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[close #751] Default MALLOC_ARENA_MAX new apps #752

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merged 1 commit into from
Sep 23, 2019

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@schneems schneems commented Apr 26, 2018

This PR will set MALLOC_ARENA_MAX=2 by default for new Ruby apps

While we currently have documentation on tuning the memory behavior of glibc by setting this environment variable the default does not produce good results for Ruby applications that are using threads:

In general most Ruby applications are memory bound and by decreasing the memory footprint of the application we can enable scaling out via more workers. Less memory might also mean a cheaper to run application, as it consumes fewer resources.

Setting this value is not entirely free. It does come with a performance trade off. For more information, see how we originally benchmarked this setting:

If a customer’s application is not memory bound and would prefer slightly faster execution over the decreased memory use, they can set their MALLOC_ARENA_MAX to a higher value. The default as specified by the linux man page is 8 times the number of cores on the system. Or they can use the 3rd party jemalloc buildpack.

Our documentation will be updated to reflect this change once the PR is merged and deployed.

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@abinoda abinoda mentioned this pull request Apr 27, 2018
@schneems schneems force-pushed the schneems/malloc-arena-max branch 2 times, most recently from 5f9b06a to d6a8796 Compare April 30, 2018 16:04
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@schneems schneems force-pushed the schneems/malloc-arena-max branch 3 times, most recently from fd5799f to c6e2235 Compare September 12, 2019 19:19
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Updated to only be new apps. I think this is good to go. I'm going to aim to merge after I get back from columbia.

This PR will set MALLOC_ARENA_MAX=2 by default for new Ruby apps

While we currently have [documentation on tuning the memory behavior of glibc by setting this environment variable](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/tuning-glibc-memory-behavior) the default does not produce good results for Ruby applications that are using threads:

- https://www.mikeperham.com/2018/04/25/taming-rails-memory-bloat/
- https://www.speedshop.co/2017/12/04/malloc-doubles-ruby-memory.html

In general most Ruby applications are memory bound and by decreasing the memory footprint of the application we can enable scaling out via more workers. Less memory might also mean a cheaper to run application, as it consumes fewer resources.

Setting this value is not entirely free. It does come with a performance trade off. For more information, see how we originally benchmarked this setting:

- https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/testing-cedar-14-memory-use

If a customer’s application is not memory bound and would prefer slightly faster execution over the decreased memory use, they can set their MALLOC_ARENA_MAX to a higher value. The default as specified by the [linux man page](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/mallopt.3.html) is 8 times the number of cores on the system. Or they can use the 3rd party [jemalloc buildpack](https://elements.heroku.com/buildpacks/mojodna/heroku-buildpack-jemalloc).

Our documentation will be updated to reflect this change once the PR is merged and deployed.
@schneems schneems merged commit 098a2b2 into master Sep 23, 2019
@schneems schneems deleted the schneems/malloc-arena-max branch September 23, 2019 14:49
@imajes
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imajes commented Feb 10, 2020

Hey! How does this compare to jemalloc in ruby apps?

@tonydehnke
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Hey! How does this compare to jemalloc in ruby apps?

This write up might help.. https://medium.com/@andresakata/benchmark-of-memory-allocators-on-a-multi-threaded-ruby-program-354ec4dc2e7e

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6 participants