page 1 architecting, building and deploying successful commercial websites gist.com case study paul...

Architecting, Building and Deploying Successful Commercial Websites

Gist.com case study

Paul Finster – Chief Technology OfficerDave Ekhaus - Director, Platform Engineering

NYUFeb 29, 2000

Architecting, Building and DeployingArchitecting, Building and Deploying

Agenda Part I – Hardware Configurations

Server Farms Databases Paradigms

Part II – Software Technology Architectural elements

Relational database Java Server Pages (JSP) Java Beans

Testing & Deploying Part III - Questions & Answers

Part IPart I

Hardware Configurations

The Internet is here!The Internet is here! Informational websites are big today!

Yahoo! Snap. MarketWatch Gist.com

Even 1% of Yahoo! traffic is a lot of traffic Gist.com runs tv.yahoo.com on 6 servers

Like e-Commerce, informational websites are mission critical applications for those business and individuals that rely on it

These are enterprise class applications! Denial of Service attacks proved popular need

What is the Commercial Website landscape?What is the Commercial Website landscape?

The scale and dynamic nature of the web changes everything

Possibly 100’s of thousands of hits per day Dynamic customized content Huge peaks during certain times of day

Common platforms in use XML, WAP, HTTP XSL, CSS

Custom Applications TV Listings – built in-house

Generic Content Applications Newsfeeds

What is the right Hardware Architecture?What is the right Hardware Architecture?

Two major hardware philosophies/paradigms Many cheap redundant machines

Example: Yahoo.com 100’s of Intel BSD machines with specially

modify Apache web server Content stored in huge memory caches

Cost Estimate: $2,000 per server Few expensive highly-reliable machines

Example: IWON.com 12 High-end Sun Solaris web server Content stored in 2 parallel Oracle

databases running on Sun E10000 servers Cost Estimate: $20,000-$100,000 per server

Common Hardware RequirementsCommon Hardware Requirements

Co-location at data centers Exodus GlobalCenter Level3 AboveNet

Hardware Load Balancing: Cisco,F5, Radware Application level switches Hi-speed virtual networks Firewalls Network Monitoring software Enterprise Storage devices

Typical N-tier Hardware ArchitectureTypical N-tier Hardware Architecture

LegacyApplications

(if any)

Web Server

Database Server

Web Server Web Server Web Server Web Server

Database Server

EnterpriseStorage

Load BalancerFirewall

Gist’s Hardware ArchitectureGist’s Hardware Architecture

ISAPI DLL

NT Web Server

SQL Server 7.0Database Server

NT Web Server NT Web Server NT Web Server NT Web Server

SQL Server 7.0 Database Server

EnterpriseStorage

EMC

RadWare: WSD Load BalancerCisco PIX Firewall

Part I IPart I I

Software Technology

Java BeansScripting Tool: JSPGist

DevTools

Templates

Other ApplicationsTV ListingsGRID

WebsiteProductio

n Bulletin Boards Process Step Custom App

DataSources

NT Solaris IIS NSAPISQL Server& Informix

Oracle & Sybase

Cookie-based Server-side Sessions

Services &

APIs

System Independence

JSP Adapter

SQLAbstraction

Content Interface

OSDrivers

WebDrivers

JDBCDrivers

Gist’s Application Framework

Filesystem

ArticleDrivers

Java Code SamplesJava Code Samples<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><%@ page import="gist.external.gistcom.*,gist.*" %><jsp:useBean id="adf" scope="session" class="gist.internal.publishing.ADFObject"></jsp:useBean><%

UserObject u = UserObject.getUser (request,response); if (u.isDefault()){

response.sendRedirect ("/tv/login.jsp?nexturl=/tv/channels.jsp");return;

}String nexturl = request.getParameter("nexturl");if ( nexturl == null )

nexturl = "/tv/channels.jsp";%><%@ include file="/tv/templates/global.jsp" %>..Channel channelsDisplay [] = u.getSortedChannels (); String c_name = null ;for(int i = 0; i < channelsDisplay.length; i++){

if (channelsDisplay[i].isVisible() ) {

chanchecked = " CHECKED ";}else{

chanchecked = "";}

}

TechnologyTechnology

Architecting

Architecture RequirementsArchitecture Requirements

Scalability - performance, growth

Security - authentication, access control, privacy

Management - monitoring, dynamic configuration

Availability - fault tolerance

Stability - data integrity

Portability - OS, DB, WS independence

Extensibility - ability to adapt to changes in technology

Integration - integration of RDBMS and legacy systems

ScalabilityScalability 1000’s of “transactions” per minute

Sub-second response time Database connection pooling

Performance Concurrency – multithreading

Inherent support in Java

Growth Load balancing

Want to be able to “Throw” hardware at the problem

SecuritySecurity Authentication

Identifying the user via Cookies Architecture supports “cookie-less” mode with

URL re-writing of session parameters Access Control

What is the user permitted to do? Ordering PPV over the web; credit card numbers Attributes of our UserObject

Privacy (if required) Encryption - RC4, MD5 SSL URL rewriting

ManagementManagement Monitoring

Consistent logging and reporting of system activity One way: Extensive use of site-wide email

diagnostics Enterprise Integration – SNMP

Integration with load balancer Rebooting crashed servers (NT primarily)

Automated Manual (if all else fails)

Dynamic Configuration Adding/Removing new features on-the-fly Incremental updating of site content Incremental Database updates

AvailabilityAvailability 100% Availability

24x7x365 Operations Fault Tolerance

Hardware solutions Backup servers

Software solutions Dynamic database connections

StabilityStability Data Integrity

Support for “transactions” Redundant databases

Protection Isolation of subsystems and application execution

Java sandbox and exception handling Resource Recovery

Database Connectivity System Resources – memory

Java memory garbage collection

PortabilityPortability OS independence

NT Various flavors of UNIX LINUX

DB independence SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle, Informix

WS independence Netscape Enterprise Server, Microsoft IIS, Apache

ExtensibilityExtensibility Adapt to Changes in Business

How well does the architecture allow you to change the content or navigation of your commercial website?

Does the architecture support your current legacy systems?

Does the architecture provide for Content and/or Editorial changes?

Adapt to Changes in Technology How quickly can you leverage new standards?

XML WAP WDL

IntegrationIntegration Partner Advertising

Co-branded websites with differing ad serving ratios

Statistical Processing/Analysis MarketWave statistics

Navigation controls Partner cookies versus Gist.com cookies URL links back and forth between partners

Billing Partners Measuring Page views

What we’ve learnedWhat we’ve learned Prototype ASAP in order to discover

architectural dependencies Database statements

Be specific in your SQL Test more: Then test again! Keep objects as light as possible Never store moving data

Member Age vs. Brithdate Channels Change: Excluded channels

User Migration is HARD! Incremental vs. batch

Get training


Building

DevelopmentDevelopment Prototypes

Work closely with partners to determine functionality

Prototype Deep, not Wide Process

Small Development Teams (2-4 people) Include: Designers, Technical producers

Develop Components in Parallel Frequent Releases

3-6 day development cycles Scoping - Controlled Feature Set


Testing & Deploying

TestingTesting Quality

Unit Test - thread safety, code coverage Smoke Test - quick validation BVT - build validation test Full Functional Test Regression Test - consistent functionality Load Test - high availability Benchmark - by Platform Installation Test - by Platform

Automated Tools Repeatability

Consistent and Isolated Environment

Metrics Measure real world scenarios Load test specific subsystems

DeployingDeploying Capacity Planning - sizing exercise Beta Testing - early, well defined subset Focus Groups – early feedback Performance - simulating real world load Benchmarking - critical areas to measure Maintenance - staging environment,

versioning

Capacity PlanningCapacity Planning Sizing Exercise

What workloads run at each node? What hardware is needed to maintain service due

to workload growth? How many more users can each existing server

support? How will server utilization be impacted if the

number of transactions increase by n%? What are those “transactions” doing?

PerformancePerformance Simulating Real World Load

This is a Challenge Analyze existing system (web server logs) Forecast activity by looking at competitors Number of registered users

“Transactions” per minute Database access requirements Legacy connection requirements Networking requirements

Principles of Algorithms really matter

Performance (continued)Performance (continued) Scalability and Fail-over are required for

24x7x365 availability

Determine appropriate hardware architecture- maximum acceptable response time, target server CPU utilization at 80% (leave room for growth)

Determine # and type of transactions- reading web pages, executing a query, updating a database, searching, sorting

Benchmarking “Transactions”Benchmarking “Transactions”

Home Page Many hits, as light as possible

Grid Page Many hits, as fast as possible

Article Pages Remove archive links

Soaps Updates Pages Pre-compile pages if possible

User Registration Transactions As clear as possible

The answer to many problems is “caching”!

MaintenanceMaintenance Staging Environment

Mirrored hardware/software Separate Database Migration strategy

Versioning Component Version Control Change Management

Part I I IPart I I I

Questions & Answers

Architecting, Building and Deploying Successful Commercial Websites

Paul Finster – Chief Technology [email protected]

Dave Ekhaus - Director, Platform [email protected]

NYUFeb 29, 2000

page 1 architecting, building and deploying successful commercial websites gist.com case study paul...

Documents

u marketwatch u

u yahoo u snap

agenda u

lot of traffic u

http u xsl

use u xml

apache web server u

solaris web server u