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Can .NET Really Scale?

Posted by Cliff on from the putting-it-to-the-test dept.

swordfish asks: "Does anyone have first hand experience with scaling .NET to support 100+ concurrent requests on a decent 2-4 CPU box with web services? I'm not talking a cluster of 10 dual CPU systems, but a single system. the obvious answer is 'buy more systems', but what if your customer says I only have 20K budgeted for the year. No matter what Slashdot readers say about buying more boxes, try telling that to your client, who can't afford anything more. I'm sure some of you will think, 'what are you smoking?' But the reality of current economics means 50K on a server for small companies is a huge investment. One could argue 5 cheap systems for 3K each could support that kind of load, but I haven't seen it, so inquiring minds want to know!"

"Ok, I've heard from different people as to whether or not .NET scales well and I've been working with it for the last 7 months. So far from what I can tell it's very tough to scale for a couple of different reasons.

  1. currently there isn't a mature messaging server and MSMQ is not appropriate for high load messaging platform.
  2. SOAP is too damn heavy weight to scale well beyond 60 concurrent requests for a single CPU 3ghz system.
  3. SQL Server doesn't support C# triggers or a way to embed C# applications within the database
  4. The through put of SQL Server is still around 200 concurrent requests for a single or dual CPU box. I've read the posts about Transaction Processing Council, but get real, who can afford to spend 6 million on a 64 CPU box?
  5. the clients we target are small-ish, so they can't spend more than 30-50K on a server. so where does that leave you in terms of scalability
  6. I've been been running benchmarks with dynamic code that does quite a bit of reflection and the performance doesn't impress me.
  7. I've also compared the performance of a static ASP/HTML page to webservice page and the throughput goes from 150-200 to about 10-20 on a 2.4-2.6Ghz system
  8. to get good through put with SQL Server you have to use async calls, but what if you have to do sync calls? From what I've seen the performance isn't great (it's ok) and I don't like the idea of setting up partitions. Sure, you can put mirrored raid on all the DB servers, but that doesn't help me if a partition goes down and the data is no longer available.
  9. I asked a MS SQL Server DBA about real-time replication across multiple servers and his remark was "it doesn't work, don't use it."

3 of 653 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why are they running Windows then? by JCMay · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I don't know about that; I've found Red Hat 9 most impressive.

    * My winprinter (Samsung ML-1210) works right out of the box; it's a menu pick in the printer setup program!

    * My USB scanner worked the first time (once I figured out which was the proper firmware file).

    * Nautilus' built-in CD creation facility beats the pants off (my experience is admittedly limited) Windows CD creation products.

    * The included version of Wine actually *prints*! I was never able to get it configured properly to use my printers; now it works right out of the box!

    Gotta give those guys credit. I downloaded the ISOs for 9 (I bought 7.1), but I think I just may have to get the box for it so they'll keep going.

  2. Re:Why are they running Windows then? by neuroxmurf · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Mmm, heroin.

  3. And this was posted here because... by God!+Awful+2 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    1. It's troll food so everyone on /. can tell this guy to use open source instead of answering his question?

    2. Those MSDN ads that kept /. alive for about a month when no one else was advertising came with strings attached? Run some MS stories or else!

    If you think #2 is excessively paranoid, keep in mind that as I write this, I am being distracted by a giant animated New York Times ad at the top of my screen.

    -a

    --
    /. users can't