== link:index.html[Index] -> link:cookbook.html[Cookbook]

Cookbook: Optimizing Cherokee
-----------------------------

Cherokee's default parameters are suitable for most cases. However,
there are a number of things that can be tweaked in order to improve
the behavior of Cherokee under special circumstances.

[[compiled]]
Compiled capabilities
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First of all you should check the capabilities that have been built
into your specific Cherokee build. This can be done by:

----
$ cherokee -i
Compilation
 Version: 1.0.0

[...]

Support
 IPv6: yes
 Pthreads: yes
 Tracing: yes
 sendfile(): yes
 syslog(): yes
 Polling methods: select poll epoll
----

The last section is interesting. If you see that any significant
capability supported by your platform is missing, you should really
build another binary or check if something is wrong with your
system. Note that not every single capability is present in every
platform. For instance, `epoll` is a polling method specific to Linux
platforms, and its absence from any non-Linux system is perfectly
normal. It is inherently more efficient than the other methods
available on Linux. For BSD based platforms `kqueue` is also a great
improvement over the most standard `poll`. This is the standard POSIX
conformant system call, and will only be available on systems that
follow the POSIX standard. From the list above, the capabilities that
have a dramatic impact in the speed of Cherokee are the polling
methods, the existence of sendfile() and the Pthreads support.


[[tweaks]]
Tweaks
~~~~~~

There is no general recommendation that is the best for everybody. In
general Cherokee's default values try to offer a good compromise
between resources and performance, but for specific cases you will be
able to tweak somethings that may (or may not) improve the overall
performance. Some of the things to keep in mind are mentioned here.

Encoding::
As it is explained in the link:modules_encoders.html[Encoders']
documentation, compressing the information to be sent makes a lot of
sense for specific file types. It's Not that much processing power is
used to compress a text file, for instance, and hardware is cheaper
than bandwidth, so you should encode files whenever it makes sense.

Handler specific::
* *CGI, SCGI, FastCGI*: link:other_goodies.html#x-sendfile[X-Sendfile]
  support can be enabled or disabled. If you know what this is, you
  will know how X-Sendfile improves performance by assigning the task
  of serving files to the web server while leaving the backend
  application to run free without waiting for the task to end. This
  gives you extra performance at no cost, but of course your
  application must specifically make use of this feature.
+
* *Static Content*: IO cache is a caching mechanism that dramatically
 improves performance serving files. The caching algorithm is very
 efficient and assures that a file will be immediately served while it
 remains cached. The usage of IO cache is absolutely recommended in
 all cases except when the contents of the files are changed
 frequently. Note that the global _IO Cache_ setting from the
 _Advanced_ section (see bellow) must be enabled for each individual
 handler's setting to be taken into account.

General::
+
* *Timeout*: The lower your timeout interval is, the faster you will
  free up resources at the cost of cancelling viable but slow
  connections.
+
* *Keep alive*: This setting dramatically affects the speed at which
  repeated connections are served to the same client. This is
  especially noticeable when an asynchronous application is used. The
  trade off is that, since connections are kept open more time, less
  connections remain available for other clients in any given
  moment. Cherokee does a pretty good job at reclaiming unused open
  connections, especially when the number of connections approaches
  the limit imposed to the system, but any way you should keep in mind
  this.

Advanced::
+
* *Threads*: The default value is chosen so that it is more than enough
  to saturate the processors. You will probably not get much out of
  this setting, since a higher value will not produce better results
  and a lower one will simply increase the amount of unused processor
  power.
+
* *File descriptors*: By definition, the higher this limit is, the
  less efficient will your system be in relative terms. However, it
  is understood that if you are tweaking this value is because you
  need to, that is, you have a very high load site. In these cases
  increasing the file descriptors' limit makes sense because the
  higher this limit is, the more connections Cherokee will be able to
  handle. By default Cherokee does not touch this value and it uses
  the one specified by your system.
+
* *IO Cache*: This setting allows to enable or disable server-wide
  the content caching. If disabled, the _IO Cache_ settings of the
  static content handlers will also be disabled, no matter what
  behavior is desired in their specific configuration. This global
  setting is essential if you are trying to debug a cache-related
  bug in your server's configuration.

[[trace]]
Debug: Disable TRACE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When compiled with debugging support, Cherokee's performance is
heavily penalized. Being able to trace the state of the web server at
a very low level is quite useful when you have to fine tune your
infrastructure, but once it is done you should disable this feature.
A production environment deserves only the finest tuned binaries.