{}


ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store.data = CACHE, {}
ActionController::CgiRequest::DEFAULT_SESSION_OPTIONS.merge!({ 'cache'
=> CACHE })
Caching Fragments

/cache/key', :expire => 10.minutes do %> ..


Memcache
• We couldSessions
store our session in
Memcache
• Great for load balancing - share
across a server farm without
using a DB store
• Ideal for transient data
• Solution exists in
db_memcache_store
• DB backend with memcache
layer - the best of both worlds
In Summary
• Memcache gives you a distributed
cache store
• Very fast and very easy to use
• Lots of ruby and rails libraries
• memcache_client
• cached_model
• db_memcache_store
• memcache_fragments
Any Questions?

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