Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Ehcache At 2 Billion...

What's Up With Ehcache 2.4


Ehcache is the de facto caching standard for Java that everyone uses (500,000+ production deployments; the majority of enterprise Java applications). Ehcache 2.4 is coming out soon and includes some capabilities that will make it even easier to use, more powerful, while still maintaining it's light weight.


The highlights include:

  • Search - Quickly find entries based on the criteria of your choosing. String matching, dates, ranges, sums, averages etc.
  • Fast local transactions - Improved performance of JTA and added a new non-jta transaction api for user level control
  • Even more capacity and performance


What I've been Testing


I've written before about BigMemory for Enterprise Ehcache and how it solves the problem of long, unpredictable GC pauses in Java. The first release of BigMemory was… well, big. In Enterprise Ehcache 2.4, BigMemory has gotten even bigger.


Using the Enterprise Ehcache Big Memory Pounder I was able to show that Enterprise Ehcache 2.4 now easily handles:


  • Entry Count: > 2 billion entries (I reached 2 billion on the hardware I had; with bigger hardware, I could probably have gone much higher).
  • Throughput: 1.3 million operations per second (symmetric read and write; CPU bound)
  • SLA/Predictability: No GC pauses and a predictable 38-42 ops/thread/millisecond throughout the test
  • Data Size: 1-350 GB in-memory cache (again, I was limited by the hardware I had; with more RAM, I could probably have gone much higher)
  • Flexible Efficient Entry Sizes: The cache can now dynamically handle very large (10-100 MB) and very small entries (just a few bytes) together more efficiently with no tuning (This test used small entries in order to fit as many entries as possible into the memory I had. I also ran tests with fewer entries in order to validate wide ranging sizes)
  • Tuning: All tests were done with NO TUNING. Right out of the box.


Here's the hardware and software stack I used for my testing:


Cisco UCS C250 Server

Dual Intel x5670 2.93 Ghz CPU

384 GB RAM ( 8 GB x 48)

Redhat 5.4 Enterprise Edition

Sun JDK 1.6_22


For this test, all of the data was in memory.


A Bit About Ehcache BigMemory


BigMemory is 100% pure Java and in process with a Java application. No magic or special JVMs (works on IBM and JRocket as well). The cache data is safely hidden away from Java GC and the pauses that occur with large heaps by instead storing data in a BigMemory off-heap store.


Embedding


BigMemory got it's start as a component in the Terracotta Server Array and as a result it is particularly useful for embedding. It's performance characteristics and no tuning approach improves "The Out Of The Box Experience" and saves money on support by removing tuning required by users and problems caused by GC pauses.


You may be thinking...


"I don't have 2 billion entries in my caches?"


That's ok. Ehcache is a lightweight core library (under 1MB) for caching that's ubiquitous and easy to use. When it's needed, Ehcache lets you scale up and out to billions of entries and terabytes of data. It does so at a manageable server density without changing code/architecture and without a bunch of tuning and learning. This protects not only your knowledge investment but your code investment.


More about BigMemory for Enterprise Ehcache:


http://terracotta.org/bigmemory

BigMemory Whitepaper

BigMemory Documentation


More about the 2010 Ehcache user survey:


Ehcache User Survey Whitepaper