695k TPS with Node.js and VoltDB

I'd like to add an independent voice too. I tried VoltDB out around a year ago. Ran it on 3 servers, with k=1 (all data replicated on 2 nodes). Servers were Dell PowerEdge 860 - only 8GB RAM, and a Q6600 quad-core processor. They cost maybe $500 or so. Even with a low-end buildout, I was able to hit around 110k TPS. This wasn't one of VoltDB's sample apps; it was a small proof-of-concept for a telecom application. They don't seem to be riding the hype train.<p>As far as open source: I was using the .NET client, and fixed a few issues with it. The folks at VoltDB were really responsive about working with me and accepting my patches. They also took time to explain the inner workings, sorta give me a launching point to investigating the core code. Pretty good experience for a commercial open source project.

<p><pre><code> TITLE DISCLAIMER: 695k using 20 fairly large machines </code></pre> I was, at first glance, pretty impressed with the 695k TPS title claim. Upon reading the article, it became apparent that this was based on running 8 8-core EC2 m2.4xlarge instances for node.js in addition to 12 8-core EC2 m2.4xlarge instances for VoltDB. In terms of server architecture, this is quite a large setup.<p>Just for an idea of how big of a machine we're talking for each of these instances:<p><pre><code> High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Instance 68.4 GB of memory 26 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each) 1690 GB of instance storage 64-bit platform I/O Performance: High API name: m2.4xlarge $1.800 an hour running Linux on demand $864.00 a day baseline for 20 of these </code></pre> This isn't meant to discredit the author or work, just to make sure it's apparent that this solution is for serious businesses only with deep pockets and boatloads of traffic. You'd be spending <i>$26,784</i> for the servers alone over a 31 day period if using them on demand.<p>The results are definitely impressive for the right target audience.

So voltdb is an in memory SQL Db with some durability and replication functionality. Is there any good documents on how it compares with some of its competitors/ who are its competitors?

If you think node.js is fast try <a href="http://vertx.io" rel="nofollow">http://vertx.io</a>.<p>It's like node but isn't single threaded so scales over multiple cores without having to fork. Also it's polyglot so you can don't have to use JS if you don't want.<p>I'm hoping to publish some performance results vs node.js before our 1.0.final release in the next few weeks.

Is EC2 really the right way to do these tests? I would have thought it would introduce unwanted variables related to network congestion and server load caused by other EC2 users.

Sounds nice. Some questions:<p>- I assume you did the tests with direct SQL statements without any ORM? How would an ORM affect the test's performance (with an Node.JS-ORM of your choice, e.g. sequelize)?<p>- How does Node+VoltDB compare to i.e. Node+PostgreSQL or Node+MySQL<p>- What does in memory SQL exactly mean? How is data made persistent?

&#62; that’s beneficial to the scaling architectures of both Node.js<p>That's not very accurate (unless you run multiple Node.js processes). See <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2387724/node-js-on-multi-core-machines" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2387724/node-js-on-multi-...</a>

looks very interesting. If I architect a tracking system again, I'd look at this setup.