InfoQ

News

Google App Engine Load Test Result

Posted by Niclas Nilsson on Jun 05, 2008 09:55 AM

Community
Architecture,
Java
Topics
Rich Internet Apps,
Software Testing,
Web Frameworks,
Cloud Computing
Tags
Google,
GWT,
Performance Evaluation

As we reported previously, there was a public Google Web Toolkit on Google App Engine load test recently. The result of the test was that the application got an average of 10 reqs/sec during one hour, and a peak load of 35 reqs/sec. In total, the application received 40 000 requests in one hour.

According to Didier Girard who set up the test, the users couldn’t notice the load.

Didier also did another thing to make the situation more like the real thing. He upgraded the software during the test.

Just before 4PM, I put a new version of the application in production. At that time their was about 10 requests/second. It was unnecessary and risky. But sometimes you have to upload a new version of your application during high traffic and I wanted to see if it is possible with GAE. All run perfectly.

Pete Koomen, Product Manager of Google Application Engine gave Didier some hints on how to help the application scale. In short:

  • Avoid unbounded queries.
  • Do computation incrementally using the datastore, rather than all at once.
  • Avoid contention on datastore entities.
  • Avoid large entity groups.

Close to 40% of the traffic came from InfoQ readers, even though the article was published less than an hour before the test. Didier says that he’s is planning another round of load testing, so those who would like to participate in further test runs should keep an eye on Tracking News on GWT.

4 comments

Reply

damn by Christoph Blank Posted Jun 5, 2008 11:52 AM
10? by Cameron Purdy Posted Jun 5, 2008 3:05 PM
Re: 10? by Niclas Nilsson Posted Jun 7, 2008 3:05 PM
Requests per second need context by Slava Imeshev Posted Jun 8, 2008 10:46 PM
  1. Back to top

    damn

    Jun 5, 2008 11:52 AM by Christoph Blank

    we need more users then! :) good news though

  2. Back to top

    10?

    Jun 5, 2008 3:05 PM by Cameron Purdy

    Ten requests per second? Forty thousand in an hour? Come on .. get forty thousand per second and it'll be interesting.

    (And yes, there are sites that sustain that order of magnitude load .. on the order of billions of pages served each day.)

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy
    Oracle Coherence: Data Grid for Java, .NET and C++

  3. Back to top

    Re: 10?

    Jun 7, 2008 3:05 PM by Niclas Nilsson

    But there are still many websites that would love to have 40K hits per hour.

    My impression from his blog posts was not that he tried to prove that it works for the extreme, fraction of a percent, high-traffic websites - just that a quite naive (Knuth-style) GWT/GAE app can work quite well without much effort for 99.x% (?) of all webapps out there.

    Kind regards
    Niclas

  4. Back to top

    Requests per second need context

    Jun 8, 2008 10:46 PM by Slava Imeshev

    Requests per second need context. You are talking about the server side of the process without considering response time and request back-log.

    Also, performance only makes sense in the context of requirements. The 10 request/sec can be really a lot of that app have only been able to process 1 request/per and it is abysmally horrible if we are talking sites such as Yahoo, eBay or InfoQ.

    Another thing to consider is scalability - will your application be able 1000 requests per second if you add 100 Google App Engine?

    Without this incomplete list of considerations 10 requests/sec are as good as the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

    Hope this helps.

    Regards,

    Slava Imeshev
    Cacheonix - Clustered Cache and Data Grid for Java

Exclusive Content

Discover RailsKits and Stop Writing Redundant Code

Ruby on Rails has become a popular Ruby framework for creating web applications in recent years. An aspect of creating a web application is the need to repeatedly create the same base functionality.

A Formal Performance Tuning Methodology: Wait-Based Tuning

Steven Haines talks about tackling web application performance tuning by proposing a method called wait-based tuning.

Shaw and Fowler About Forging a New Alliance

Shaw and Fowler talk about the need for a new relationship between the business department and the IT department. Studies have shown that projects mostly fail due to miscommunication between the two.

How to GET a Cup of Coffee

In this article, Jim Webber, Savas Parastatidis and Ian Robinson show how to drive an application's flow through the use of hypermedia in a RESTful application.

Archaeopteryx: A Ruby MIDI Generator

Eccentric artist turned overnight anti-celebrity, Giles Bowkett captures the heart and soul of RubyFringe as he demonstrates his revolutionary Archaeopteryx MIDI drum pattern generator.

Alexandru Popescu Discusses the InfoQ.com Site Architecture

InfoQ Chief Architect Alexandru Popescu discusses the InfoQ architecture, WebWork and DWR, Hibernate and JCR, Hibernate scalability, the new InfoQ video streaming system, and future plans for InfoQ.

LHC Grid: Data storage and analysis for the largest scientific instrument on the planet

higgs-event

The Worldwide Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Computing Grid provides data storage and analysis for the entire high energy physics community that will use the LHC.

Fostering Software Craftsmanship in a Corporate Setting

Scott talks about software craftsmanship represented by people responsible for their work, continuously learning, taking pride in their work, sharing knowledge and respecting professional standards.