In this talk I will share how we brought down our Jenkins build pipeline time down from over 90 minutes to under 12 minutes. I will share specific techniques which helped and also some, which logically made sense, but actually did not help. If your team is trying to optimize their build times, then this session might give you some ideas on how to approach the problem. Development Impact – The number of builds in a day have increased over a period of time as the build time has reduced. Frequency of code check-in has increased; Wait time has reduced; failed test case faster to isolate and fix. The sessions will look at: Why long running pipeline was hurting, Key Principles to Speed Up Your Build Pipeline, Bottlenecks , Disk IO examples and alternatives, Insights from CPU Profiling, Divide and Conquer, Fail Fast, Results The talk will highlight: Importance of getting fast feedback, How to investigate long running tests, How to run Tests concurrently, RAM Disks, SSD, Hybrid disks, Why you should not assume; but validate your hypothesis. Session at the IndicThreads.com Confence held in Pune India on 27-28 Feb 2015 http://www.indicthreads.com http://pune15.indicthreads.com

1. Speed Up Your Build Pipeline for Faster
Feedback
Ashish Parkhi
IDeaS a SAS Company
ashish.parkhi@ideas.com
@AshishParkhi
http://ashishparkhi.com

2. 2
Build Pipeline – 10 Months Ago
About 60to 90minutes

3. 3
Impact on life.
Image source – http://ak3.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/5132438/preview/stock-footage-mixed-ethnicity-group-of-medical-professionals-
working-late-at-night-are-looking-at-a-computer.jpg
http://the247analyst.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dealing-with-pressure.jpg
http://www.dimitri.co.uk/business/business-images/worker-alone-dark-office.jpg
http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/2012/10/crying-little-girl.jpg

4. 4
Build Pipeline - Now – under 10 Minutes

5. 5
Focus on the
Bottlenecks
Divide and
Conquer
Key Principles to Speed Up
Your Build Pipeline
Fail Fast

6. 6
Focus on the
Bottlenecks
Divide and
Conquer
Key Principles to Speed Up
Your Build Pipeline
Fail Fast

7. 7
Disk IO – Example Focus on Bottleneck
File Operations

8. 8
Disk IO – Example Focus on Bottleneck
Database operations.
Image Source - https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPdVawndjUZbU2PDn-oKgjBPqmgDqr3PPZatZh9kxEgNi71AND
http://www.dba-oracle.com/images/large_disk_hot_files.gif

9. 9
Disk IO – Alternative Focus on Bottleneck
• Avoid file operations – e.g. duplicating workspace
Image Source - http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bqTjSN7pSpg/UbqyjVojEFI/AAAAAAAADBw/PWe0kiuRHJ4/s200/no+duplicate+content.jpg

10. 10
Disk IO – Alternative Focus on Bottleneck
• Avoid file operations – e.g. Jar creation.
Image Source - http://i1.wp.com/blog.quoteroller.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Dont-start-from-scratch.png?resize=800%2C264

11. 11
Disk IO – Alternative Focus on Bottleneck
• Robocopy/rsync.
Image source - http://www.asustor.com/images/admv2/022_Rsync%20Backup-The-ultimate-tool-for-remote-backup.png

12. 12
Disk IO – Alternative Focus on Bottleneck
• Test on smaller but apt data set.
Image source - http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4hvqisoH9CE/TSZIs7eiSAI/AAAAAAAAA7E/vanj6bGD8XQ/s1600/big-vs-small-left.jpg

13. 13
Disk IO - Alternative - SSD Focus on Bottleneck
• HDD (Toshiba MQ01ACF050 500GB SATA III) vs SSD
(Samsung PM851 512GB mSata)

14. 14
Disk IO - Alternative - SSD Focus on Bottleneck
• HDD SSD

15. 15
Disk IO - Alternative – In Memory DB Focus on Bottleneck
Memory (Heap) Engine
– had some limitations over myisam engine.

16. 16
Disk IO - Alternative – In Memory DB Focus on Bottleneck
– was not supporting many MySQL queries so was
discarded.

17. 17
Disk IO - Alternative – In Memory DB Focus on Bottleneck
database
– looked promising as it could support many MySQL
queries but still required couple of modifications to
our code.

18. 18
Disk IO - Alternative – In Memory DB Focus on Bottleneck
– looked most promising as it is wire compatible with
MySQL, which means without code changes I could
just point to memsql and be done with it.

19. 19
Disk IO - Alternative – RAM Drive Focus on Bottleneck
• SoftPerfect RAM Disk

20. Disk IO - Alternative – RAM Drive Focus on Bottleneck
• RAM Drive
21

21. Disk IO - Alternative – RAM Drive Focus on Bottleneck
• RAM Drive – did not work
22

22. Disk IO - Alternative – RAM Drive Focus on Bottleneck
• RAM Drive – did not work
23

23. CPU - Profiling Focus on Bottleneck
24

24. CPU – Profiling - Insights Focus on Bottleneck
Image source - https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQde6NeSrbuv40CIhKtFa1OuIQXf7F7esMJKp1Ie7zmH2t29l6Z
Scanning resource bundle files from jars.
25

25. CPU – Profiling - Insights Focus on Bottleneck
Image source - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uKMyLlB3F7o/Tqn_6yqdElI/AAAAAAAAB94/_1FMbHJFQBQ/s1600/weight-lift-cartoon.jpg
Loading Spring Application Context.
26

26. CPU – Profiling - Insights Focus on Bottleneck
Image source - http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/00000/7000/000/7029/7029.strip.gif
Avoiding unnecessary activities during build e.g. sending
out email.
27

27. CPU – Profiling - Insights Focus on Bottleneck
java.util.Calendar is horribly slow.
Total processing time took 20.72 minutes out of which Date
Arithmetic took 18.15 minutes which is about 87.6% of the
total processing time!
28

28. CPU – Profiling - Insights Focus on Bottleneck
java.util.Calendar is horribly slow. We switched to joda
date library and deprecated java.util.Date API.
Now Date Arithmetic takes 1.30 minutes; that’s a massive
saving of 93.77%
29

29. CPU - ANT 1.7 Junit task options. Focus on Bottleneck
30

30. Focus on the
Bottlenecks
Divide and
Conquer
Key Principles to Speed Up
Your Build Pipeline
Fail Fast
31

31. CPU - Running Tests Concurrently
Divide and Conquer
• Create parallel jobs.
32

32. CPU - Running Tests Concurrently
Divide and Conquer
• Distribute tasks across multiple slaves.
Image source - https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/download/attachments/2916393/logo.png?version=1&modificationDate=1302753947000
33

33. CPU - Running Tests Concurrently
Divide and Conquer
Image source - http://sharpreflections.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/multi_core_cpu.png
• Using @RunWith(ConcurrentJunitRunner.class).
– Curtesy - Mathieu Carbou
http://java.dzone.com/articles/concurrent-junit-tests
– Maven Surefire plugin has built in mechanism.
34

34. Focus on the
Bottlenecks
Divide and
Conquer
Key Principles to Speed Up
Your Build Pipeline
Fail Fast
35

35. Restructure The Build Pipeline
Fail Fast
Image Source - http://javapapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/failfast.jpg
• We want our builds to give us fast feedback. Hence it is very important to
prioritize our build tasks based on what is most likely to fail first.
• Push unnecessary stuff to a separate build – Things like JavaDocs can be
done nightly.
• Separate out fast and slow running tests.
36

36. Incremental Build vs. Clean Build
Fail Fast
• Local dev builds are incremental, instead of clean
builds, as it helps with faster feedback and fail fast.
37

37. Summary
• Focus on bottlenecks
– Avoid Disk IO - File operations, file based database operations.
– Use smaller datasets, robocopy, rsync
– Use in-memory databases, Ram Drives, SSDs.
– Perform CPU profiling, scan logs, to uncover the unknown.
– Verify build tool settings.
• Divide and Conquer
– Create smaller jobs that can run in parallel.
– Distribute jobs across multiple slaves.
– Write tests that can run in isolation and use ConcurrentJunitRunner to run them
in parallel.
• Fail Fast
– Restructure the build pipeline to uncover failures soon.
– Incremental Builds
38

38. Build Time Vs No Of Builds
Removed
Workspace
Duplication
Ant Junit Task – Fork
Once
Ram Disk
Caching
Resource
Caching
Spring Context
Avoided Email
Joda DateTime
Deprecated Date
API
Concurrent
Junit
Runner
39

39. Impact on life
Image source - http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTCvK8pY5qcp7Gl3ZBjxN1mc1HVHdiy1sQhByKeGgUk_5eJuUk7cA
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQpoUXqhEpdGl1cLzn4gQsng_GyxUmOKWxYUH6GfrjN_FRUYPxw-Q
40

40. Resources
• Jenkins – http://jenkins-ci.org/
• CI – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
• Mklink – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753194.aspx
• http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/junit.html
• http://java.dzone.com/articles/javalangoutofmemory-permgen
• SSD – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
• Hybrid disk – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive
• HSQL – http://hsqldb.org/
• H2 – http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html
• Memsql – http://www.memsql.com/
• MySQL is bazillion times faster than MemSQL
• Tmpfs – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmpfs
• http://blog.laptopmag.com/faster-than-an-ssd-how-to-turn-extra-memory-into-a-ram-disk
• RAM Disk Software Benchmarked
• http://jvmmonitor.org/
• http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/VMware-snapshot-size-and-other-causes-for-slow-
snapshots
• http://blogs.agilefaqs.com/2014/10/03/key-principles-for-reducing-continuous-integration-build-
time/
• http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2011/06/testing-at-speed-and-scale-of-google.html
• http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Development-at-Google
• http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html
41

41. Thank You!
Ashish Parkhi
IDeaS a SAS Company
ashish.parkhi@ideas.com
@AshishParkhi
http://ashishparkhi.com