trinity-devel@lists.pearsoncomputing.net

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Month: July 2018

Re: [trinity-devel] Mirrors and PSB

From: Slávek Banko <slavek.banko@...>
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2018 01:55:13 +0200
On Sunday 22 of July 2018 00:12:21 Mike Bird wrote:
> Hi Slavek,
>
> Thank you for the comprehensive response.  A few points come to mind.
>
>
> (1) TDE mirrors are not synced "daily".
>
>     Due to master server bandwidth limitations, primary sync runs can
>     take anywhere from a minute to a week.
>
>     The primary mirror normally syncs from Tim's master server
>     continuously subject to a bandwidth limit selected by Tim and
>     with a short delay between the completion of one sync run
>     and the start of the next.  During major release rollouts
>     syncing is changed e.g. by reducing delay between sync runs
>     and by deferring dbg/debuginfo/dev/devel/tar/src files when more
>     urgent files need to be mirrored.
>
>     Secondary mirrors sync from the primary on their own schedules.
>     Currently some secondaries sync three times per day and some four.
>

Interesting. I supposed that the synchronization is initialized once a 
day, and then it only depends on whether it has finished or that it will 
be delayed when previous synchronization is still running.

> On Sat July 21 2018 10:20:33 Sl�vek Banko wrote:
> > On Sunday 24 of June 2018 20:59:46 Mike Bird wrote:
> > > (6) To avoid overloading build farm bandwidth, it is best not to
> > > announce releases until they are fully mirrored.  If users start
> > > pulling unmirrored files they are served from the build farm,
> > > overloading its bandwidth and slowing mirroring, so things get very
> > > slow for everyone.
> >
> > This is no longer necessary. As I mentioned above, the redirector has
> > a cache that is filled with new packages before the official release.
> > Therefore, at the time of release, if packages are not yet available
> > on official mirrors, they may be served directly from this cache.
> > This makes the packages available to users quickly and without
> > overloading the line to the primary server.
>
> (2) This seems counter-productive.  The reason for implementing a
>     distinct primary mirror was so that each file would only be
>     transferred once from Tim's master server due to bandwidth
>     limitations.
>

Do not worry, this caching is not counterproductive, just the opposite. 
The synchronization of packages into the redirector cache is done before 
the packages are published to the official repository == before the 
synchronization to the primary mirror starts. This means that 
synchronization into redirector cache uses the time when the bandwidth on 
the primary server is not used. This is the main trick of this caching - 
that's why this caching is very beneficial.

Separate substantial benefit is caching of RPM packages. RPM packages are 
being prepared by Fran�ois on their own repository. From this repository, 
the packages are first synchronized into the primary server => load of 
bandwidth on the incoming. Then are synchronized to the primary mirror => 
load of bandwidth on the outgoing. This both represents a long time. On 
the redirector, packages are cached directly from the Fran�ois repository 
== this does not cause any bandwidth load on the primary server, and the 
packages may be available before they are downloaded to the primary 
server.

Therefore, I would like to say that caching on the redirector is very 
beneficial both for saving bandwidth to the primary server and also for 
faster availability of packages to users. Both sides wins :)

> > Already R14.0.4 has successfully used this cache at the time of
> > release.
>
> (3) There were severe slowdowns for several days during R14.0.4 rollout
>     which appeared to be due to master server bandwidth limitations.
>

Yes, releasing the version will always cause a load of bandwidth to the 
primary server for several days. However, thanks to the cache on the 
redirector, this load can be lower and the packages are accessible to 
users earlier.

Note: If I remember correctly, the RPM packages cache on the redirector 
have not yet been set at time of release R14.0.4. Therefore, when we 
release R14.0.5, I expect the additional benefit of this cache.

>
> --Mike
>

Cheers
-- 
Sl�vek