/meteor-benchapp

Benchmarking app for Meteor

Primary LanguageCSS

Meteor Benchmarking

This is a simple benchmarking test comparing performance of Node.js and nginx.

Disclaimer These are some preliminary tests I have conducted on a weekend. I still have to prepare a more thorough test series that takes into account more real-world scenarios.

TL;DR

The test clearly shows that putting nginx in front of a Node.JS (or Meteor) application greatly increases response times for initial requests to the root path and static assets.

However, Node.JS performs much better for serving a single image than for serving the root path.

Naturally, having a multi-core system where nginx can take advantage of all cores will bring better results compared to Meteor which runs on a single core by default.

Scenario and setups

Two servers:

  1. meteor
  2. comet

Meteor runs Node.js, MongoDB, and nginx. Comet acts as a client. These tests have been conducted on a single core, single processor machine. Here are the results with 2 cores (all other specs remain).

Setup 1: Test Root for Node.JS

Deployment via mup, all requests go directly to Meteor at http://meteor:3000

Setup 2: Test Root for Nginx as proxy

Use the configuration for nginx as a proxy. Nginx forwards all requests to the upstream Node.JS server at Port 3000.

Setup 3: Test Root for Nginx as proxy + serving static files

Similar to setup 2 - proxy all requests to / to Port 3000 (Node.JS), but all requests for CSS, JS, and images are served by Nginx directly.

Setup 4: Request an image from Node.JS

Similar to the tests before, only this time ab requests an image (100k jpg file). Served from Node.js.

Setup 5: Request an image from Nginx as Node.JS proxy

Serving the image from Nginx, with a configuration to pass requests to Node.JS.

Setup 6: Request an image from Nginx serving static

Added static files as locations to Nginx config, serving from Nginx rather than Node.JS.

Results

How to read the graphs

Testing Root

Requesting the root path using Apache Bench (ab) with

ab -n100000 -c100 -g plotdata.tsv http://meteor/

Result Node.JS Nginx (just proxy) Nginx (serving static assets)
Requests 100000 100000 100000
Time taken (s) 299.050 106.313 108.380
Requests per second 334.39 940.62 922.68
Time per request (ms) (mean, across all concurrent requests) 2.991 1.063 1.084
Transfer rate (Kbytes/sec) 269.41 806.51 791.12

Node.JS

timeseries for requesting the root path with Node.JS

Apache Bench Results | Raw Timeseries Data

Nginx as proxy

timeseries for requesting the root path with Nginx as proxy

Apache Bench Results | Raw Timeseries Data

Nginx serving static assets

timeseries for requesting the root path with Nginx serving static assets

Apache Bench Results | Raw Timeseries Data

Testing an image

Requesting an image (100018 bytes) with

ab -n100000 -c100 -g plotdata.tsv http://meteor/image.jpg

Result Node.JS Nginx (just proxy) Nginx (serving static assets)
Requests 100000 100000 100000
Time taken (s) 144.642 150.812 61.633
Requests per second 691.36 663.08 1622.52
Time per request (ms) (mean, across all concurrent requests) 1.446 1.508 0.616
Transfer rate (Kbytes/sec) 67719.94 64968.57 159044.71

Node.JS

timeseries for requesting an image with Node.JS

Nginx as proxy

timeseries for requesting an image with Nginx as proxy

Apache Bench Results | Raw Timeseries Data

Nginx serving static assets

timeseries for requesting an image with Nginx serving static assets

Apache Bench Results | Raw Timeseries Data

Combined results

Result 1a) Node.js (/) 2a) Node.js (image.jpg) 1b) Nginx (/, proxy) 2b) Nginx (image.jpg, proxy) 3a) Nginx (/, optimized) 3b) Nginx (image.jpg, optimized)
Time for test 299 145 106 151 108 62
Reqs/s 334 691 940 663 923 1623
Time per req (ms) 2.991 1.446 1.063 1.508 1.084 0.616
Conn times min (ms) 33 110 21 3 22 7
Conn times mean (ms) 299 145 106 151 108 62
Conn times max (ms) 490 294 260 473 163 1055

Percentage of reqs served in certain time

Result 1a) Node.js (/) 2a) Node.js (image.jpg) 1b) Nginx (/, proxy) 2b) Nginx (image.jpg, proxy) 3a) Nginx (/, optimized) 3b) Nginx (image.jpg, optimized)
50% 331 139 105 149 107 60
66% 346 151 110 167 111 63
75% 357 154 112 181 114 66
80% 364 156 113 191 116 67
90% 397 164 118 223 122 73
95% 420 175 124 255 127 80
98% 447 194 131 293 132 90
99% 459 206 134 315 135 98
100% 490 294 260 473 163 1055

Specs

Both machines are equally equipped:

  • Same underlying host
  • KVM machines with
  • 2 GB RAM
  • 1 Proc with 1 Core (virtual)
  • Intel E1000 NIC (virtual)

Misc

Plotting of the graphs was done using Gnuplot with inspiration from Brad Landers. Use the gnuplot script like this:

$ gnuplot gnuPlotScript