Freeradius 3.0.7 and multiple buffered-sql servers - detail file issues

[Alan DeKok]

On Apr 21, 2015, at 2:35 AM, Marcin <marcin at nicram.net> wrote:
> So, which is better solution for performance: keep accounting data in
> details file, then read it and write to db with buffered-sql or write
> accounting to database directly?

  Typically writing to a database directly is lower latency than writing to the detail file and then to the DB.

  In v3, the pool configuration helps a lot.  Set a "max" number of connections the DB can handle, and fail-over to the detail file.  In normal operation, everything goes directly to the DB.  If you get a huge spike of traffic, the detail file fills up.  And then drains slowly when the spike goes away.

> In configuration file buffered-sql we can read:
> #v+
> The server can read accounting packets from the detail file much more
> quickly than those packets an be written to a database.  If the database is
> overloaded, then bad things can happen.

  Yes, which means you can read 100K packets/s from the detail file, and only write 2K packets/s to the DB.  This shouldn't be surprising.

  Alan DeKok.