Efficient data distribution in a Web server farm

High-performance Web sites rely on Web server `farms', hundreds of computers serving the same content, for scalability, reliability, and low-latency access to Internet content. Deploying these scalable farms typically requires the power of distributed or clustered file systems. Building Web server farms on file systems complements hierarchical proxy caching. Proxy caching replicates Web content throughout the Internet, thereby reducing latency from network delays and off-loading traffic from the primary servers. Web server farms scale resources at a single site, reducing latency from queuing delays. Both technologies are essential when building a high-performance infrastructure for content delivery. The authors present a cache consistency model and locking protocol customized for file systems that are used as scalable infrastructure for Web server farms. The protocol takes advantage of the Web's relaxed consistency semantics to reduce latencies and network overhead. Our hybrid approach preserves strong consistency for concurrent write sharing with time-based consistency and push caching for readers (Web servers). Using simulation, we compare our approach to the Andrew file system and the sequential consistency file system protocols we propose to replace     

基于标记的缓存协作分布式Web服务器系统

介绍了提高Web服务器性能的前沿技术--分布式Web服务器系统,讨论了现有各种方案的优缺点,在此基础上提出一种新的分布式Web服务器系统.该系统使用基于标记的缓存协作用户请求分发方法(tag based cache cooperative Web requests distribution,简称TB-CCRD),通过前端机把系统中各个Web服务器的缓存组织成一个大的虚拟缓存系统,提高系统的整体缓存命中率,缩短了请求的响应时间;通过分布式处理TCP连接转交来消除前端机的性能瓶颈;利用标记通告URL在缓存中的位置,避免了额外的系统内部通信.从而得到了一个可扩展的高性能分布式Web服务器系统.     

Performance benefits of non-volatile caches in distributed file systems

We study the use of non-volatile memory for caching in distributed file systems. This provides an advantage over traditional distributed file systems in that the load is reduced at the server without making the data vulnerable to failures. We propose the use of a small non-volatile cache for writes, at the client and the file server, together with a larger volatile read cache to keep the cost of the caches reasonable. We use a synthetic workload developed from analysis of file I/O traces from commercial production systems and use a detailed simulation of the distributed environment. The service times for the resources of the system were derived from measurements performed on a typical workstation. We show that non-volatile write caches at the clients and the file server reduce the write response time and the load on the file server dramatically, thus improving the scalability of the system. We examine the comparative benefits of two alternative writeback policies for the non-volatile write cache. We show that a proposed threshold based writeback policy is more effective than a periodic writeback policy under heavy load. We also investigate the effect of varying the write cache size and show that introducing a small non-volatile cache at the client in conjunction with a moderate sized non-volatile server write cache improves the write response time by a factor of four at all load levels.     

A site-based proxy cache

In traditional proxy caches,any visited page from any Web server is cached independently,ignoring connections between pages,And users still have to frequently visity in dexing pages just for reaching useful informative ones,which causes significant waste of caching space and unnecessary Web traffic.In order to solve the above problem,this paper introduced a site graph model to describe WWW and a site-based replacement strategy has been built based on it .The concept of “access frequency“ is developed for evaluating whether a Web page is worth being kept in caching space.On the basis of user‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘s access history,auxiliary navigation information is provided to help him reach target pages more quickly.Performance test results haves shown that the proposed proxy cache system can get higher hit ratio than traditional ones and can reduce user‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘s access latency effectively.     

A Scalable Web Server Architecture

This paper describes a scalable architecture for Web servers designed to cope with the ongoing increase of the Internet requirements. In the paper, first the drawbacks of the traditional Web server architecture are discussed, and the need for an innovative solution is described. The proposed design addresses two of the parameters that can dramatically impact the performance of Web servers: (1) the need for a powerful data management system to cope with the increase in the complexity of users' requests; and (2) an efficient caching mechanism to reduce the amount of redundant traffic. In this direction, a scalable solution based on distributed database technology to replace the file system is described, and performance test results of the system are provided. This architecture is further extended by a collaborative caching system that builds up an adaptive hierarchy of caches for Web servers, which allows them to keep up with the changes in the traffic generated by the applications they are running. Finally, some improvements to the proposed architecture are addressed.     

一种提高Web响应性能的缓存机制

对于一个日访问量达到万级以上的网站来说,浏览速度将会成为该系统的一个瓶颈。如果能够优化内容发布系统,并把非实时更新的页面转换成静态页面,将会使浏览速度得到显著的提升。本文提出一种基于Java和XML技术、在MVC2架构基础上的三级缓存机制,从静态页面、组件到数据对象分别进行缓存,根据点击率来更新缓存,有效降低了多层体系结构之间的通信量,提高了Web的响应性能。     

Analysis of task assignment policies in scalable distributedweb-server systems

A distributed multiserver Web site can provide the scalability necessary to keep up with growing client demand at popular sites. Load balancing of these distributed Web-server systems, consisting of multiple, homogeneous Web servers for document retrieval and a Domain Name Server (DNS) for address resolution, opens interesting new problems. In this paper, we investigate the effects of using a more active DNS which, as an atypical centralized scheduler, applies some scheduling strategy in routing the requests to the most suitable Web server. Unlike traditional parallel/distributed systems in which a centralized scheduler has full control of the system, the DNS controls only a very small fraction of the requests reaching the multiserver Web site. This peculiarity, especially in the presence of highly skewed load, makes it very difficult to achieve acceptable load balancing and avoid overloading some Web servers. This paper adapts traditional scheduling algorithms to the DNS, proposes new policies, and examines their impact under different scenarios. Extensive simulation results show the advantage of strategies that make scheduling decisions on the basis of the domain that originates the client requests and limited server state information (e.g., whether a server is overloaded or not). An initially unexpected result is that using detailed server information, especially based on history, does not seem useful in predicting the future load and can often lead to degraded performance     

ARM7的嵌入式Web服务器设计技术

主要介绍嵌入式Web服务器技术的设计思想和软件设计流程,以及应用程序文件系统的构造,将网页文件转化为可编译的数据结构;并以32位ARM7微处理器LPC2210为硬件平台,在源码公开的ZLG/IP软件包的支持下,给出了一个嵌入式Web服务器的应用实例。     

Proxy caching that estimates page load delays

Do users wait less if proxy caches incorporate estimates of the current network conditions into document replacement algorithms? To answer this, we explore two new caching algorithms: (1) keep in the cache documents that take the longest to retrieve; and (2) use a hybrid of several factors, trying to keep in the cache documents from servers that take a long time to connect to, that must be loaded over the slowest Internet links, that have been referenced the most frequently, and that are small. The algorithms work by estimating the Web page download delays or proxy-to-Web server bandwidth using recent page fetches. The new algorithms are compared to the best three existing policies—LRU, LFU, and SIZE—using three measures-user response time and ability to minimize Web server loads and network bandwidth consumed—on workloads from Virginia Tech and Boston University.     

合作式Web缓存系统的性能分析

共享不同代理的缓存文件是减少Web通信量和减轻网络瓶颈的重要方法．在分析现有合作式缓存系统的基础上，提出一种基于混合管理的合作式Web缓存系统(HMCS）．HMCS采用重定向的方法将请求从未命中的代理转发给缓存了请求文件的代理．采用这种方法可以减少缓存文件的冗余度，从而提高了缓存系统的存储利用率，进而提高系统的命中率．性能分析和仿真结果表明HMCS系统性能要优于CRISP和ICPS系统．     

基于单片机的CAN_NODE的设计与实现

CAN_NODE实验板是一款功能强大的8位AVR单片机实验板,采用的是基于AVR RISC结构的8位低功耗CMOS微处理器ATmega128。由于其先进的指令集以及单周期指令执行时间,ATmega128的数据吞吐率高达1 MIPS/MHz。板上提供了CAN总线通讯所需要的硬件,按键,LED,USB接口等常用的功能部件,为系统扩展而预留了扩展功能接口,提供了SPI接口和JTAG接口以方便下载和调试。     

DNS dispatching algorithms with state estimators for scalable Web‐server clusters

Replication of information across a server cluster provides a promising way to support popular Web sites. However, a Web‐server cluster requires some mechanism for the scheduling of requests to the most available server. One common approach is to use the cluster Domain Name System (DNS) as a centralized dispatcher. The main problem is that WWW address caching mechanisms (although reducing network traffic) only let this DNS dispatcher control a very small fraction of the requests reaching the Web‐server cluster. The non‐uniformity of the load from different client domains, and the high variability of real Web workload introduce additional degrees of complexity to the load balancing issue. These characteristics make existing scheduling algorithms for traditional distributed systems not applicable to control the load of Web‐server clusters and motivate the research on entirely new DNS policies that require some system state information. We analyze various DNS dispatching policies under realistic situations where state information needs to be estimated with low computation and communication overhead so as to be applicable to a Web cluster architecture. In a model of realistic scenarios for the Web cluster, a large set of simulation experiments shows that, by incorporating the proposed state estimators into the dispatching policies, the effectiveness of the DNS scheduling algorithms can improve substantially, in particular if compared to the results of DNS algorithms not using adequate state information. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Architecture of a Web server accelerator

We describe the design, implementation and performance of a high-performance Web server accelerator which runs on an embedded operating system and improves Web server performance by caching data. It can serve Web data at rates an order of magnitude higher than that which would be achieved by a high-performance Web server running on similar hardware under a conventional operating system such as Unix or NT. The superior performance of our system results in part from its highly optimized communications stack. In order to maximize hit rates and maintain updated caches, our accelerator provides an API which allows application programs to explicitly add, delete, and update cached data. The API allows our accelerator to cache dynamic as well as static data. We describe how our accelerator can be scaled to multiple processors to increase performance and availability. The basic design alternatives include a content router or a TCP router (without content routing) in front of a set of Web cache accelerator nodes, with the cache memory distributed across the accelerator nodes. Content-based routing reduces cache node CPU cycles but can make the front-end router a bottleneck. With the TCP router, a request for a cached object may initially be sent to the wrong cache node; this results in larger cache node CPU cycles, but can provide a higher aggregate throughput, because the TCP router becomes a bottleneck at a higher throughput than the content router. We quantify the throughput ranges in which different designs are preferable. We also examine a combination of content-based and TCP routing techniques. In addition, we present statistics from critical deployments of our accelerator for improving performance at highly accessed Sporting and Event Web sites hosted by IBM.     

The Gecko NFS Web proxy

The World-Wide Web provides remote access to pages using its own naming scheme (URLs), transfer protocol (HTTP), and cache algorithms. Not only does using these special-purpose mechanisms have performance implications, but they make it impossible for standard Unix applications to access the Web. Gecko is a system that provides access to the Web via the NFS protocol. URLs are mapped to Unix file names, providing unmodified applications access to Web pages; pages are transferred from the Gecko server to the clients using NFS instead of HTTP, significantly improving performance; and NFS's cache consistency mechanism ensures that all clients have the same version of a page. Applications access pages as they would Unix files. A client-side proxy translates HTTP requests into file accesses, allowing existing Web applications to use Gecko. Experiments performed on our prototype show that Gecko is able to provide this additional functionality at a performance level that exceeds that of HTTP.     

Rewriting-Based Navigation of Web Sites: Looking for Models and Logics

In this paper we outline the use of term rewriting techniques for modeling the dynamic behavior of Web sites. We associate rewrite rules to each Web page expressing the Web pages which are immediately reachable from this page. The obtained system permits the application of well-known results from the rewriting theory to analyse interesting properties of the Web site. In particular, we briefly discuss the use of some logics with strong connections with term rewriting as a basis for specifying and verifying dynamic properties of Web sites. We use Maude as a suitable specification language for such rewriting models which also permits to directly explore interesting dynamic properties of Web sites.     

Storage-aware Algorithms for Scheduling of Workflow Ensembles in Clouds

This paper focuses on data-intensive workflows and addresses the problem of scheduling workflow ensembles under cost and deadline constraints in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. Previous research in this area ignores file transfers between workflow tasks, which, as we show, often have a large impact on workflow ensemble execution. In this paper we propose and implement a simulation model for handling file transfers between tasks, featuring the ability to dynamically calculate bandwidth and supporting a configurable number of replicas, thus allowing us to simulate various levels of congestion. The resulting model is capable of representing a wide range of storage systems available on clouds: from in-memory caches (such as memcached), to distributed file systems (such as NFS servers) and cloud storage (such as Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage). We observe that file transfers may have a significant impact on ensemble execution; for some applications up to 90 % of the execution time is spent on file transfers. Next, we propose and evaluate a novel scheduling algorithm that minimizes the number of transfers by taking advantage of data caching and file locality. We find that for data-intensive applications it performs better than other scheduling algorithms. Additionally, we modify the original scheduling algorithms to effectively operate in environments where file transfers take non-zero time.     

基于用户访问路径分析的页面推荐模型

已有的基于访问路径分析的页面推荐系统大多由离线处理和在线处理两部分组成,由于其周期性离线处理的过程较为耗时,难以适应大型网站以及内容更新频繁的网站的需要。提出了一种新的基于用户访问路径分析的页面推荐模型。该模型采用在线处理方式,利用增量图划分方法形成页面聚类,依此生成动态页面推荐。模型以Apache模块的形式实现,可适用于大型网站以及内容更新频繁的网站。实验结果表明,该模型具有较好的整体性能。     

一种基于预取的集群服务器调度算法

针对集群服务器LARD调度算法只能利用已有缓存的问题,提出一种基于预取的算法Prefetch-LARD,该算法从Web访问日志中挖掘页面之间的转移概率,建立马尔科夫链模型,在调度请求时利用概率关系提前将下一次可能访问的文档从节点磁盘取到本地cache中,提高了请求的缓存命中率;算法还采用了加权的节点超载判断方法,以提高集群节点的负载均衡度,实验表明,在同样的测试环境下,Prefetch-LARD算法比LARD算法的缓存命中率提高26．9％,系统的吞吐量相应提高18．8％．     

Characterization and Evaluation of Cache Hierarchies for Web Servers

As Internet usage continues to expand rapidly, careful attention needs to be paid to the design of Internet servers for achieving high performance and end-user satisfaction. Currently, the memory system continues to remain a significant performance bottleneck for Internet servers employing multi-GHz processors. In this paper, our aim is two-fold: (1) to characterize the cache/memory performance of web server workloads and (2) to propose and evaluate cache design alternatives for future web servers. We chose SPECweb99 as the representative web server workload and our entire characterization and evaluation methodology is based on our CASPER simulation framework. We begin by exploring the processor cache design space for single and dual-processor servers. Based on our observations, we then evaluate other cache hierarchy alternatives such as chipset caches, coherence filters and decompressed page stores. We show the sensitivity of these components to basic organization parameters such as cache size, line size and degree of associativity. We also present the performance implications of routing memory requests initiated by I/O devices through these caches. Based on detailed simulation data and its implications on system level performance, this paper shows that chipset caches have significant potential for improving future web server performance.     

基于Web的海量存储柔性分布式文件服务器设计

分析了以往分布式文件服务器的不足 ,提出了一种以J2EE技术为核心的基于Web的支持海量文件存储的分布式文件服务器的设计方案。该分布式文件服务器由一个集中控制单元和多个本地文件服务器组成。集中控制单元对文件逻辑信息进行集中式管理 ;文件的物理信息则由位于Web不同节点上的本地文件服务器管理。