2 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
4ae2395f37 perf: client GC measurement, V2 client by default, container-like client constraints (#4844)
Extends the out-of-process load harness (`perf/`, not part of the
product build) so it can measure client-side GC, run the V2 client by
default, and emulate a container-sized client. No product code changes.

## Client GC measurement
- New `client-gc:` result line from an in-process GC event listener
(`GcListener.cs`, runtime GC keyword at informational level): GC mode,
collections by condemned generation and trigger, pause and suspension
p50/p99/max, bytes surviving gen0/gen1, pinned objects, gen2/LOH size,
peak heap after a collection, committed bytes, heap limit, DATAS heap
count and gen0 budget. `--gc-events 0` turns it off.
- The latency recorder is now a fixed log-linear histogram (~1.6 %
resolution). The old `ConcurrentBag<long>` kept ~25 MB of samples alive
in the measured client's gen2 (client heap 29–31 MB vs 4 MB now).
- **Fix:** GC, thread-pool and processor-count settings set for the
harness (`DOTNET_GC*`, `COMPlus_GC*`, `DOTNET_ThreadPool_*`,
`DOTNET_PROCESSOR_COUNT`) no longer leak into the server child. Before,
`DOTNET_gcServer=1` switched the server too, although the README said it
switched the client. `SERVER_`-prefixed variables still configure the
server.
- TraceAnalyzer `gc` decodes the condemn reasons and breaks each
collection into phases (marking by root type with the bytes marked,
plan/relocate/compact).

## V2 client by default
- `--client` defaults to `managed` (`ManagedSession` + V2 subscription
engine). The `events` and `counters` workloads gained V2 paths;
`--pool-notifications 1` enables `WithPoolNotifications`.
`client-scenarios.txt` lists V2 scenarios. `--client classic` and
`shared` still work.

## Container-like client
- `--client-cores N`: the harness runs itself again with
`DOTNET_PROCESSOR_COUNT=N` on the last N processors and pins the server
to the others.
- `--client-memory MB`: the client's GC heap hard limit becomes 75 % of
MB, the limit .NET derives from a container memory limit (native memory
is not capped).

## What it found
The report is published separately. Highlights:
- Request path: a gen0 pause costs ~1 ms of fixed work (stack and card
scanning, compaction), so pause time follows collection count. Read-1
allocates ~2 KB/request on the client, and its p99 is the GC pause (a 64
MB gen0 halves it).
- V2 subscriptions and events never reach gen2 (classic `Subscription`
with its message cache: 22 % of wall time paused for events).
- Containers: each V2 monitored item costs 2.8–3.8 KB, mostly a per-item
`ConcurrentDictionary` in `OptionsMonitor<T>` (one lock per processor)
and a per-item `ConcurrentQueue`. 100k items do not fit in a 256 MB
container. A 1-processor client stalls ~1 s unless the thread-pool
minimum is raised.

## Testing
- Harness builds in Release (`CustomTestTarget=net10.0`). I ran every
changed scenario: read/write/browse/sub/events/counters on managed
sessions, constrained runs with 1, 2 and 4 cores and 256 MB to 1 GB, and
`TraceAnalyzer gc/alloc` on recorded traces.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Marc Schier <marcschier@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: copilot-swe-agent[bot] <198982749+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: marcschier <11168470+marcschier@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-10-20 09:44:26 +02:00
romanettandClaude Opus 5.5 28f1401324 Server: cut request-path lock contention and allocation; add load harness (#4707)
Profiling the reference server under load showed most request-path CPU
spent spinning on contended locks, plus several avoidable allocations
per request or per node. This PR removes them, switches the reference
server to Server GC, and adds the load harness used to measure it.

## Results

Paired A/B against `master` (3 alternating rounds, medians, 20 sessions,
workstation GC on both sides, 24-core machine):

| Scenario | Throughput | p50 | p90 | Server CPU / op | Server alloc /
op | Lock contention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read, 1 value | **+45%** (94k → 137k req/s) | −20% | −46% | −37% |
−39% | −94% |
| Read, 100 values | **+40%** | −26% | −17% | −24% | −25% | +130% ¹ |
| Read, 100 values, SignAndEncrypt | **+48%** | −36% | −20% | −30% |
−26% | +106% ¹ |
| Browse (Server object) | **+33%** | −31% | −12% | −13% | −14% | −40% |
| Write, 100 values | +13% | −12% | −4% | −10% | −19% | −23% |
| Data-change subscriptions | ±0 ² | ≈ | ≈ | −14% | −17% | −29% |

¹ The faster server spends more time in the remaining per-node locks.
² Throughput is bounded by the writer rate in this scenario.

Separately, Server GC instead of workstation GC doubles Read-100
throughput (21k → 44k req/s) and cuts p90 from 2.1 ms to 0.6 ms, because
workstation GC paused the server for about half the wall time under
load. The working set grows from ~210 MB to ~430 MB.

## Changes

- **`ObjectPool<T>`**: lock-free slot array. `ConcurrentBag.Count` took
every per-thread lock on each `Return` of the pooled response value-task
source, once per request.
- **`FairRequestQueue`**:
- drops redundant gate entries: the fail-fast pre-checks and the stopped
check read volatile fields and are re-checked under the gate; the owner
count is folded into selection;
- coalesces wake pulses with a pending flag, so the bounded signal
channel's lock is only taken when no token is outstanding. Wake-count
semantics in the tests are unchanged.
- **`DefaultServerResourceIsolationProvider`**:
  - compares peer addresses without `GetAddressBytes()` allocations;
- builds the unsecured verification context only when a classifier is
configured.
- **TCP listener / channel**: caches the certificate DER copies per
channel, keyed on the certificate instance. `X509Certificate2.RawData`
returns a fresh copy on every access, and the listener read it for every
request.
- **`EndpointBase`**: resolves the request `ActivitySource` once instead
of `Assembly.GetCallingAssembly()` per request.
- **Node managers**:
- one `ServerSystemContext` copy per request (cached on the
`OperationContext`) for per-node callbacks: permission metadata, node
metadata, view membership, method lookup;
  - removes a discarded copy in `GetReferenceDescriptionAsync`;
- per-request operation caches are plain `Dictionary` instead of a
`ConcurrentDictionary` with 24 lock objects;
  - the validation cache is built in one pass;
  - fixes zero-capacity error lists.
- **`ResourceManager`**: translation lookups read an immutable snapshot
that is rebuilt after writes. Browse serialised on the global lock for
every display name.
- **`MonitoredItem`**: shares the default `DataChangeFilter` instead of
allocating one per sampled value.
- **Reference server**: `ServerGarbageCollection=true`; new "Garbage
collector mode" section in `docs/ServerScalability.md`.
- **`perf/`**: `ServerLoadHarness` (out-of-process server plus load
driver, server-side CPU/GC/alloc/contention deltas, optional
`dotnet-trace` capture), `TraceAnalyzer` (TraceEvent-based
CPU/allocation/contention aggregation), and paired A/B scripts. Not part
of `UA.slnx`.

### Behaviour notes for custom node managers
- The `IDictionary<NodeId, NodeState>` operation cache handed to
overrides is now a `Dictionary`. It was a `ConcurrentDictionary`, but
only one request flow uses it.
- Within one request, per-node callbacks of a node manager share one
`ServerSystemContext` copy.

### Later commits on this PR
- **Permission checks without `NodeMetadata`** (`9068684c3`): the
role-permission and access-restriction validators run on an internal
`PermissionMetadata` struct; `AsyncCustomNodeManager` fills it on the
stack from the same attributes and namespace defaults. Browse's
reference filter reads 3 attributes per target instead of 13. Read 100
values: 120.6 → 95.7 KB/request, ~21k → 26k req/s; Browse 67.6 → 51.8
KB, 26.7k → 29.8k req/s.
- **Read-only channel evidence** (`936b28d76`, `dc638ab9f`):
`SecureChannelContext.ClientChannelCertificate`,
`ServerChannelCertificate` and `ChannelThumbprint` are `ByteString`, so
the cached per-channel certificate buffer is shared without a copy and
cannot be altered by handlers or classifiers. **Public API change**, see
the new section in `docs/MigrationGuide.md`. The isolation provider's
revalidation snapshot still copies.
- **Session lookup** (`936b28d76`):
`SessionManager.TryGetSessionContext` takes the candidate snapshot
without the bindings lock; the validating check under the lock is
unchanged (2 instead of 4 global lock acquisitions per request).
- Unit tests for `ObjectPool`, the per-request system context cache, the
translation snapshot, `SecureChannelContext` null semantics and a
stopped `FairRequestQueue`; `perf/` follows the repository conventions.

## Testing
- `Opc.Ua.Server.Tests` (net10.0): 8386 passed before the `ByteString`
change. After it, 13 secure-session and isolation tests failed; both
causes are fixed in `dc638ab9f` and those tests (25 with their variants)
pass. A full rerun of the Server, Sessions, Core, Redundancy, LDS and
GDS suites on the final commit is in progress.
- Full solution builds for net10.0 and net48; `dotnet format whitespace`
clean.

### o6-automation opcua-benchmarks (sampling, deep pipelines)
Replicated both tests of the [o6-automation
benchmark](https://github.com/o6-automation/opcua-benchmarks) in the
harness (`--scenario counters`, and `read` with 10 clients × N
outstanding), paired against `origin/master`:

| Test | master | this PR |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription sampling, 100 Hz, every item ≥ 99 % of samples, 1 item |
FAIL (75–94 %) | PASS (100 %) |
| same, 1024 items | FAIL (64–73 %) | PASS (99.9 %) |
| same, capacity | — | between 4096 and 6144 items (~410–520k samples/s)
|
| Read, 10 clients × 100 outstanding, None | stalls (0–1.7k req/s) |
121–131k req/s |
| Read, 10 clients × 100 outstanding, SignAndEncrypt | stalls (0 req/s)
| 89–91k req/s |
| Read, 10 clients × 1000 outstanding | channels faulted
(`BadTcpNotEnoughResources`) | 0 errors, ~45–54k req/s |

- **Fixed-rate sampling** (`30b769d13`): the sampling loop waited one
interval after each sample, adding timer overshoot and sampling time to
every cycle; samples now have absolute deadlines.
- **Async response send** (`cdac5c5ca`): `SendResponse` blocked
thread-pool workers on the channel gate; with many requests in flight
the receive loop that was handed the gate waited for a pool thread and
the channel stalled. The TCP, Kestrel TCP and WebSocket listeners now
use `SendResponseAsync`.
- **Backpressure instead of channel fault** (`191cd2ba7`): server
channels stop reading while more than 100 responses are queued and
resume at 50, instead of faulting the channel. Client channels keep
reading. At 10,000 outstanding requests throughput is ~50k req/s with or
without the limit engaged, so the remaining gap to the 100-per-client
case is not the backpressure.

## Not changed
- `SentMessageQueue` deep-clones every `NotificationMessage`. Retained
messages return their pooled payloads on acknowledgement while the
response copy may still be queued for send, and a client can acknowledge
a sequence number before receiving it; the clone keeps a recycled
payload from reaching another session's response. Removing it needs a
send-completion hook from the transport.
- Generated responses allocate a default `ResponseHeader` that is
replaced (~2-3 % of per-request allocation). Fixing it means making
structure fields of every generated type lazily initialized, a
generator-wide change to default values, equality and encoding.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-09 13:00:49 +02:00