This document discusses Rhebok, a high performance Rack handler written in Ruby. Rhebok uses a prefork architecture for concurrency and achieves 1.5-2x better performance than Unicorn. It implements efficient network I/O using techniques like IO timeouts, TCP_NODELAY, and writev(). Rhebok also uses the ultra-fast PicoHTTPParser for HTTP request parsing. The document provides an overview of Rhebok, benchmarks showing its performance, and details on its internals and architecture.

1. Rhebok,
High performance Rack Handler
Masahiro Nagano @kazeburo
RubyKaigi 2015

2. Me
•Masahiro Nagano
•@kazeburo
•Principal Site Reliability Engineer
at Mercari, Inc.

4. Mercari
•Download: 27M (JP+US)
•GMV: Several Billion per a Month
•Items: Several hundreds of thousand
or more new items in a Day
•Backend language: PHP, Go, lua, etc

5. Agenda
•Rhebok Overview and Benchmark
•How to create a High Performance
Rack Handler & Rhebok internals

6. Rhebok
Overview and Benchmark

7. Rhebok
• Rack Handler/Web Server
• 1.5x-2x performance when compared to
Unicorn
• Prefork Architecture same as Unicorn
• Rhebok is suitable for running HTTP application
servers behind a reverse proxy like nginx
• Ruby port of Perl’s Gazelle

8. What’s Gazelle?
• High Performance Plack Handler
• Plack is Perl’s Rack
• 2x~3x times faster than servers
commonly used like Starman, Starlet
• Production Ready
• Installed to dozen servers and has shown to
reduce their CPU usage by 1-3%

9. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rohit_saxena/9819136626/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wildlifewanderer/8176461065/

10. Who should use Rhebok?
•A Highly optimized high traffic
websites
• Gaming, Ad-tec, Recipe Site, Media or
massive scale SNS
• By using Rhebok, it is possible to improve
the response speed to higher level
•Can be applied to any website

11. general website
optimized website
SQLCacheWAFRack
Handler Ruby
SQLCacheRubyWAFRack
Handler
% in response time

12. Who should not use
Rhebok?
•Who want to use WebSocket or
Streaming
•Who can not setup the reverse proxy
in front of Rhebok

13. Rhebok Spec
•HTTP/1.1 Web Server
•Support full HTTP/1.1 features except
for KeepAlive
•Support TCP and Unix Domain Socket
•Hot Deployment using start_server
•OobGC

14. Usage
$ rackup -s Rhebok
--port 8080
-E production
-O MaxWorkers=20
-O MaxRequestPerChild=1000
-O OobGC=yes
config.ru

15. Recommended
configuration
RhebokAmazon Web Services LLC or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Client Multimedia Corporate
data center
Traditional
server
Mobile Client
IAM Add-on Example:
IAM Add-on
Assignment/
Task
RequesterWorkers
Reverse Proxy
(Nginx,h2o)
HTTP/2
HTTP/1.1
TCP
Unix Domain Socket
http {
listen 443 ssl http2;
upstream app {
server unix:/path/to/app.sock;
}
server {
location / {
proxy_pass http://app;
}
location ~ ^/assets/ {
root /path/to/webapp/assets;
}
}
}

16. Hot Deploy

17. $ start_server --port 8080
-- rackup -s Rhebok
-E production
-O MaxWorkers=20
-O MaxRequestPerChild=1000
-O OobGC=yes
config.ru
perl: https://metacpan.org/release/Server-Starter
golang: https://github.com/lestrrat/go-server-starter
start_server

18. How works start_server
start_server --port 8080 -- rackup
Rhebok
worker worker worker
socket
fork
Amazon Mechanical Turk
On-Demand Workforce
Human Intelligence
Tasks (HIT)
Assignment/
Task
RequesterWorkersAmazon
Mechanical Turk
Non-Service Specific
Socket.for_fd(
ENV["SERVER_STARTER_PORT"]
)

19. How works start_server
start_server --port 8080 -- rackup
Rhebok
worker worker worker
socket
Amazon Mechanical Turk
On-Demand Workforce
Human Intelligence
Tasks (HIT)
Assignment/
Task
RequesterWorkersAmazon
Mechanical Turk
Non-Service Specific
SIGHUP
Rhebok
worker worker worker
fork
Socket.for_fd(
ENV["SERVER_STARTER_PORT"]
)

20. How works start_server
start_server --port 8080 -- rackup
Rhebok
worker worker worker
socket
Amazon Mechanical Turk
On-Demand Workforce
Human Intelligence
Tasks (HIT)
Assignment/
Task
RequesterWorkersAmazon
Mechanical Turk
Non-Service Specific
SIGHUP
Rhebok
worker worker worker
SIGTERM

21. Benchmark

22. Benchmark environment
• Amazon EC2 c3.8xlarge
• 32 vcpu
• Amazon Linux
• Ruby 2.2.3
• Unicorn 5.0.0 / rhebok 0.9.0
• patched wrk that supports unix domain socket
• https://github.com/kazeburo/wrk/tree/unixdomain2

23. Benchmark
HelloWorld sinatra rails
5577
30788
248094
6151
34557
398898
req/sec
Rhebok
unicorn

24. ISUCON benchmark
• ISUCON
• web application tuning contest
• Contestants compete with the scores of
benchmark created by organizers
• Web application that becomes the theme
of ISUCON is close to the service it is in
reality

25. ISUCON 4 Qualifier
43560
41175
SCORE
unicorn Rhebok

26. How to create
a high performance Rack Handler
and Rhebok internals

27. Basics of
Rack and Rack Handler

28. Rack
•Rack is specification
• interface between webservers that support
ruby and ruby web frameworks
•Rack also is implementation
• eg. Rack::Request, Response and
Middlewares

29. web server interface
unicorn
thin
puma
Rack
Web
interface
Rails
sinatra
Padrino
Web Server Framework

30. Rack Application
app = Proc.new do |env|
[
'200',
{'Content-Type' => 'text/html'},
['Hello']
]
end

31. Rack env hash
•Hash object contains Request Data
•CGI keys
• REQUEST_METHOD, SCRIPT_NAME, PATH_INFO,
QUERY_STRING, HTTP_Variables
•Rack specific keys
• rack.version, rack.url_scheme, rack.input, rack.errors,
rack.multithread, rack.multiprocess, rack.run_once,rack.hijack?

32. Response Array
[
'200',
{
'Content-Type' => 'text/html',
‘X-Content-Type-Options’ => ‘nosniff’,
‘X-Frame-Options’ => ‘SAMEORIGIN’,
‘X-XSS-Protection’ => ‘1; mode=block’
},
['Hello',‘world’]
]

33. Response body
•Response body must respond to each
• Array of strings
• Application instance
• File like object

34. Role of Rack Handler
•Create env from an HTTP request sent
from a client
•Call an application
•Create an HTTP response from array
and send back to the client
env app array
HTTP req HTTP res

35. Create a Rack
Handler

36. module Rack
module Handler
class Shika
def self.run(app, options)
slf = new()
slf.run_server(app)
end
def run_server(app)
server = TCPServer.new('0.0.0.0', 8080)
while true
conn = server.accept
buf = ""
while true
buf << conn.sysread(4096)
break if buf[-4,4] == "rnrn"
end
reqs = buf.split("rn")
req = reqs.shift.split
env = {
'REQUEST_METHOD' => req[0],
'SCRIPT_NAME' => '',
'PATH_INFO' => req[1],
'QUERY_STRING' => req[1].split('?').last,
'SERVER_NAME' => '0.0.0.0',
'SERVER_PORT' => '5000',
'rack.version' => [0,1],
'rack.input' => StringIO.new('').set_encoding('BINARY'),
'rack.errors' => STDERR,
'rack.multithread' => false,
'rack.multiprocess' => false,
'rack.run_once' => false,
'rack.url_scheme' => 'http'
}
reqs.each do |header|
header = header.split(": ")
env["HTTP_"+header[0].upcase.gsub('-','_')] = header[1];
end
status, headers, body = app.call(env)
res_header = "HTTP/1.0 "+status.to_s+"
res_header << "+Rack::Utils::HTTP_STATUS_CODES[status]+"rn"
headers.each do |k, v|
res_header << "#{k}: #{v}rn"
end
res_header << "Connection: closernrn"
conn.write(res_header)
body.each do |chunk|
conn.write(chunk)
end
conn.close
end
end
end
end
create socket
accept
read request &
create env
run app
create
response

37. Run server
$ rackup -r ./shika.rb -s Shika -E production config.ru

38. This rack handler has
some problems
• Performance problem
• Handle only one request at once
• Stop the whole world when one request
lagged
• No TIMEOUT
• No HTTP request parser support HTTP/
1.1 spec

39. Increase concurrency
• Multi process
• simple and easy to scale
• Multi thread
• lightweight context switch compared to the
process
• IO Multiplexing
• Event driven, can handle many connections

40. Concurrency strategy
• Unicorn
• -> multi process
• PUMA
• -> multi thread + limited event model
(+ multi process)
• Thin
• event model (+ multi process)

41. Manager
Prefork Architecture

42. Manager
bind
listen
Prefork Architecture

43. Worker
accept
Worker
accept
Worker
accept
Worker
accept
Manager
bind
listen
fork fork fork fork
Prefork Architecture

44. Worker
accept
Worker
accept
Worker
accept
Worker
accept
Manager
bind
listen
fork fork fork fork
Client Client ClientClient
Prefork Architecture

45. prefork_engine
•https://github.com/kazeburo/
prefork_engine
•Ruby port of Perl’s Parallel::Prefork
•a simple prefork server framework

46. prefork_engine
server = TCPServer.new('0.0.0.0', 8080)
pe = PreforkEngine.new({
"max_workers" => 5,
"trap_signals" => {
"TERM" => 'TERM',
"HUP" => 'TERM',
},
})
while !pe.signal_received.match(/^TERM$/)
pe.start { # child
while true
conn = server.accept
....
end
}
end
pe.wait_all_children

47. IO timeout

48. IO timeout
•Unicorn does not have io timeout
• send SIGKILL to a long running process
• default timeout 30 sec
E, [2015-12-08T03:13:24.863287 #90217] ERROR -- : worker=0 PID:
90243 timeout (61s > 60s), killing
E, [2015-12-08T03:13:24.865764 #90217] ERROR -- : reaped
#<Process::Status: pid 90243 SIGKILL (signal 9)> worker=0
I, [2015-12-08T03:13:24.866176 #90217] INFO -- : worker=0
spawning...

49. Using select(2)
while true
connection = @server.accept
buf = self.read_timeout(connection)
if buf == nil
connection.close
next
end
parse_http_header(…)
--
def read_timeout(conn)
if !IO.select([conn],nil,nil,READ_TIMEOUT)
return nil
end
return connection.sysread(4096)
end

50. Rhebok supports IO timeout
•Implement read_timeout in C
• avoid strange behavior of nonblock +
sysread
• use poll(2) instead of select(2)
$ rackup -s Rhebok -O Timeout=60 config.ru

51. Parse HTTP request

52. HTTP parser
• HTTP Parser is easy to cause security issue. It's
safer to choose an existing one that is widely used
• There are several fast implementation
• Mongrel based - Unicorn, PUMA
• Node.js based - Passenger 5
• PicoHTTPParser - Rhebok, h2o
• pico_http_parser in rubygems
• Ruby binding of PicoHTTPParser

53. pico_http_parser benchmark
0 1 2 4 10
80814
118499
140395153002
167823
109602
166615
203201
231919
455188
# of headers
picohttpparser unicorn

54. PicoHTTPParser in Rhebok
•uses PicoHTTPParser directly
• does not use pico_http_parser.gem
•performs both of reading and parsing
the HTTP header in a C function
• reduce overhead of create Ruby’s string
contain HTTP header

55. TCP optimization

56. TCP_NODELAY
•When data is written, TCP does not
send packets immediately. There are
some delays.
•TCP uses Nagle’s algorithm to collect
small packets in order to send them all
at once by default
•TCP_NODELAY disable it

57. write(“foo”)
write(“bar”)
os/kernel clientApplication
buffering
“foobar”
Nagle’s algorithm
delay

58. write(“foo”)
write(“bar”)
os/kernel clientApplication
“foo”
“bar”
TCP_NODELAY

59. Problem of TCP_NODELAY
• When TCP_NODEALY is enable, take
care of excessive fragmentation of tcp
packet
• causes increase network latency
• To prevent fragmentation
• concat data in application
• use writev(2)

60. writev(2)

61. w/o writev(2)
char *buf1 = “Hello ”;
char *buf2 = “RubyKaigi”;
char *buf3 = “rn”;
write(fd, buf1, strlen(buf1));
write(fd, buf2, strlen(buf2));
write(fd, buf3, strlen(buf3));
kernel
User Users Client MultimMobile Client
Amazon Mechanical Turk
On-Demand Workforce
Human Intelligence
Tasks (HIT)
Assignment/
Task
WorkersAmazon
Mechanical Turk
Non-Service Specific
“Hello“ “RubyKaigi” “rn”
many syscalls

62. w/o writev(2)
char *buf1 = “Hello ”;
char *buf2 = “RubyKaigi”;
char *buf3 = “rn”;
char *buf;
str = (char *)malloc(100);
strcat(buf, buf1);
strcat(buf, buf2);
strcat(buf, buf2);
write(fd, buf, strlen(buf));
free(buf); kernel
“Hello RubyKaigirn”
one syscall
Amazon Mechanical Turk
On-Demand Workforce
Human Intelligence
Tasks (HIT)
Assignment/
Task
WorkersAmazon
Mechanical Turk
Non-Service Specific
allocate memory

63. writev(2)
ssize_t rv;
char *buf1 = “Hello ”;
char *buf2 = “RubyKaigi”;
char *buf3 = “rn”;
struct iovec v[3];
v[0].io_base = buf1;
v[0].io_len = strlen(buf1);
...
v[2].io_base = buf3;
v[2].io_len = strlen(buf3);
rv = writev(fd, v, 3); kernel
Gathering
buffers
Amazon Mechanical Turk
On-Demand Workforce
Human Intelligence
Tasks (HIT)
Assignment/
Task
WorkersAmazon
Mechanical Turk
Non-Service Specific
“Hello RubyKaigirn”
one syscall

64. Rhebok internals
•Prefork Architecture
•Effecient network IO
•Ultra Fast HTTP parser
•TCP Optimization
•Implemented C

65. conclusion

66. conclusion
•Rhebok is a High Performance Rack
Handler
•Rhebok is built on many modern
technologies
•Please use Rhebok and feedback to
me

67. end