(RADIATOR) Duplicate Requests - Randomness

[Robert Blayzor]

Joe Hughes wrote:
> To get round the issue we're doing some database optimization, file
> optimization, dumping historic data into flat-files to keep the tables
> lean etc - to improve things and improve the response times.


We ran into this problem a couple of times before.  The fact is that
MSSQL gets horrible on insert performance when a table gets big,
especially if you're using full transactional logging and clustered indexes.

The way we worked around this was to put the RADIUS accounting data in a
separate database and keep the recovery method on "simple".  That way
you're not creating a transaction log entry for every insert.  Of course
there is some risk that if you don't back up your data that often you
can lose a chuck of accounting records.  With the amount of records we
insert we just couldn't find a way around it.  We use transactional
replication to another server, so any loss would be minimized to only
several seconds.

One other thing that hurts on a accounting table for inserts is if
you're using clustered indexes.  While clustered indexes make for fast
searches, they are painful if you you're inserting and deleting a lot of
data.

Try to keep away from db maintenance methods that will cause locks on
the table.  ie:  it's probably ok to do an integrity test, but
rebuilding the indexes could be painful on a table with millions of rows.

Finally run two instances of Radiator on your server.  One for
accounting and one for authentication requests.  Since Radiator has to
wait for database queries to return before handling another request, you
don't want your accounting lag to hold up your authentication process.
This really fixed a lot of the problems for us.

-- 
Robert Blayzor
INOC
rblayzor at inoc.net
http://www.inoc.net/~rblayzor/

Mac OS X. Because making Unix user-friendly is easier than debugging
Windows.

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