Rails Server Benchmark

This is a demo Rails application to benchmark Unicorn and Puma on Ruby MRI with different types of work.

The application implements six actions on BenchmarksController:

• /fibonacci/:number Calculate a fibonacci number, then respond with just the number, as plain text.
• /template-render Renders a view template with a ERB loop, conditionals and interpolation, responds with the template.
• /template-render-no-response Like the one above, but it discards the rendered body and responds with the time taken, as plain text.
• /network-io Execute an HTTP GET, then respond with the time taken.
• /network-io-and-render Combines network-io and template-render, to test a mix of CPU and IO work.
• /pause/:seconds Kernel#sleep for a few seconds, then respond with 200 and the number of seconds in the body.
• /pause-and-render/:seconds Combines /pause/:seconds and template-render, to test a mix of CPU and (simulated) IO work.

The application does not interact with a DB and the rendered HTMl does not link to any asset.

These endpoints are benchmarked with different configurations of Unicorn and Puma.

Ruby and server versions

• Ruby MRI 2.3.3
• Unicorn 5.2.0
• Puma 3.6.2

Run the servers

Example commands to run start the app with the two servers:

Unicorn

RAILS_ENV=production WORKER_COUNT=4 bin/unicorn -c config/unicorn.rb -E production

Puma

RAILS_ENV=production WORKER_COUNT=4 THREADS_COUNT=5 bin/puma -C config/puma.rb -e production

How to run the benchmarks (wip)

The application comes with a ruby script to automate the benchmarks: script/benchmark.rb.

It runs ab and collects the results in a results/bench_results.csv file.
It defaults to running ab for 30 seconds, with increasing concurrency levels: 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. It tries its best to sleep between CPU intesive tests to let the processor cool down a little.

Each run takes roughly 25 minutes ((30 * 6 * 7 + (5 * 6 + 20) * 5) / 60).

After each run, rename the file by adding the server configuration, e.g. bench_results_unicorn_4.csv for Unicorn running with 4 workes, and bench_results_puma_4_5.csv for Puma running with 4 workers and 5 threads per worker.

This is necessary to run the next script: script/organize.rb.
This will parse the CSVs and create a new processed.csv file with the data grouped in a way that makes it easier to compare how the different setups performed on the same tests.