Building an high performance node.js application with cluster and node-webworker

Question

I'm not a node.js master, so I'd like to have more points of view about this.

I'm creating an HTTP node.js web server that must handle not only lots of concurrent connections but also long running jobs. By default node.js runs on one process, and if there's a piece of code that takes a long time to execute any subsequent connection must wait until the code ends what it's doing on the previous connection.

For example:

var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {

  doSomething(); // This takes a long time to execute

  // Return a response
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");

So I was thinking to run all the long running jobs in separate threads using the node-webworker library:

var http = require('http');
var sys = require('sys');
var Worker = require('webworker');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {

  var w = new Worker('doSomething.js'); // This takes a long time to execute

  // Return a response
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");

And to make the whole thing more performant, I thought to also use cluster to create a new node process for each CPU core.

In this way I expect to balance the client connections through different processes with cluster (let's say 4 node processes if I run it on a quad-core), and then execute the long running job on separate threads with node-webworker.

Is there something wrong with this configuration?

Matthew C Rice · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-23 23:00:52Z

I see that this post is a few months old, but I wanted to provide a comment to this in the event that someone comes along.

"By default node.js runs on one process, and if there's a piece of code that takes a long time to execute any subsequent connection must wait until the code ends what it's doing on the previous connection."

^-- This is not entirely true. If doSomething(); is required to complete before you send back the response, then yes, but if it isn't, you can make use of the Asynchronous functionality available to you in the core of Node.js, and return immediately, while this item processes in the background.

A quick example of what I'm explaining can be seen by adding the following code in your server:

setTimeout(function(){
    console.log("Done with 5 second item");
}, 5000);

If you hit the server a few times, you will get an immediate response on the client side, and eventually see the console fill with the messages seconds after the response was sent.

Ozzz · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-19 23:35:51Z

1

Why don't you just copy and paste your code into a file and run it over JXcore like

$ jx mt-keep:4 mysourcefile.js

and see how it performs. If you need a real multithreading without leaving the safety of single threading try JX. its 100% node.JS 0.12+ compatible. You can spawn the threads and run a whole node.js app inside each of them separately.

answered Feb 19, 2014 at 23:35

Ozzz

3001 silver badge7 bronze badges

Comments

Rob Tweed · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-09 06:19:35Z

0

You might want to check out Q-Oper8 instead as it should provide a more flexible architecture for this kind of thing. Full info at:

https://github.com/robtweed/Q-Oper8

answered Sep 9, 2011 at 6:19

Rob Tweed

791 bronze badge

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Building an high performance node.js application with cluster and node-webworker

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related