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  • VOS.VirtConfigScale(Last) -- DAVWikiAdmin? , 2018-06-20 13:00:31 Edit WebDAV System Administrator 2018-06-20 13:00:31

    Configuring Virtuoso for Scale

    Background

    OpenLink Virtuoso is an engine of many features. It incorporates a database engine, Web server, RDF Quad Store, SPARQL processor, and the OpenLink Data Spaces (ODS) suite of applications for bookmarks, briefcase, wiki, webmail, etc.

    Naturally, each of these features has its dependencies and consequences for resource usage, be that in-memory or on disk.

    Here we present an overview of 3 possible configurations for Virtuoso.

    For comparison, we use Virtuoso Open-Source Edition (VOS) compiled on Debian GNU/Linux ("Testing" distribution).

    Structure of a Virtuoso Installation

    A typical Virtuoso installation comprises the following files/areas:

    Directory Description Files Sort in ascending order Size
    /usr/bin/ Vital operating binaries for server and command-line client virtuoso-t
    isql-v
    isql-vw
    9.2 MB
    /usr/share/virtuoso/vad/ ODS and other packages (cartridges/sponger, tutorial, demo, isparql, etc.) cartridges_dav.vad
    doc_dav.vad
    131 MB
    /usr/lib/ client drivers for ODBC & JDBC jdbc-2.0/virtjdbc*.jar
    virtodbc*.so
    12 MB
    /usr/lib/virtuoso/hosting/ Runtime loadable plugins for hosting and wiki markup wikiv.so
    mediawiki.so
    creolewiki.so
    3.6 MB
    /var/lib/virtuoso/vsp/ Splash-page for top-level web interface vsp/
    vsmx/
    images/
    frames/
    css/
    index.html
    etc.
    1.5 MB
    /usr/share/doc/virtuoso-opensource/ Misc README data for OS platform README.Debian
    README.CVS.gz
    etc.
    128 KB
    /usr/lib/jena/ Java class modules for using Virtuoso from Jena virt_jena.jar 56 KB
    /usr/lib/sesame/ Java class modules for using Virtuoso from Sesame virt_sesame2.jar 56 KB
    /var/lib/virtuoso/db Default database directory virtuoso.ini
    virtuoso.db
    12 MB

    Operation

    When the server is run against a given .ini file, it looks for a database at the name and location specified in that file. If none is found, the server will create an empty database with minimal system schema.

    If it finds an appropriate directory containing *.vad files (set in the virtuoso.ini file during 'make install'), Virtuoso will install the Conductor package by default.

    From there on, the Virtuoso administrator is expected to use the Conductor, <http://localhost:8890/conductor/>, to install further packages such as the ODS application suite, etc.

    After a checkpoint, a virtuoso.db file forms a portable unit encapsulating the entirety of a database instance, and can be moved between servers, so you can implement custom applications and schemas using the client interfaces (iSQL, ODBC, JDBC, etc.) and avoid installing any of the packages — even the Conductor — should you so desire.

    Configuration Options

    The following parameters in a virtuoso.ini file defining a Virtuoso instance control the resource consumption and performance:

    [Database]
    DatabaseFile virtuoso.db Filename of database file docs
    FileExtend 200 The amount of 8K-sized pages by which the database file automatically grows when the current file is not large enough. docs
    MaxCheckpointRemap 2000 Controls how many pages may be stored other than their logical page during checkpoints docs
    Striping 0 Enables the database file-striping mechanism docs
    [Parameters]
    ServerThreads
    a/k/a
    MaxClientConnections
    20 maximum concurrent number of SQL (ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLE DB, XMLA, and/or iSQL) connections the instance will handle; should typically be close to but not over the licensed number of concurrent connections minus the ServerThreads or MaxClientConnections setting in the [HttpServer] stanza docs
    CheckpointInterval 60 interval (minutes) at which Virtuoso will automatically make a database checkpoint docs
    NumberOfBuffers 2000 controls the amount of RAM (8K pages) used by Virtuoso to cache database files docs
    MaxDirtyBuffers 1200 The maximum number of modified buffers to store before writing
    MaxStaticCursorRows 5000 the maximum number of rows returned by a static cursor docs
    FreeTextBatchSize 100000 the amount of text data processed in one batch of the free-text index during batch reindexing docs
    [HTTPServer]
    ServerThreads
    a/k/a
    MaxClientConnections
    10 Maximum concurrent HTTP sessions the instance will handle; should be less than the the licensed number of concurrent connections docs
    MaxKeepAlives 10 A maximum number of HTTP sockets with KeepAlive connections docs
    KeepAliveTimeout 10 Timeout (in seconds) before an idle HTTP connection is closed docs
    HTTPThreadSize 280000 Stack-size of an HTTP thread for handling connection and processing docs
    [Striping]
    Segment1 100M, db-seg1-1.db, db-seg1-2.db Segment-specification for disk-striping docs
    Segment2 100M, db-seg2-1.db
    [SPARQL]
    ResultSetMaxRows 100000 Maximum number of rows in a SPARQL resultset docs
    [Plugins]
    LoadPath /usr/lib/virtuoso/hosting Directory in which to search for plugins docs
    Load1 plain, wikiv Main ODS-Wiki markup parser
    Load2 plain, mediawiki Auxiliary MediaWiki markup parser module for ODS-Wiki
    Load3 plain, creolewiki Auxiliary Creole wiki markup parser module for ODS-Wiki
    Load4 plain, im ImageMagick plugin used by ODS-Gallery
    Load5 plain, wbxml2 WbXML plugin used by the SyncML package
    Load6 plain, hslookup Required for some Sponger Cartridge operations
    Load7 Hosting, hosting_php.so Module for hosting PHP scripts within Virtuoso
    ;Load8 Hosting,hosting_perl.so Module for hosting Perl scripts within Virtuoso (unsupported at present)
    ;Load9 Hosting,hosting_python.so Module for hosting Python scripts within Virtuoso (unsupported at present)
    ;Load10 Hosting,hosting_ruby.so Module for hosting Ruby scripts within Virtuoso (unsupported at present)
    ;Load11 msdtc,msdtc_sample For Microsoft XA transaction support

    Notes:

    • Striping is an obvious way to control the amount of disk-space used; by default, striping is off (0), so the [Striping] section does not come into play.
    • The checkpoint-interval setting is simply the amount of time for which a temporary database will grow before being checkpointed into the main virtuoso.db file, so the choice is scenario-dependent. For a given incoming transaction rate, a short interval will give frequent smaller checkpoints, while specifying a longer interval will make fewer, slower, checkpoints.
    • The numbers of threads in the database engine as a whole and specifically allocated to the HTTP server will control performance, and each thread will cost a given amount of memory.
    • Naturally you can disable any or all unused plugins to further reduce the memory footprint; for example, if not running ODS-Wiki, you can remove the wikiv, mediawiki, and creolewiki plugins.

    We have a documentation page on tuning Virtuoso for RDF usage.

    Analysis

    Virtuoso provides the status() command, which may be executed through the SQL interface (e.g., isql-v(1)).

    The resultset from this command is documented here, but we specifically highlight consideration of the NumberOfBuffers parameter; status() output shows how many buffers the server is actually using, so you can tailor the allocated number accordingly.

    Default

    By default, the Debian virtuoso-opensource package enables all possible hosting options except Mono.

    package .deb 58 MB
    server binary, /usr/bin/virtuoso-t 8.3 MB
    default database with Conductor installed 37 MB
    Virtual memory allocation 354 MB
    Resident memory used 125 MB

    Embedded / Minimal

    The minimum that is required to run Virtuoso is the server executable (virtuoso-t for the Open Source Edition [VOS], or virtuoso-iodbc-t for the Enterprise Edition) compiled with as few options as possible, and the virtuoso.ini file. From there, the first time the server is run against the virtuoso.ini, it will create the empty database (virtuoso.db) with minimal schema.

    The most important parameter to consider when optimizing for size is NumberOfBuffers.

    By applying a few changes to virtuoso.ini, one can quite dramatically reduce the memory footprint:


    [Database]
    FileExtend         = 100                  ; down from 200
    MaxCheckpointRemap = 1000                 ; down from 2000
    
    [TempDatabase]
    MaxCheckpointRemap = 1000                 ; down from 2000
     
    [Parameters]
    ServerThreads      = 5                    ; down from 10
    # MaxClientConnections = 5                ; alias for ServerThreads
    CheckpointInterval = 10                   ; down from 60
    NumberOfBuffers    = 100                  ; down from 2000
    MaxDirtyBuffers    = 50                   ; down from 1200
    SchedulerInterval  = 5                    ; down from 10
    FreeTextBatchSize  = 1000                 ; down from 100000
    
    [HTTPServer]
    ServerThreads      = 2                    ; down from 5
    # MaxClientConnections = 2                ; alias for ServerThreads
    KeepAliveTimeout   = 5                    ; down from 10
    HTTPThreadSize     = 10000                ; down from 280000
     
    [Client]
    SQL_PREFETCH_ROWS  = 10                   ; down from 100
    SQL_PREFETCH_BYTES = 4096                 ; down from 16000
     
    [Replication]
    ServerEnable       = 0                    ; changed from 1
    
    [Zero Config]
    ;ServerName         = virtuoso (SAUCE)    ; commented-out
    
    [SPARQL]
    ResultSetMaxRows   = 10000                ; down from 100000
     
    [Plugins]
    ; ...                                        ; comment-out all plugins
    

    Result:

    default empty database with no Conductor installed 12 MB
    Virtual memory allocation 150 MB
    Resident memory used 70 MB

    Executing status() shows that 1000 buffers are allocated and only 270 are in use.

    Comparison with LAMP

    On the same machine, we installed Apache 2.x and MySQL 5.0 server using standard Debian GNU/Linux packages:


    bash$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server apache2
    

    This is not quite comparing like with like; Virtuoso includes not only HTTP and SQLinterfaces, but also a complete RDF Quad Store, SPARQL processor, free-text indexer, etc. However, out-of-the-box MySQL and Apache consumptions compare to the above-tuned Virtuoso as follows:

    Apache MySQL? Virtuoso
    package *.deb 45.6 MB - 58 MB
    server binary 0.3 MB 7 MB 8.3 MB
    default empty database - 21 MB 12 MB
    virtual memory allocation 229 MB 123 MB 350 MB
    resident memory usage 2.8 MB 15 MB 70 MB

    Enterprise-wide

    In larger installations, the NumberOfBuffers parameter should be increased, but there is no point in making the process so large it has to swap. Therefore we recommend about 60% of memory be allocated to buffers.

    As examples, we consider two instances: our own web-server, www.openlinksw.com (running on Debian GNU/Linux), and DBpedia.org (running on Sun Solaris).

    www DBpedia
    Virtual memory allocated 2734 MB 6257 MB
    Resident memory 662 MB (65%) 6216 MB (38%)
    Striping 0 0
    CheckpointInterval 120 60
    NumberOfBuffers 20000,
    18511 used
    100000,
    99964 used
    MaxDirtyBuffers 8000 40000
    MaxCheckpointRemap 16000 80000
    FreeTextBatchSize 100000 100000
    ServerThreads (a/k/a MaxClientConnections) 10 1000
    HTTP ServerThreads (a/k/a MaxClientConnections) 250 100
    HTTPThreadSize 280000 10000000
    Plugins only wikiv wikiv, imagemagick, wbxml2
    SPARQL ResultSetMaxRows 1000 1000

    References