Hi guys,
Our app has been getting traction recently, and we struggle to cope with
the traffic. I was hoping you guys could point me in the right
direction.
For each request, the app does some heavy calculations. They are not
done
in Ruby, we use a compiled, shared lib for this. Our current
architecture
is:
- user request triggers 2 background jobs (via Workling/Starling)
- the first worker does some pre-processing (including polling the DB),
call the shared lib, and loop. It sends results along the way to the
second
worker. - the second worker does some post-processing and sends results back to
the
app.
I think the key problem is the call to the shared lib is blocking, so
when
we get lots of calls at once, it seems to me all the workers are stuck
on
this lib and nothing else happens (there are a limited number of
workers).
I have a couple of options in mind, but I have no idea which one should
give better results:
- upgrade to Ruby 1.9.3 (from 1.8.7)
- migrate from DL/Load to FFI (but I don’t believe it sorts the blocking
issue) - consider another Ruby implementation
- consider a different architecture. For instance I could run this
shared
lib on a separate instance without anything else (just Ruby processes)
but
I am not sure how to do this considering speed will be key.
Thanks!
PJ