Category: Sysadmin

System administration is a special are of IT. It also has a special place in my heart. It is an interesting mixture of all the other disciplines, both common across the whole industry, and at the same time unique for each person, company, and geographical location. When I have something to say or share about system administration, I use this category.

SSO with Nginx auth_request module

SSO with Nginx auth_request module – SSO as in Single Sign-On.  Absolutely beautiful solution for one set of requirements, and a horrendous for another.  Worth knowing though.

Nginx and Memcached, a 400% boost!

Here is an idea to try on a slow weekend: Nginx and Memcached, a 400% boost!

nginx_memcache

 

Memcached, the darling of every web-developer, is capable of turning almost any application into a speed-demon. Benchmarking one of my own Rails applications resulted in ~850 req/s on commodity, non-optimized hardware – more than enough in the case of this application. However, what if we took Mongrel out of the equation? Nginx, by default, comes prepackaged with the Memcached module, which allows us to bypass the Mongrel servers and talk to Memcached directly. Same hardware, and a quick test later: ~3,550 req/s, or almost a 400% improvement! Not bad for a five minute tweak!