Nfs – Advantages and disadvantages to using NFS with Apache

apache-2.2nfs

I am coming into an environment where they are using NFS to access PHP scripts and static web content that is stored on a server that is on the same network as the front end Apache server. Only one front end Apache server is accessing these files over NFS so it isn't a situation where they are load balancing the front end Apache boxes.

We are in the process of virtualizing the Apache and NFS servers. We are in disagreement over if it makes sense to still be using NFS in this situation or just having all the web content stored locally on the same machine as the web server. What do you all think?

Thanks for any input.

Best Answer

You only need NFS if you need multiple-client access at a filesystem level. Since you don't need multiple-client access, I really wouldn't recommend NFS as the best choice.

Even if you do have multiple Apache servers, I still wouldn't recommend using NFS as the means of sharing your code between machines. Automated deployment tools can easily distribute code to as many locations as you like near-simultaneously. NFS might be the best choice for user-provided assets, but that's still not as cut-and-dried as it might initially appear (my opinions on this topic are available in this other answer).

Related Solutions

Nfs – What are “good” speeds for iSCSI and NFS over 1GB ethernet

We've pushed a Sun X4100 writing over bonded GigE and iSCSI to an Sun X4500 to 280MB/s.

There's a lot that can be done to tune the TCP stack on Solaris to help things out, this my my stock tuning config. (take from some collection of Sun whitepapers):

$ cat /etc/rc3.d/S99ndd
#!/bin/bash

NDD=/usr/sbin/ndd

$NDD -set /dev/tcp tcp_xmit_hiwat 1048576
$NDD -set /dev/tcp tcp_recv_hiwat 8388608
$NDD -set /dev/tcp tcp_max_buf 8388608
$NDD -set /dev/udp udp_xmit_hiwat 1048576
$NDD -set /dev/udp udp_recv_hiwat 8388608
$NDD -set /dev/udp udp_max_buf 8388608
$NDD -set /dev/tcp tcp_conn_req_max_q 65536
$NDD -set /dev/tcp tcp_conn_req_max_q0 65536
$NDD -set /dev/tcp tcp_fin_wait_2_flush_interval 67500

Also, worth looking into on your OpenSolaris machine is changing the fsflush interval, the interrupt adjustment "magic" and disabling soft rings. Append the following to /etc/system (reboot required):

* "fsflush" tuning
set tune_t_fsflushr = 5
set autoup = 300
* Disable the Automatic Interrupt Adjustment
set dld:dld_opt = 2
* Disable "soft rings"
set ip:ip_squeue_fanout = 0
set ip:ip_soft_rings_cnt = 0

Worth mentioning, I do this on Solaris 10 -- not OpenSolaris -- but I think the tunables should work for you just the same.

I'm a big fan of Filebench for playing around with tuning options and doing throughput tests.

The (recently renamed) OpenSolaris 2009.06 release looks to be very exciting in the world of iSCSI and ZFS.

Hope this helps some!

Web-server – Why use Apache in front of another web server

Web application servers are good at hosting their application (Ruby, Java, etc), but not as good as Apache at hosting static files, or providing load balancing/failover (mod_proxy), security/filtering (mod_security), rewriting (mod_rewrite) etc. Therefore it's quite common to use Apache as the front end, possibly serving all the static content, and then proxying requests to the application server (mongrel, tomcat, etc).

Apache is a well-audited piece of code that has "been around the block" somewhat more than the newer servers, so it makes sense to have it as the server that faces the untrusted Internet. It also means you can put your application servers inside your network, and your Apache servers in your DMZ.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Nfs – What are “good” speeds for iSCSI and NFS over 1GB ethernet

Web-server – Why use Apache in front of another web server

Related Topic