Still very new to service fabric but I'm surprised that something as advanced as this is so slow to debug. I'm using a fairly fast machine but it takes 4-5 minutes to tear down and restart the cluster. I've googled it and can't see that anyone else has reported this as being a show stopper.
Some clues to help with your slow development turnaround time:
When developing locally, consider using a One-node cluster in order
to speed-up deployments and upgrades (less Upgrade/Fault Domains):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-get-started-with-a-local-cluster#one-node-and-five-node-cluster-mode
You need to setup/create your cluster once and than start it and
keep it running between debugging sessions, Visual Studio will take
care of uninstalling/upgrading the SF Apps when starting the
debugger.
You can modify the properties of the SF Application project to
decide if your SF App will be uninstalled and install or upgraded
when starting the debugger, which impacts the deployment time.
Consider running from a SSD drive which will speed up compilation and
deployment (file intensive).
Expect less than one minute to compile, deploy and attach debugger for a SF App with 2-3 services.
Yes, we have the same issue, we have around 10 services in our application and debugging is very slow, VS fails to refresh 1 node cluster all the time, so cluster reset is only solution. So every debug run takes about 5 minutes.
Yes, very disappointment development process, the only advantage is some reuse of C# code, if you have not decided what to use for your cloud solution, abandon C# as early as possible. Go for any JST based language having no intermediate binaries.
Related
We have our J2EE based application basically It is small e-commerce apps that run across global (multiple time zones). When ever we have to deploy the patch it take around 3 hrs time (DB backup,DB changes,Java changes,QA smoke testing). I knew its too high. I want to bring down this deployment time to less than 30 mins.
Now I would brief about application infra: We got two Jboss server and single DB, load balancer is configured for both jboss server. It is not cluster env.
Currently what we do :
We bring down both jboss and DB
Take DB backup
Make the DB changes, run some script
Make the java changes, run patches
Above steps will take around 2 hrs for us
Than QA will do testing for one hr. than bring up the server.
Can you suggest some better approach to achieve this? My main question, when we have multiple jboss and single DB. How to make deployment smooth
One approach I've heard that Netflix uses, but have not had a chance to use myself:
Make all of your DB schema changes both forward and backward compatible with the current version of software running, and the one you are about to deploy. Make the new software version continue to write any data the old version needs. Hopefully this is a minimal set.
Backup your running DB (most DBs don't require downtime for backups), and deploy your database schema updates at least a week prior to your software deploy.
Once your db changes have burnt in and seem to be bug free with the current running version, reconfigure your load balancer to point to only one instance of your JBoss servers. Deploy your updated software to the other instance and have QA smoke test it offline while the other server continues to server production request.
When QA is happy with the results, point the LB to just the offline JBoss server (with the new software). When that comes online, update the software on the newly offline JBoss server, and have QA smoke test if desired. If successful, point the LB to both JBoss instances.
If QA finds major bugs, and a quick bug fix and "roll-forward" is not possible, roll back to the previous version of the deployed software. Since your schema and new code is backward compatible, you won't have lost data.
On your next deploy, remove any garbage from your schema (like columns unused by the current deploy) in a way that makes it still backward and forward compatible.
Although more complex than your current approach, this approach should reduce your deployment downtime with minimal risk.
I want to know how can I speed up RSA 7.5( which is an IDE by IBM having eclipse under the hood with websphere server runtimes) mainly server start. The first time I start it after computer reboot it loads after, but after that it takes for ever to start/stop the server. The debug mode for server takes for ever to start.
I am using server 7 run time for IBM RSA 7.5.
So bascially RAD/RSA has websphere run times which allows to configure the server runtime start/stop within RAD/RSA. The run time allows you to develop webapps and test time on the server on deploy it on the websphere run time.
The problem I am facing is with the websphere runtime which works fine after computer reboot but is very slow after several deployments/publishing of the same web app.
I would be grateful you give performance tips for speed up RSA server start/shutdown and overall performance tips. I have plenty of memory like 12 GB with i7 Core 6 cores on Win7.
Of course of your are running the server in debug mode it's going to be a lot slower, but you have a few options like putting the server in development mode or doing some fine tuning as to which applications should start. Take a look at these articles:
Rational Application Developer Performance Tips- Case study: Tuning WebSphere Application Server V7 and V8 for performance
Performance tuning WebSphere Application Server 7 on AIX 6.1
WebSphere tuning for the impatient: How to get 80% of the performance improvement with 20% of the effort
WebSphere Performance Monitoring & Tuning
Some of these are a bit dated but they have some good information that may still be relevent to your issues; especially the first one.
Make sure that the workspaces are stored on a local disk.
edit - forgot this: buy a SSD disk. It makes a huge difference when developing.
If you have a virus scanner, disable on-access scan in the SDP installation directory including the server plugin, and in all your workspaces.
Uninstall any applications (ears) you are not using - the more you have installed the longer the server takes to startup. If your server is taking too long to start, RAD/RSA will assume it has timed out and stop it before it finishes starting - if this happens then increase the start timeout limit by double-clicking your server in the Servers tab and modifying the values in the Timeouts section.
Oh, and If you have a lot of datasources defined, and autostarting connection pools with alot of connections, it may also take a while to start the pools.
But that can't explain it all... I haven't tested, but since WAS and RSA seems to spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing, I am starting to suspect it's trying to download schemas or something. If you have the time, you could try to trace and see if you find something like that...
I came across this post while trying to troubleshoot my RSA performance. I figured I would update it with a recommendation for improving performance on RSA 8.0.4.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/radhelp/v8/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.performance.doc/topics/cperformance.html has some excellent tips on improving performance in the "Performance Tips" section. After implementing just some of the "Always" tips I've found my memory reducing significantly and performance being much faster.
You should start with the "Always" tips and then move to the "Sometimes" and "Rarely" ones for finer tuning.
When I deploy a web role to azure using the management portal, the process takes about 20 minutes. But, when I deploy using visual studio, it can take hours, and it's stuck in "Initializing"/"Waiting for host". Eventually, it does deploy and run normally.
Any thoughts on what's wrong?
Notes:
I'm deploying through visual studio in order to be able to use Intellitrace and the web deploy.
No errors appear at any time during the deployment
Installing web deploy, RDP, any plugins, etc. will lengthen the deployment time. I am pretty sure that Web Deploy in particular will cause the machine to reboot which adds a few mins. This is probably what you notice most (VM's reboot and it takes awhile to get back).
I believe that deploying from Visual Studio releases the host(s) and acquires a new one. This is evident by the fact that the IP addresses associated with the roles typically change when you deploy from Visual Studio.
But upgrading via the Portal re-images the existing host(s).
That presumably accounts for a significant proportion of the time difference, especially if there isn't a host available in the relevant upgrade or fault domain.
For a variety of unfortunate management reasons (budget constraints etc.) I, the developer, have been put in the position to deploy the app in a production environment. The catch is that I don't have any experience in production EJB application server deployment. That said, they are aware that there are no guarantees of success.
The context:
The dev server runs on the latest version of Netbeans with Glassfish v3, on a mac machine
98% / 99% uptime is ok, there are no financial/critical transactions
It is a client/server EJB 3 app, and the web tier, business tier, and resource tiers currently run on the same machine.
I have the liberty to choose the hw/sw infrastructure
Load estimations: 10 simultaneous connexions avg, rare 200 peaks
The outbound public data is text/small pics (it's for iPhone clients), inbound HTTP text only
Basic maintenance will be taken care of (backup, server reboot, etc)
My questions for production deployment:
What are the must haves infrastructure-wise? Minimum system specs etc?
Is it ok to keep Glassfish v3?
Which configuration aspects of the server should I focus on?
Worst case scenario: if I deploy the same software infrastructure (Netbeans/Glassfish v3) as during the development, would the server keep up?
Any piece of advice would be most welcome. Thanks!
For the architecture, you can start small with just a single GlassFish instance with no front web server (GlassFish has one built in that is very capable). If you can wait for the release of GlassFish 3.1 you'll be able to add instances (clustered or standalone) and offer scalability and centralized admin.
Most production instances of GlassFish I've seen run with 1GB-2GB of JVM heap (-Xmx) but your mileage may vary if you load lots of data in memory or if you use some frameworks. If you want better reliability, having them on separate machines is a plus obviously. With two instances on the same machine you can offer continuity of service if one instance fails (but not if the machine fails).
I'd suggest scripting as much as possible the provisioning of the resources (connection pool , JDBC datasource, etc...) and applications using the "asadmin" command-line tool and try to not use NetBeans on the production platform.
Benchmarking with simulated load sounds like a wise thing to try to put together before going live and this survival guide will probably come in handy.
You don't mention the database. Isn't there one?
I suggest the following:
Not a Mac expert but I'll say go with 6GB or more RAM
HDD space is not a problem these days
Do not know much abt Mac Processors (watever eq of dual core etc)
Personally I have not used GF3 in Production but I hope it's stable now so you should be ok.
System Architecture:
Receive all HTTP requests on some web server (Apache or Sun web server) and load balance with your Glassfish server(s).
Now depending on your physical (or virtual) machines create instance of Glassfish Application Server on each machine. If you just have one machine then create atleast 2 instances of Glassfish. This will help to put one node down for maintaince and other to keep going.
As far as deployment is concern make sure you stop debug logs and fine tune JPA logs etc.
Use Ant or other scripts to deploy code and taking backup of existing code.
I hope this will help to kick start and rest you can ask or solve as you go along.
Good luck.
Is there a known solution for splitting build process cross the network machines?
Use case:
We are an average software development company. We own around 50 development workstations (Quad Core 2.66Ghz, 4 GB ram, 200 GB raid). No need to tell that at any single moment not every machine is loaded to the max.
There are 5 to 15 projects running simultaneously at any single moment. Obviously all of them are continuously build on server, than deployed to proper environment. Single project build is taking from 3 to 15 minutes.
The problem: Whenever we build 5 projects in a row the last project is going to be ready after around 25 - 50 minutes. Building in parallel does not solve the problem (build is only a part of the game, than you need to deploy, run tests etc.)
YES the correct solution is to add another build server, but "That involves buying new Expensive hardware, and we already spent a lot!". Yea, right(damn them)!
Anyway. What about splitting build among developers workstation? Lets say whenever we need to build project "A" we check 5 workstations and start build on all that are not overloaded. The build can be canceled by a developer if he really needs all the power of his machine as long as there is at least 1 machine that is still building. After build is finished deployment can be performed to a proper environment (hosted on some server, not on workstation :) ). The bigger the company the more this makes sense to me.
Anyone tried something like this? Are there any good practices? Any helpful software?
(90% of the projects are .net C#, platform - Windows)
You can also check our Parabuild at http://www.viewtier.com - it allows to designate a set of machines as a build farm. Works practically on any platform. It looks like that's what you are looking for.