2. Optimizing Proxy Server
Proxy Server Performance
In order to optimize server performance for whatsoever reason, you
need to start by monitoring the server. In most cases, before server
monitoring commences, it is common practice to establish baseline
performance metrics for the specific server. Baseline performance
metrics are established by measuring the performance of a
particular server under various conditions, at different times of the
day, week, and month, and when the hardware and software
configuration changes. Based on the baseline metrics which you
define for the server, you would need to optimize the server when
performance of the server by far exceeds your baseline metrics.
It is recommended to formulate a thorough server monitoring plan
once you have established your baseline performance metrics for a
specific server.
3.
Bottle neck occurs when:-
Certain settings are not configured correctly.
A resource is faulty and not functioning as it should be.
Insufficient resources exist, and a resource is being
overused. • Where many instances of the same particular
resource exist, the resources may not be handling load
equally or efficiently.
A particular application(s) is hogging a resource.
4.
The techniques that you can use to
optimize Proxy Server performance are
listed here:
Caching Web content improves performance. Cached information is accessed by
users from a location on the Local Area Network (LAN). This means that bandwidth
utilization to the Internet ends up being lowered because cached information does not
need to be downloaded from the Internet. All of this leads to an improvement in the
service experienced by users.
Proxy Server also provides a feature called proxy arrays. A proxy array is a solution
whereby one or multiple proxy servers operate as a single cache for client requests.
Benefits provided by the proxy array feature include scalable performance, and fault
tolerance.
Network Load Balancing (NLB) can be used to distribute the processing load of
inbound traffic over multiple proxy servers. This leads to high availability and
performance optimization.
Round Robin DNS can also be used to load balance inbound traffic across multiple
proxy servers, thereby also providing high availability and performance optimization.
5. Optimizing Proxy Server
The advantages of using proxy arrays as a
Proxy Server optimization method are listed
here:
Because Web content is cached over multiple servers, no
single server hosts all Web content.
If one server in the proxy array fails, fail over is immediately
provided. • Additional fault tolerance is provided for the client.
6.
The advantages of using Network Load
Balancing (NLB) as a Proxy Server optimization
method are listed here:
You can add or remove proxy servers residing in the
NLB cluster.
Load balancing occurs dynamically over all proxy
servers residing in the NLB cluster.
Because load balancing and the addition or removal
of proxy servers occurs dynamically, availability and
performance is improved.
The NLB cluster is automatically reconfigured when
a proxy server happens to fail.
7. The advantages of using Round Robin
DNS as a Proxy Server optimization
method are listed here:
Load balancing is performed on all proxy servers in the round
robin DNS.
Round Robin DNS can operate on all operating system
platforms.
Performance is improved because traffic is basically load
balanced over all proxy servers.
If you need to provide the highest possible level of server
availability for your Proxy Server implementation, you should
use Microsoft Windows Clustering.
The proxy servers all share a common cache.
If a server in the proxy array fails, failover is immediately
provided.
Because the cache does not need to be built again when a
server fails, restore occurs quite faster.
8.
The following techniques can be used
to optimize Internet access and reduce
Internet traffic:
Use one of the Proxy Server caching methods to optimize
Internet access: With passive caching, Proxy Server stores
objects in the Proxy Server cache with each object obtaining a
Time To Live (TTL) value. Before Proxy Server forwards
requests to the Internet, it first checks the Proxy Server cache
to determine if the request can be serviced from there. When
the Proxy Server cache becomes full, Proxy Server removes
objects from the cache, based on a combination of factors:
object size, object age, and object popularity
9. The advantages of using passive
caching in your Proxy Server
implementation are:
The Internet connection is only initiated when users need to
access the Internet.
No activity occurs when users are not accessing the Internet.
With active Caching, Proxy Server automatically generates
requests for specific objects in the Proxy Server cache so that
frequently requested objects remain cached. Proxy Server
determines which objects should be flagged for active caching
by considering object popularity, Time To Live (TTL) value of
objects, and server load to determine the level of active
caching performed.
10. To reduce Internet traffic:
Reduce the occurrence of Proxy Server having to connect to
the Internet. This is done by enabling the active caching
feature.
Increase the Proxy Server cache size so that more
information can be stored in the cache, and therefore
obtained from the cache. o Increase the Time To Live (TTL)
value of cached information.
Try to reduce the utilization of WinSock Proxy and Socks
Proxy applications. Monitoring Proxy Server Components
11. The various components to track
when monitoring Proxy Server
are listed here:
Monitoring of the CPU should be included when monitoring
Proxy Server, even though Proxy Server does not really
intensively utilize CPU resources.
A component that should be monitored when monitoring
Proxy Server performance is memory usage.
Another typical component monitored when monitoring
system performance is disk performance. Hard disk
performance is especially important when a large quantity of
information is going to be cached.
Network Monitor can be used to monitor bandwidth usage.
Performance is negatively impacted when existing network
traffic surpasses LAN bandwidth or WAN bandwidth.