Performance

Roundup: Patterns for Performance and Operability

Posted on October 7, 2013October 7, 2013 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

I recently posted a review of Patterns for Performance and Operability by Ford et al on the SoftwareOperability website. I think that this book is exceptionally useful in its treatment of both performance and operability, and anyone who cares about how well software works in Production should buy and read a copy (there are paper and eBook editions).

Two other reviews might be useful too: my colleague Anant East (Head of Architecture and Infrastructure, thetrainline.com) wrote up a detailed review of Patterns for Performance and Operability on the tech blog at thetrainline.com, and I posted a short review on Amazon.

How HTTPbis changes HTTP caching, and why CDNs are not always the answer

Posted on February 4, 2013February 4, 2013 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

HTTP caching is a key part of what makes the web usable, and draft standards like HTTPbis add further refinements to the existing HTTP/1.1 caching features. At WebPerfDays 2012, Mark Nottingham (@mnot) and Josh Bixby (@joshuabixby) gave some useful tips on how we can tune our web applications to take advantage of the existing and forthcoming HTTP cache features.

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Event-Sourced Architectures by Martin Thompson at QConLondon 2012

Posted on May 18, 2012May 18, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Software performance guru Martin Thompson (@mjpt777) gave an illuminating talk on event-sourced architectures, and why event-driven, state-machine designs are the way forward for complex, multi-path software systems (“Event Sourced Architectures and what we have forgotten about High-Availability”, [slides: 700KB PDF]).

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Using LogParser and Log Replay to Bootstrap Load Test Scripts

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

In a previous post I mentioned how Microsoft LogParser can be used to discover HTTP endpoints in legacy applications. Another great use for LogParser is to generate files to drive load test scripts.

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Fault tolerance, anomaly detection, and anticipation patterns by Jon Allspaw at QConLondon 2012

Posted on March 21, 2012May 15, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

Jon Allspaw (@allspaw) from Etsy talked about the role that Anomaly Detection, Fault Tolerance and Anticipation play in producing highly scalable software systems (Fault tolerance, anomaly detection, and anticipation patterns, slides [PDF, 5MB]).

As head of technical operations at Etsy, whose web traffic is pretty substantial, Jon focused on resilience in software systems: what it is, and how to achieve it.

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