RE: [squid-users] Frequent cache rebuilding

From: Tris Hoar <tristan.hoar_at_bgfl.org>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:04:48 -0000

Nikita,

You mention that you are running this server in VMware. Where is it you are
measuring the CPU usage from? Since if it's with in the virtual machine then
that is not accurate. The VM only sees as much available CPU as it needs at
any one time. For example you could have a server with low shares that is
under high load using all the cpu time on the physical hardware, now all the
other computers would show 100% cpu as their allocation is scaled back. But
any computer with higher shares needing cpu time will get it as they would
take precedence. Thus you can only measure the cpu time from the VI Client
or vmtop on the ESX server as they have the real over view of what's going
on in the hardware.

Regards,

Tris

> -----Original Message-----
> From: crobertson_at_gci.net [mailto:crobertson_at_gci.net]
> Sent: 22 January 2009 19:02
> To: squid-users_at_squid-cache.org
> Subject: Re: [squid-users] Frequent cache rebuilding
>
> Andreev Nikita wrote:
> >>>> Why does squid eat 100% of processor if the problem is in FS?
> >>>>
> >
> >
> >> How is your cache_dir defined? aufs (in general) is a better choice
> >> than ufs, diskd might still have some stability issues under load, and
> >> coss is a good supplement as a small object cache. Conceivably if
> Squid
> >> is set up with a ufs cache_dir mounted as NFS, it's spending a lot of
> >> time in a wait state, blocked while the I/O completes.
> >>
> >
> > For 6 days uptime:
> > # vmstat
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----
> cpu------
> > r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy
> id wa st
> > 2 0 92 104052 235704 2309956 0 0 3 43 24 33 10 16
> 73 1 0
> >
> > As you can see system has spent only 1% of CPU time in I/O wait.
> > (cpu-wa column).
> >
>
> This also shows the CPU has been 73% idle. If I'm not mistaken, you
> stated that you had a two CPU (core) system, which would still leave one
> of the cores at 50% idle. Running "vmstat 2" while you are experiencing
> load will give more insight.
>
> > My cache dir directive looks like:
> > cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 16384 64 1024
> >
>
> Make sure your Squid can support it (check the output of "squid -v" for
> aufs) and change this line to...
>
> cache_dir aufs /var/spool/squid 16384 64 1024
>
> ...to enable asynchronous cache accesses.
>
> > # vmstat -d
> > vmstat -d
> > disk- ------------reads------------ ------------writes----------- -----
> IO------
> > total merged sectors ms total merged sectors ms cur
> sec
> > ram0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram14 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > ram15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > sda 50114 8198 1197972 239114 771044 986524 13061742 1616345 0
> 1239
> > sdb 125 1430 2383 100 3 20 184 43 0
> 0
> > sdc 547181 13909 6116481 6209599 2893943 6771249 77505040 42580590 0
> 8027
> > dm-0 6659 0 143594 45401 528574 0 4228592 1248409 0
> 269
> > dm-1 13604 0 408122 82828 883993 0 7071944 3118925 0
> 677
> > dm-2 150 0 1132 387 2 0 10 2 0
> 0
> > dm-3 36240 0 639146 173982 178529 0 1428232 540632 0
> 229
> > dm-4 164 0 1136 610 35 0 76 155 0
> 0
> > dm-5 216 0 1240 817 166439 0 332884 262910 0
> 185
> > hda 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > fd0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> > md0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
> 0
> >
>
> Right. Unless it's mounted as part of a logical volume, NFS doesn't
> show up here.
>
> > If it's not an I/O wait problem then what can cause squid to use 100%
> > of CPU core?
>
> For a 4mbit circuit on recent hardware, using lots (thousands) of regex
> ACLs would do it. But...
>
> > I tried to clear cache but after an hour or so squid
> > began to use as much CPU as usual (~100%).
> >
>
> ...indicates to me that it's cache related. So I think it's either the
> cache_dir type you are using (ufs) or the way the cache_dir is mounted
> (NFS).
>
> > I'm not sure but maybe it started after we enlarged our outer link
> > from 2Mbps to 4Mbps.
> >
> > I will try to move squid cache to local disk but squid works in VMware
> > Virtual Infrastructure. So if I move any of virtual machine partitions
> > from shared to local storage I wouldn't have an ability to move squid
> > VM from one HA cluster node to the other ('cause local partitions on
> > cluster nodes are different from each other).
> >
>
> Then if changing the cache_dir type doesn't help, look into using AoE or
> iSCSI.
>
> > Regards,
> > Nikita.
>
> Chris
>
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Received on Fri Jan 23 2009 - 11:04:51 MST

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