# Memcached 1.6.5 (Rails 2.3) 10x slower **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [April 13, 2009, 10:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374 "2009-04-13T10:37:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2009, 10:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/1 "2009-04-13T10:37:15Z")
The move to memcached\_client 1.6.5 in Rails 2.3 seems to have made the Rails cache about 10x slower. Since that’s the opposite effect I would expect, I was hoping somebody would explain where I’m misreading these numbers? I noticed my fragment caching was slow – it shouldn’t take 2ms just to read a 2k string from a localhost memcached server: Cached fragment hit: views/sightings/1556/row (2.3ms) Cached fragment hit: views/sightings/1557/row (2.4ms) Cached fragment hit: views/sightings/1558/row (2.2ms) Then i did some quick and dirty benchmarks on the console: First, with the “1.6.5” version bundled with rails 2.3 # =\> cache benchmark: (182.9ms) Then I switch memcache\_client versions, to 1.5.0: # =\> cache benchmark: (18.6ms) (full benchmark code – [Rails memcached benchmark · GitHub](http://gist.github.com/94196)) These numbers hold up on both OSX and Solaris. I’ll submit a ticket somewhere unless it turns out I’m missing something… ---
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2009, 10:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/2 "2009-04-13T10:56:34Z")
On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 7:10 PM, whatcould [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Cached fragment hit: views/sightings/1558/row (2.2ms) > > These numbers hold up on both OSX and Solaris. I’ll submit a ticket > somewhere unless it turns out I’m missing something… Can you post a complete test case that can be ran? -Conrad ---
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/3 "2009-04-13T17:01:01Z")
Hmm, good idea. There’s probably a better way to do this but here’s a test I ran in activesupport/test: > (you still have to manually replace the memcache client in activesupport/vendor/, not sure how to easily swap out the MemCache client in code.) results: # ruby -Ilib:test test/memcache\_client\_test.rb Loaded suite test/memcache\_client\_test Started memcache\_client version: 1.6.4.99 0.940000 0.390000 1.330000 ( 1.354539) . Finished in 1.374947 seconds. # ========= and switching memcache\_client versions: memcache\_client version: 1.5.0 0.040000 0.020000 0.060000 ( 0.138320) . Finished in 0.15171 seconds. ============= There must be something I’m doing wrong – I’m sure someone would have seen this if it were really this much slower?? ---
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/4 "2009-04-13T18:18:59Z")
Ok, on a tip from mperham: Turning off the timeouts makes memcache in Rails 2.3 almost as fast as it was in 2.2: > With timeouts: memcache\_client version: 1.6.4.99 9.170000 4.200000 13.370000 ( 13.567950) . No timeouts: memcache\_client version: 1.6.4.99 0.730000 0.230000 0.960000 ( 1.616430) === That would be something like this in your production.rb: config.cache\_store = :mem\_cache\_store, ‘127.0.0.1:11211’, { :timeout =\> nil } === But there’s still something fishy here – in the mcache-client benchmarks, 1.6.5 is significantly faster even without turning off the timeouts. Doing some more research. ---
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2009, 8:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/5 "2009-04-14T08:19:10Z")
I’ve added a FAQ entry explaining what is going on. 1.6+ is much faster than 1.5.0 only when multiple servers are being used. I’m guessing your benchmark is testing just localhost:11211. > Simple answer, turn off socket timeouts in order to dramatically speed up memcache-client but realize you might be woken up at 3am when production melts down, as I was. mike ---
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/6 "2009-04-13T17:26:48Z")
By the way – I should clarify that the _actual memcache-client library_ is significantly faster, as the benchmarks included in the new (Mike P.'s) branch of memcache-client show. [http://github.com/mperham/memcache-client/tree](http://github.com/mperham/memcache-client/tree) Time to run the whole benchmark suite, on my oldish MacBook: 1.7.1: 49 seconds 1.6.4.99: 126 seconds 1.5: 376 seconds!! So it’s not the memcache-client itself. ---
**Author:** ![whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@whatcould](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/whatcould)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memcached-1-6-5-rails-2-3-10x-slower/165374/7 "2009-04-14T15:55:03Z")
> Simple answer, turn off socket timeouts in order to dramatically speed > up memcache-client but realize you might be woken up at 3am when > production melts down, as I was. Better answer – split the difference: install mike’s memcache- client-1.7.2 (from github) and the SystemTimer gem, which speeds up 1.6.5 substantially without turning off the timeouts. My problem is that I added fragment caching thinking .03ms fetch times were normal, and now when it takes 3-4ms (with the timeouts) to get each fragment… stuff gets really slow. So until i refactor, timeouts are off. david