[keycloak-dev] Next step performance

[Marek Posolda]

On 29.5.2014 21:12, Bill Burke wrote:
> I'd like to have a hangout next week on this.  There's really 4 areas to
> focus on:
>
> 1. Set up a good performance test and get a baseline on current code.
I've already did some performance tests longer time ago when comparing 
model implementations. Those are at "testsuite/performance" . These are 
just Java tests, which are directly using model API (no end-to-end HTTP 
tests ATM).

It's based on JMeter and it allows to configure number of concurrent 
workers and number of "iterations" for each worker. For example test for 
creating users with 10 workers and each worker creating 100 users means 
1000 created users in total. Also in property files you can configure 
number of users to create, realms where to create users etc.

Just figured out that tests doesn't work atm, but will try to possibly 
fix and send PR also with some instructions.

>
> 2. Database caching.  There are multiple approaches.
> * Our caches will be read-mostly except for user session management.
I think that in very big systems there might be also big number of user 
registrations . And each user can change his account, so it might be big 
number of edit actions, which can user done by himself (for example 
linking/unlinking social account).
> * Write our own REST cache.  My idea was to implement a new model
> provider that delegates to the real underlying model provider.  It would
> send RESTful invalidation messages secured by keycloak in a clustered
> environment.  Maybe use Infinispan or some other local-only cache as the
> backbone.  I'm really really wary of using Infinispan (or other cache's)
> clustering options.  I'm not sure how well these guys work in cloud
> clustered environments. And I'm not sure how well they've thought of
> security.
> * Use Hibernate 2nd level cache.  Really wary of this as I don't know
> how well Infinispan et. al. work in a cloud environment.  I'd really
> like something HTTP based and authenticated by Keycloak.  I'm not sure
> we'll be able to get the level of control here either that we need.
> * Another reason for a custom cache, is, IMO, almost everything can be
> stored in memory. Even users.
Reusing infinispan at last as local-only cache would be nice as it 
solves many other things, like for example eviction/expiration . It has 
also support for transactions (but if we want to use it, we may need to 
add JTA support...)

Creating our own model provider will add good control, but might be time 
consuming tasks . Tricky part is invalidation IMO. For example when you 
delete application, you should drop also all application roles, role 
memberships, scopes and scope memberships and userSession links to this 
application. In the end, it might drop almost whole cache:-)
But probably we need to focus especially on events, which will happen 
often (like creating new userSession or registering new user) and ensure 
that there is no invalidation of more things then needed in these 
cases.  But for example registration of new user should invalidate all 
user queries as well (I mean realm.getUsers() , realm.searchForUser and 
realm.searchForUserByuAttribute).

>
> 3. Clustering.
> * Keycloak is not completely stateless.  Specifically access codes are
> stored in memory.  We should be able to move this state information into
> a cookie.
> * User Session management is a huge issue as it is the only thing that
> is write-mostly.
There is also some state on SocialRequestManager .
>
> 4. HTTP Cache-Control
> * All themed static content should support a way to set up cache-control
> headers.
> * Admin REST api could do cache-control too if we had a way to determine
> a version number or timestamp on model data.  Not that important though
> as, IMO, admin rest api isn't going to have a lot of volume.
>
I would add "pagination" support. I think we need pagination at least 
for users, probably also for userSessions on clients (I mean 
clientModel.getUserSessions() ). Maybe also for AuditProvider query results.

Marek