Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
The Node.js Scalability Myth
Search
Felix Geisendörfer
May 02, 2012
Technology
3
410
The Node.js Scalability Myth
Presentation given on 27.04.2012 at Roots conference in Bergen, Norway.
Felix Geisendörfer
May 02, 2012
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Felix Geisendörfer
See All by Felix Geisendörfer
tus.io - Resumable File Uploads (Lightning Talk)
felixge
2
780
Programming flying robots with JavaScript
felixge
2
970
Programming flying robots with JavaScript
felixge
0
610
Programming an AR Drone Firmware with JS (de)
felixge
1
620
Faster than C?
felixge
1
1.2k
Flying robots over a 10.000 mile distance with JavaScript.
felixge
0
500
Faster than C?
felixge
1
650
The power of node.js (with quadcopters)
felixge
0
500
Faster than C?
felixge
0
430
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
20251014_Pythonを実務で徹底的に使いこなした話
ippei0923
0
210
Railsの話をしよう
yahonda
0
160
「れきちず」のこれまでとこれから - 誰にでもわかりやすい歴史地図を目指して / FOSS4G 2025 Japan
hjmkth
1
320
20251007: What happens when multi-agent systems become larger? (CyberAgent, Inc)
ornew
1
430
今この時代に技術とどう向き合うべきか
gree_tech
PRO
2
2.1k
Codexとも仲良く。CodeRabbit CLIの紹介
moongift
PRO
1
250
AWSでAgentic AIを開発するための前提知識の整理
nasuvitz
2
200
Claude Code Subagents 再入門 ~cc-sddの実装で学んだこと~
gotalab555
10
16k
Sansan Engineering Unit 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
1
3k
防災デジタル分野での官民共創の取り組み (2)DIT/CCとD-CERTについて
ditccsugii
0
310
AI時代こそ求められる設計力- AWSクラウドデザインパターン3選で信頼性と拡張性を高める-
kenichirokimura
3
350
React19.2のuseEffectEventを追う
maguroalternative
2
500
Featured
See All Featured
Being A Developer After 40
akosma
91
590k
KATA
mclloyd
PRO
32
15k
The Cult of Friendly URLs
andyhume
79
6.6k
Design and Strategy: How to Deal with People Who Don’t "Get" Design
morganepeng
132
19k
A Tale of Four Properties
chriscoyier
161
23k
Side Projects
sachag
455
43k
Fantastic passwords and where to find them - at NoRuKo
philnash
52
3.4k
XXLCSS - How to scale CSS and keep your sanity
sugarenia
248
1.3M
Documentation Writing (for coders)
carmenintech
75
5.1k
Understanding Cognitive Biases in Performance Measurement
bluesmoon
31
2.7k
Fireside Chat
paigeccino
40
3.7k
Cheating the UX When There Is Nothing More to Optimize - PixelPioneers
stephaniewalter
285
14k
Transcript
The Node.js Scalability Myth Felix Geisendörfer 27.04.2012 at Roots Conference
(Bergen, Norway)
(@)felixge(.de)
core contributor
transloadit.com (using node since v0.0.6)
History
Ryan Dahl starts the node project (first commit) Feb 16,
2009
Discovered node.js (v0.0.6) ~June, 2009
None
Core Contributor & Module Author node-mysql node-formidable + 30 other
modules
Isaac Schlueter starts the npm package manager (first commit) Sep
29, 2009
Ryan’s talk at JSConf.EU gets people excited about node Nov
7, 2009
(c) @substack Jan 30, 2012 Ryan appoints Isaac to lead
node.js
Topic of this Talk
I need to build an über-scalable web service. It will
be the next big thing!
Easy! I will use node.js and MongoDB!
Easy! I will use node.js and MongoDB!
Because node.js is “scalable”, right?
None
Audience?
Node.js?
Are you measuring app performance in production?
1000 req / s
100 req / s
10 req / s
10 requests / per second = 864000 requests / day
10 req / s
The End?
I REALLY need to build an über-scalable web service!!11!1
Scalability
(c) @substack
The Node.js Scalability Myth • Threads don’t scale • Event
loops do
The Node.js Scalability Myth • Threads don’t scale • Event
loops do (Probably) not true in 2012 (Very likely) not relevant
More relevant • Understanding your tools • Using the right
tool for the job
Node’s Concurrency Model
Node’s Concurrency Model 1 var http = require('http'); 2 3
http.createServer(function(req, res) { 4 res.end('Hello World'); 5 }).listen(8080); server.js
Node’s Concurrency Model $ node server.js
Node’s Concurrency Model • Node loads server.js from disk ->
v8 compiles & executes • listen() allocates and binds a file descriptor • Event Loops starts running
Node’s Concurrency Model 1 while (true) { 2 int r
= select(nfds, readfds, writefds, errorfds, 0); 3 if (r === 0) { 4 continue; 5 } 6 7 // Figure out which fds had activity, accept() on server fds, read() on // connection fds, write() queued writes 8 } Abstracted by libuv Different on Windows
Node’s Concurrency Model • Cooperative multitasking • Low memory usage
• Fast / efficient • Simple (compared to threads)
Vertical Scalability
Adding more resources to a single node
Vertical Scalability • CPU • GPUs • Memory • Disk
• Network
CPU
CPU (v8) • V8 compiles JS to Assembly • Just-in-time
compilation (JIT) • Does pretty well in those language benchmarks
Computers of the future will have hundreds of cores!
CPU • Node is single threaded (runs on a single
CPU) • No shared memory
But ...
Does your problem require shared memory?
If yes: Don’t use node
And: Good Luck
If no: child_process.fork()
Redis / ZeroMQ are your friends
GPUs
GPUs • No support in node itself • node-cuda addon
by Kashif Rasul
Memory
Memory • No hard memory limit on 64 bit (since
node-0.6 / v8-3.7) • JS is a garbage collected language (avoid huge heaps) • Buffers do not count towards heap
Network
Network • Node’s concurrency model is optimized for networking •
Good at fully saturating available network resources
Disk
Disk • Done in thread pool • Unfortunately along with
DNS at this point • Throughput ok, but not ideal yet • sendfile() not working yet
Does node scale vertically?
Yeah, good enough
Horizontal Scalability
Adding more nodes to a system
Bad News
Node.js has no horizontal scaling features
Even worse
This s#@t is really hard
Problems • De-coupling / encapsulation • CAP Theorem • System
Automation
...
Good Luck
One tip
Monitor & Measure! • Collect: node-measured, statsd, ... • Analyze:
Graphite, Librato Metrics, ... • Debug
So if node doesn’t have magic scaling, what is it
good for?
<Live Coding>
tl;dr • Know your requirements • There are no silver
bullets
Questions? Slides will be available at felixge.de
Thanks
Feedback