How To Deliver High Performing Highly Available Cloud Applications

How to Ensure High-Performing, Highly Available Cloud Applications Ben Rushlo Director, Web Performance Consulting, Keynote Systems April 21, 2009 ©2008 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential.

Cloud Computing “A form of standardized IT-based capability – such as Intranet-based services, software, IT infrastructure – offered by a service provider that is accessible via Internet protocols from any computer, is always available and scales automatically to adjust to demand, is either per-per-use or advertising-based, has Web- or programmatic-based control interfaces, and enables full customer self-service.” Frank Gillett, Forrester Research ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 2

2008 – Year of Web Glitches Aug 12, Oct 17 Feb 15 Jul 27 Dec 1 April, May, June. July Jul 10 Jun 17 Jul 8 Nov 28 Jun 17 Jun 17 ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 3

Cloud Computing’s Reliability & Availability Gap Enterprises can’t completely rely on cloud infrastructures to run their business Almost no SLAs provided by cloud providers Using the Cloud lessens control and increases complexity of managing technology Who provides you “Cloud Insurance”? ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 4

The Application Lives Everywhere The “Cloud” – Web services, distributed data centers/infrastructure, content delivery network etc ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 7

Complexity is Increasing Domains 1 -2 5-10 Third Party Content 1-2 requests per page 10 30 requests per page Page Sizes 100-300K 300K – 2MB Languages HTML, limited JS and CSS Multiple JS and CSS per page (XML, Flash, Flex etc) Hosting Single location Hybrid (Cloud) ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 11

Increased User Expectations The Internet has become a utility Always on, always responsive The competition is raising the bar Even if it is not your direct competition 8s 4s 2s ? The Cloud model changes expectations Users are not simply “viewing content”, instead they are interacting, using applications The user doesn’t care that it is hosted in the cloud and will not lower expecations 1s or less might become the new rule ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 13

Performance Management Best Practices Test at every stage in Application Lifecycle – build with the user in mind Test from the Cloud – where your users are Test with a Browser – what your users use Capture the Right Metrics – what impacts your user ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 15

Key Metrics – Pre Launch Average download times Scalability Per element performance Quality Analysis Client side processing IT Variability – over geography Operations Web Web service performance Development Pre render vs. render time Network vs. Application vs. Content Page Construction Test out the cloud before your users do ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 16

Key Metrics – In Production Performance -average versus target Quality Analysis Availability – errors and outages IT Operations Variability Web Development – throughout day and overall Third-Party Quality Trends and Events Don’t let your users monitor the cloud for you ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 17

Asset Count More Important Than Size Size matters less and less Asset count primary driver for high speed user’s performance experience Roundtrips! Roundtrips! Roundtrips! Most sites have highest asset counts in three areas External CSS External JS Static/designer images Combination of these files is key Sprites, packing JS etc. ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 20

JS and CSS Strategy External JS and CSS was designed to allow caching across the site However, many sites are loading unique JS and CSS per page Some of this related to “silos” within organizations Developers need to think about the “user flow” not per page Coordination is key Similar functionality should be in “Global” JS and CSS and loaded on key entry points in site ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 21

File Size Size does matter to poorer connected users The “grey area” users – wireless, mobile devices, dial-up, satellite, coffee shops, hotels etc. JS and CSS Need to be compressed Need to be minified (comments removed, whitespace removed) Old code pruned ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 22

Download Time 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 UPS Live Travelocity Wikipedia Sprint HotJobs Career Builder Disney Fidelity Yellow Pages ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. Google AT&T Orbitz Merrill Lynch MSN eBay Ask 40 Typical Home Pages CNN Expedia Time On Netw ork Client Side Processing AOL Bank Of America Symantic Facebook Ticketmaster NY Times Apple Hewlett-Packard Client Side Processing April 21, 2009 Amazon CBS Sportsline Verizon Yahoo USA Today Dell Walmart Priceline.com MSNBC Weather.com Charles Schwab FedEx Monster 23

JavaScript and The Browser External JS is not only a roundtrip but is also serialized the browser Each file much be loaded in serial Exponentially extends the download Worse in the top of the load (pre render) Pre render JS files should be limited (ie. few of them) ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 26

JS Threading Example Javascript files load one file at a time None of these images were downloaded to the browser until 2.4 seconds into a 2.8 second page load ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 27

Geographic Distribution of Content Performance varies significantly based on geography Key factors that drive amount of variation are Element counts (Roundtrips!) User distance from data center Use of Content Delivery Network ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 28

Online Tax Application- Canada 25.0 20.0 15.0 Seconds 10.0 5.0 0.0 Home Page Online Online Edition Get Started Validation Vancouver Telus 4.61 1.18 1.37 6.70 0.51 Calgary Telus 6.78 1.64 1.58 8.49 0.57 Toronto Bell 9.27 2.71 2.71 17.90 0.97 Montreal Verizon 11.68 3.48 3.14 21.46 1.09 Vancouver Telus Calgary Telus Toronto Bell Montreal Verizon ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 29

Third Party Usage and Quality It is quite common to find pages that have 10+ domains that are third party Floodlight tags (which dynamically insert new domains) Tracking (Omniture, Google Analytics etc) Media buy/tracking tags A/B testing Survey/opinion tags Etc Third party quality needs to be monitored Third party tags must be POST render where possible ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 30

Cache Management For many sites, visitors return quite frequently Sites need to take into account the impact of caching Cache needs to be done appropriately Far future expire headers Etag configuration The performance impact of “validating” cache with the server is AS SIGNIFICANT as downloading that content fresh (for high speed user) ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 32

Automotive Site Example – Return Versus New 3.00 2.50 400K 2.00 Seconds 1.50 40K 1.00 0.50 0.00 Home Page - New Visitor Home Page - Return Visitor Geometric Mean ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 33

Don’t Forget The Basics Cloud vendors must provide performance metrics Measure your cloud application yourself as well Ensure SLAs in place Measure…Measure…Measure ©2009 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote & Client Confidential. April 21, 2009 34

How To Deliver High Performing Highly Available Cloud Applications

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