[erlang-questions] Garbage Collection, BEAM memory and Erlang memory

[Garrett Smith]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 8:11 AM, Roberto Ostinelli <roberto@REDACTED> wrote:
> Dear List,
> Given the amount of answers I got in this post, I want to follow up and give
> some additional information.
>
> After struggling for quite a while, I just did a comparison between using
> SSL connections vs standard TCP connections.
> The results are quite impressive.
>
> This is the diagram of memory evolution for a system under load, with SSL:
> https://cldup.com/cNOc8hS004-2000x2000.png
>
> This is the same system, but without SSL:
> https://cldup.com/sx3RrdMR8o-3000x3000.png
>
> You can clearly see that using standard TCP connections the system is
> extremely stable.
> Using SSL connections, on the other hand, results in RAM memory having very
> erratic behavior that ends up blowing up the node.
>
> Not sure what to do with this information, except that I'm going to use a
> SSL termination (HAProxy or ELB) and have my Erlang node run without SSL.

This is my standard practice now - motivated by a number of production
issues. Fronting Erlang with an SSL proxy is completely trivial and
makes the pain go away. I guess it'd be nice if Erlang kept up with
the Nginxes and HAProxies, but not a must have.