Performance comparison between nginx -light, -full and -extras Debian packages

jcisio's picture
Posted by jcisio on September 14, 2012 at 8:41am

Hi,

Does anyone benchmark those packages? The nginx-extras contains ngx_lua module. While it is not as heavier as mod_php, it makes me think about the performance.

My use case: I'm doing a long polling feature. It now can hold 600 concurrent Drupal connections (tested with the live iPhone 5 event), but I want to push it further: don't bootstrap Drupal, keep those connection only in nginx with a Lua script. I have now two choices: 1/ switch the -light package to the -extras package, 2/ keep using the -light package, but proxy the long polling to another nginx instance with -extras package. (I still don't know how to install both in the same server, maybe I'll compile one, but it's not a problem).

Back to my question: do you have performance problem with the nginx-extras package? Especially when you use embedded Lua or embedded Perl.

Edit: I took a round and it seems that the embedded Lua is not really "embedded": it calls the external script on demand, so it won't hurt performance much, but I'm not sure, so my question.

Login or register to post comments

Comments

Not really and there's a .deb for that :)

Posted by perusio on September 14, 2012 at 9:01am
perusio's picture

It's embedded. The Lua module has code cache. If you're using LuaJIT (as opposed to the Lua lib) the performance hit should be minimal.

Of course there's no amount of talk that can replace real benchmarking.

I won't advise to use the stock nginx-full package. It comes with everything + the kitchen sink. I suggest you create your own package with just the modules you need or use someone else's customized debian package ;)