[dnsdist] dnsdist performance

[Remi Gacogne]

Hi Klaus,

On 8/13/19 9:31 PM, Klaus Darilion wrote:
> My results were:
> 1 VM with 4vCPUs. The VM runs NSD and PDNS/PGSQL. DNSDIST forwards some
> zones to NSD, others to PDNS/PGSQL
> 
> PDNS with cached responses: 40.000 q/s
> PDNS random labels: 9.000 q/s
> NSD: 65.000 q/s
> 
> 1. dnsdist with single "listen" and each backend added only once
> dnsdist with cached responses: 40.000 q/s
> dnsdist random labels to PDNS: 7.300 q/s
> dnsdist random labels to NSD: 40.000 q/s
> 
> 2. dnsdist with 3 "listen" and each backend added 3 times
> dnsdist with cached responses: 100.000 q/s
> dnsdist random labels to PDNS: 7.300 q/s
> dnsdist random labels to NSD: 60.000 q/s

That's interesting, thank you! I assume the "dnsdist with cached
responses" lines are with dnsdist's packet cache enabled? If so I'd be
interested in knowing the results without any packet cache in dnsdist
but with the packet cache in PDNS enabled.

>> If you increase the number of threads you'll need to use ring buffers
>> sharding to limit contention, by the way.
> 
> Any config recommendation? I currently use a single Cache for both
> backends with 1 shard:
> 
> cache = newPacketCache(500000, 10, 10, 60, 60, true, 1, true, 10)
> getPool(""):setCache(cache)
> getPool("static"):setCache(cache)

I'd advise the use of more shards since it will pretty much get rid of
the contention between the threads, although it might not matter that
much at this level of QPS. A value like 50 should be enough for 6
threads but in some setups I have used values up to 1000 shards. The
sweet spot depends on your exact setup.

Note that this is the number of shards in the packet cache, not the ring
buffers. Even if you don't use the packet cache it would be a good idea
to shard the ring buffers as soon as you use several threads, with:

setRingBuffersSize(10000, 16)

which keeps the default value for the number of entries to keep in
memory but use 16 shards instead of 1, reducing lock contention there as
well.

Best regards,
-- 
Remi Gacogne
PowerDNS.COM BV - https://www.powerdns.com/

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