Hello there,

I am working on a PHP application. This is not a scientific investigation, but when running the application and retrieving information from the Nirvanix network I observe quite some slow response times. On average it takes about 5 seconds for completing a simple session authentication plus a ListFolder for a 3 files folder.

I have the same issue when using the Nirvanix Fily System application for PHP.

Just wondering if anyone is having the same issue...

 ciao Luca

 PS I am in Europe
 

The ListFolder call tends to be one of the heavier calls into our system.  The PHP File System Manager however is doing quite a few things when it does a page render.  You will see it call Login, ListFolder, parse that ListFolder and do some Array munging and then a call to GetDownloadLinks passing in the Array of files to generate a temporary download link.  To optimize this you could do a link to a page that will generate the download link rather than doing it on every single file being listed.

Let me know if this helps,
     Barry R.

Thanks Barry,

spot on, getting the OptimalURL for each file slows down the whole thing...

thanks for your help

ciao Luca

 

Luca,

I'm also very concerned about the performance of the web service. Did you time the call and did it take 5 seconds? Ord did the page take 5 seconds to load?

Edward
 

I want to warn that the PHP File manager is intended to show HOW to use the code and is not optimized for performance.  It is a simple example that focuses on teaching rather than a full implementation. Individually all of our calls should be sub second.  Please let us know if this is ever not the case.  There can be times where calls may take longer but this would be operations on large numbers of files.  In my own testing the load of a page containing 500 items (Maximum for this page due to paging) returns in about 6 seconds but that includes the following calls:

• Login - Approx 60 milliseconds round trip.
  
• List Folder - The total items on the folder I returned was 7,000 items with 4000 being folders. with paging returning the first 500 items.  This takes about 330 milliseconds.
• Some inefficient array code to form the query to GetDownloadLinks (Now Obsolete you should use GetOptimalURLs)  This call takes about 1.8 seconds and is mostly transmission of the data and PHP forming the call.
• The browse.php then renders the page which it has to take the results and merge them with the original listfolder xml.  This is just the XML in PHP and does not include the actual rest calls.  This takes about 3.6 seconds.
•  Finally the call the Logout which returns in approximately 60 milliseconds.

 I would like to encourage you to try this on your own to get a feel for the performance.  I assure you the inefficiency is in the example and not a product of the web services themselves.  Such is the way of sample code optimization often results in compact code that is harder to understand which is not what the goal of this reference application.

Please let me know at any time if you experience performance problems.  We spend a considerable portion of our time thinking of how to optimize calls and make the system perform well in almost any situation.

Regards,
   Barry R.

Hi Edward,

 I see you live in NL also :-)

Creating the download URLs slows down the application and as Barry pointed out, the file system application is not optimised for performances.

For my own application I now create a link for each file that will then call the download URL. That helps quite a bit.

 For optimising I have tried to reduce as much as possible the amount of calls to the web service in order to improve also the performances of my little server... :-)

 hope it helps

 ciao

Luca

 

Luca,

I'm currently living in Utrecht...I thought you were from Italy (Luca & ciao??) 

Thanks for the 'linking' tip, it will surely help, as you already experienced.

Barry, thanks for the breakdown. I'm going to start some trials today using the application example Nirvanix provides.

Luca and Barry, if you have any more tips that would keep me or anyone else from pulling their hairs out while setting this thing up, be my guest, I'm all ears.

Edward
 

 Please write any issues here or if you need some one on one debugging assistance I am usually available via the Live chat.  If not there are a number of people available to help as well.  I'm eager to hear where the applications are hard to use / understand since making them clear will help everyone as well.

Good luck,
    Barry R.

I am experiencing very slow response times today... I am not saying it's due to Nirvanix, but the case prompted the question.

How can I easily check if the problem is actually due to the Nirvanix? or prove that it isn't?

I just want to make sure that if the issue is with my hosting provider I can provide some proof before I get bounced left and right :-)

Ideally I can get my hands on a perfomance-debugging script ;-)

thanks in advance 

ciao Luca

 I would like you to try doing some traceroutes to see if its the network.  You can email the results of the traceroutes to customersupport@nirvanix.com and we can help you analyze your network performance.

To perform a traceroute in windows click start | Run (on Vista its the command box at the base of the start window) then enter: cmd.exe

Once the command window has opened type "tracert nodeX.nirvanix.com"  replace NodeX with the node you are having issues with Or replace with services to test the main web services servers.

When the results are displayed right click on the window and select "Mark" and then select all of the displayed output and press Enter.

This will copy the results into your copy buffer where you can open an email and paste the results.

Regards,
    Barry R. 

I had the same kind of problems on saturday. It was impossible for me to access files and upload on node1. I've tested if it was an error on my side but the php file manager had the same problem. Some files were still accessible but it was very slow and most of it were inaccessible. Everything was back the day after.

 We were running in a degraded state for parts of saturday and sunday.  The problems have been be corrected now and all servers are running at normal capacity and speed.

Please let me know if this is not the case.

Regards,
    Barry R.