Using the Apache Worker MPM vs Prefork on Java App Servers
April 4, 2012After suffering some major performance problems on an Apache system that’s fronting two different Java web apps (via mod_jk and mod_dispatcher) I’m looking into implementing the Worker MPM vs. the stock Prefork MPM that comes on Redhat systems. Following are my own notes on such, mostly as a personal placeholder. Hopefully some others have had experience with this.
Why move to Worker?
Per the Apache documentation on multiprocess modules:
The
workerMPM uses multiple child processes with many threads each. Each thread handles one connection at a time. Worker generally is a good choice for high-traffic servers because it has a smaller memory footprint than the prefork MPM.The
preforkMPM uses multiple child processes with one thread each. Each process handles one connection at a time. On many systems, prefork is comparable in speed to worker, but it uses more memory. Prefork’s threadless design has advantages over worker in some situations: it can be used with non-thread-safe third-party modules, and it is easier to debug on platforms with poor thread debugging support.
ref: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/perf-tuning.html – Section “Choosing an MPM”
I didn’t find many performance comparisons of prefork vs worker for folks using Apache in front of JBoss or other app servers (mostly just Ruby / PHP / Python) though all reported a higher average throughput (req/sec) with about half the memory utilization. Very curious how it will perform with our Java apps.
Changes Required on a Redhat (RHEL) System
It looks like the changes that would need to be made, configuration-wise, to implement Worker are as follows:
- Edit /etc/sysconfig/httpd and uncomment the line that reads “#HTTPD=/usr/sbin/httpd.worker“
- Worker requires a threadsafe version of mod_cgi called mod_cgid.so which is presently NOT included on our RHEL machines.
Anyone else have performance data or other experience with using the Worker MPM with Tomcat / JBoss / Jetty / Glassfish or with a JCR-type CMS?
Hi, we currently run a Java App serer behind Apache 2.2 using the standard prefork MPM and were curious about the same thing. Not sure what you are using mod_cgi for? We don’t use that. That said, did you make this move? What have you seen from it?
For us, there was some legacy stuff that required mod_cgi, but nothing that we’re currently using that requires it, to my knowledge.
But, as supporting, figuring out, reprogramming legacy garbage can sometimes be nearly impossible to schedule programmer time for, we ended up just sticking with prefork. We got decent enough performance with it without having to make the move.