Configuring threads and performance

No parameter should be left by default when the optimal performance is desired. These parameters should be taken into consideration to achieve the best behavior.

Getting ready

With your favorite text editor, open your server.properties file copy.

How to do it...

Adjust the following parameters:

message.max.bytes=1000000
num.network.threads=3
num.io.threads=8
background.threads=10
queued.max.requests=500
socket.send.buffer.bytes=102400
socket.receive.buffer.bytes=102400
socket.request.max.bytes=104857600
num.partitions=1

How it works…

With these changes, the network and performance configurations have been set to achieve optimum levels for the application. Again, every system is different, and you might need to experiment a little to come up with the optimal one for a specific configuration.

Here is an explanation of every parameter:

• message.max.bytes: Default value: 10 00 000. This is the maximum size, in bytes, for each message. This is designed to prevent any producer from sending extra large messages and saturating the consumers.
• num.network.threads: Default value: 3. This is the number of simultaneous threads running to handle a network's request. If the system has too many simultaneous requests, consider increasing this value.
• num.io.threads: Default value: 8. This is the number of threads for Input Output operations. This value should be at least the number of present processors.
• background.threads: Default value: 10. This is the number of threads for background jobs. For example, old log files deletion.
• queued.max.requests: Default value: 500. This is the number of messages queued while the other messages are processed by the I/O threads. Remember, when the queue is full, the network threads will not accept more requests. If your application has erratic loads, set this to a value at which it will not throttle.
• socket.send.buffer.bytes: Default value: 102 400. This is SO_SNDBUFF buffer size, used for socket connections.
• socket.receive.buffer.bytes: Default value: 102 400. This is SO_RCVBUFF buffer size, also used for socket connections.
• socket.request.max.bytes: Default value: 104 857 600. This is the maximum request size, in bytes, that the server can accept. It should always be smaller than the Java heap size.
• num.partitions: Default value: 1. This is the number of default partitions of a topic, without giving any partition size.

There's more...

As with everything that runs on the JVM, the Java installation should be tuned to achieve optimal performance. This includes the settings for heap, socket size, memory parameters, and garbage collection.