Ubuntu Community · Building an internal platform with Ubuntu from scratch: architecture and decision log

529
Ubr/ubuntu·posted by zhu_zong·5 minutes agoTutorialLocked

Building an internal platform with Ubuntu from scratch: architecture and decision log

Short version: Ubuntu 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.

We also fixed monitoring along the way: replaced average-based alerts with percentiles and split them per endpoint. False alerts dropped by about seventy percent and the on-call rotation visibly cheered up.

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 Ubuntu itself but our upstream connection reuse — the load test traffic was too clean and hid the long-tail requests.

On trade-offs, my view is this: if nobody on the team owns this area long-term, do not introduce a second mechanism. With two coexistence you first have to work out which one is even in play when things break, and that costs far more than the performance you saved.

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.

243 comments

243 comments

· first 120 loaded
M
Rrase·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.

520
Sslow_query·2 days ago

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

514
Hhuang_ke·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.

479
Mmike_xu·1 hour 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.

443
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

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

422
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.

412
Bbob_chen·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.

356
RraseMod·2 days ago

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

354
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.

341
Sslow_query·12 minutes 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.

324
Wwinter·2 hours ago

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

9
Mmike_xu·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.

37
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.

461
Wwinter·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.

375
Lli_ming·1 hour 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.

1
Sslow_query·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.

233
Mmike_xu·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.

317
Aalice_dev·12 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.

308
Sswoole_lee·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.

279
Cchen_dev·28 minutes ago

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

447
Nnikic·1 hour ago

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

353
Bbob_chen·28 minutes 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.

70
Lli_ming·yesterdayedited

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

373
Rran_bo·2 days ago

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

212
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

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

353
Sslow_query·5 hours ago

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

276
Bbob_chenOP·2 days ago

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

101
Hhuang_keOP·2 days ago

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

411
Sslow_query·3 minutes ago

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

3
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

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

1
Wwinter·28 minutes 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.

14
Cchen_dev·5 hours 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.

239
Kkite·2 days ago

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

191
Kkernel_panic·2 hours ago

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

242
Ttang_hao·12 minutes ago

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

224
Lli_ming·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.

213
WwinterOP·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.

48
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

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

199
Wwinter·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.

198
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

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

196
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

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

288
Oops_wang·2 days agoedited

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

193
Sslow_query·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.

220
Rrase·12 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.

387
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

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

159
Zzhou_yi·yesterdayedited

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.

372
Lli_ming·2 hours 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.

177
Bbob_chen·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.

171
Nnikic·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.

186
Rrase·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.

149
Kkite·just now

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

86
LlinlinOP·1 hour ago

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

46
Lli_ming·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.

518
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

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

394
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

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

275
Cchen_devMod·2 days agoLevel 6

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

373
Lli_mingOP·2 days agoLevel 6

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

2
Sslow_query·2 days ago

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

24
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

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

321
Cchen_dev·5 hours ago

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

230
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.

183
Rran_bo·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.

58
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

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

389
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

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

239
Kkernel_panic·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.

172
Kkernel_panic·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.

132
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

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

78
Lli_ming·2 days agoLevel 6

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.

375
Rrase·yesterday

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

77
Zzhou_yi·2 days agoLevel 6

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

329
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

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

1
Hhuang_ke·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.

1
Wwinter·3 minutes agoedited

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

19
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.

287
Lli_mingOP·2 days ago

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

4
Ttang_hao·2 days agoeditedLevel 6

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.

286
Bbob_chen·1 hour agoLevel 6

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

1
Llinlin·28 minutes ago

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

1
Rran_boOP·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.

275
Kkernel_panic·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.

67
Oops_wangOP·2 hours 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.

5
Hhuang_ke·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.

157
Rrase·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.

98
Oops_wang·2 days agoLevel 6

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.

389
Llinlin·2 days agoedited

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

1
Kkernel_panic·2 days agoeditedLevel 6

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

216
Ttang_hao·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.

55
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

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

2
Oops_wang·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.

5
Kkite·yesterday

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

83
Llinlin·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.

78
Mmike_xu·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.

59
Sswoole_lee·just now

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.

58
Sslow_query·2 days agoedited

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

46
Bbob_chen·3 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.

41
Rrase·2 hours ago

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

29
Cchen_dev·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.

21
Zzhou_yi·yesterdayedited

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

19
Ttang_hao·just now

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.

17
KkiteOP·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.

502
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.

198
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

One counter-example: below Ubuntu 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
Lli_ming·2 days agoedited

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

16
Wwinter·2 days ago

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

12
Nnikic·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.

330
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.

1
Kkernel_panic·yesterdayedited

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

243
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

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

10
KkiteMod·2 days ago

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

7
Rran_bo·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.

3
Oops_wang·28 minutes ago

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

135
Oops_wang·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.

23
Llinlin·28 minutes ago

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

1
Sslow_query·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.

60
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

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

1
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.

127
Ddev_zhou·2 days 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.

70
Nnikic·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_xu·2 days ago

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

214
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

One counter-example: below Ubuntu 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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