App Design · News · Building an internal platform with app-design-news from scratch: architecture and decision log

610
ADr/app-design-news·posted by bob_chen·3 days agoExperience

Building an internal platform with app-design-news from scratch: architecture and decision log

Short version: app-design-news needs almost no tuning at small and medium scale — the point where it starts to hurt is much further out than most people assume. Full measurements below.

The first thing was to collapse the variables. We were changing config and upgrading the version at the same time, and afterwards nobody could say which change caused what. We rolled back to moving one variable at a time, re-ran three times, and only then did the curve settle. Tedious, but not skippable.

-- The query that broke: a full scan over 20M rows.
-- A composite index took P99 from 1.8s down to 42ms.
SELECT id, title, created_at
  FROM posts
 WHERE community_id = ?
   AND status = 1
 ORDER BY score DESC
 LIMIT 20;

Worth noting: the official docs do cover this, just in a very inconspicuous spot. I only found it reading the source comments, where the author explains the reasoning — roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

What genuinely surprised me was the tail. The average looked great while P99 jumped by an order of magnitude past some threshold. The cause was not app-design-news itself but our upstream connection reuse — the load test traffic was too clean and hid the long-tail requests.

176 comments

176 comments

· first 120 loaded
M
Llinlin·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

519
Ttang_hao·2 days agoedited

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

461
RraseOP·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

436
Aalice_dev·yesterday

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

29
Ddev_zhouMod·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

4
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

483
Kkite·1 hour ago

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

331
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

467
Bbob_chenMod·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

6
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

364
Zzhu_zongOP·2 days ago

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

357
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

11
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

415
Kkernel_panicMod·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

380
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

347
Ddev_zhou·yesterday

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

306
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

248
Oops_wang·5 hours ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

210
Oops_wang·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

201
Lli_ming·2 days ago

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

339
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

198
Rran_bo·2 days agoedited

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

420
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

2
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

177
Oops_wang·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

145
Aalice_dev·1 hour ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

134
Nnikic·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

134
Rran_boOP·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

59
Lli_ming·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

132
Sslow_query·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

125
Nnikic·1 hour ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

118
LlinlinOP·2 days ago

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

16
Zzhu_zong·28 minutes ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

117
Sslow_queryOPMod·28 minutes ago

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

56
LlinlinOPMod·3 minutes ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

46
Wwinter·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

101
Kkite·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

100
Zzhou_yi·1 hour ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

97
Zzhou_yiOP·2 days agoedited

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

23
Sswoole_lee·1 hour ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

83
Lli_ming·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

82
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

77
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

77
Aalice_devOP·2 days ago

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

472
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

10
Lli_ming·2 days ago

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

67
Mmike_xu·just now

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

490
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

62
Wwinter·2 hours ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

59
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

479
Bbob_chen·just now

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

1
Mmike_xu·3 minutes ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

412
Nnikic·2 days ago

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

387
Zzhu_zong·28 minutes ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

172
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

291
Llinlin·2 days agoLevel 6

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

99
Kkernel_panic·2 days agoLevel 6

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

68
Aalice_dev·2 days agoedited

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

101
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

22
Kkite·2 days ago

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

45
Sslow_query·2 days agoedited

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

43
Zzhou_yiOP·2 days agoedited

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

223
Lli_ming·2 hours ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

34
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

26
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

25
Aalice_dev·12 minutes ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

4
Lli_ming·2 days ago

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

239
Wwinter·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

22
Kkite·5 hours ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

21
Kkite·5 hours agoedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

20
Mmike_xu·2 hours agoedited

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

446
Kkite·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

310
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

406
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

2
Mmike_xuOP·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

190
Zzhu_zong·12 minutes agoedited

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

20
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

19
Aalice_dev·5 hours ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

18
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

18
Cchen_devMod·2 days ago

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

182
Nnikic·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

15
Ddev_zhou·5 hours ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

25
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

13
Lli_ming·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

11
Llinlin·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

10
Nnikic·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

7
Kkite·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

10
Sswoole_leeMod·3 minutes ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

6
Ttang_haoMod·yesterday

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

274
Zzhou_yiMod·1 hour ago

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

373
Oops_wang·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

72
KkiteOP·12 minutes ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

455
Mmike_xu·5 hours ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

30
Zzhou_yiOPMod·3 minutes ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

170
Ddev_zhou·just now

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

11
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

184
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

511
Ttang_hao·2 days agoLevel 6

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

35
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

504
Zzhou_yi·2 days agoLevel 6

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

294
KkiteOP·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

30
Llinlin·2 days agoLevel 6

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

443
Sslow_query·2 days agoLevel 6

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

159
Aalice_dev·28 minutes ago

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

167
Kkite·28 minutes ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

87
Kkite·2 days agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

18
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

This is not a app-design-news problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

1
Rrase·1 hour ago

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

1
WwinterOP·1 hour ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

3
Kkernel_panic·28 minutes agoedited

I just read the app-design-news source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

7
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

102
Wwinter·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

6
Aalice_devOP·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

75
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

166
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

5
Wwinter·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

3
Zzhu_zong·12 minutes ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

2
Kkernel_panicOP·5 hours ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

425
Wwinter·5 hours ago

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

2
Aalice_devMod·just now

One counter-example: below app-design-news 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

1

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