Alright! Today we’re going to talk about optimizing etcd performance for large scale distributed systems. And by “optimize,” I mean “make it less terrible.” Because let’s face it, out of the box, etcd is a hot mess. It’s like trying to run a marathon with a broken leg you can do it, but it’s going to be painful and slow as hell.

So why does etcd suck so much? Well, for starters, it was designed by a bunch of hipsters who think that “less is more” applies to everything in life, including performance. They decided to limit the number of concurrent connections to 1024 (because apparently that’s all you need), and they also capped the size of each request at 8KB (because why would anyone ever want to store anything larger than a tweet?).

But let’s not get too bogged down in the details. Instead, let’s focus on some practical tips for making etcd less terrible:

1. Increase the concurrent connection limit This is an easy one. Just edit your etcd config file and set the “max-concurrency” option to a higher value (like 2048 or even 4096). Trust me, you’ll notice a huge difference in performance.

2. Increase the request size limit Another simple fix is to increase the maximum request size. This can be done by setting the “max-request-size” option in your etcd config file (again, 1MB or even 4MB should do the trick).

3. Use a load balancer If you have multiple etcd nodes running on different servers, consider using a load balancer to distribute traffic across them. This will help prevent any single node from becoming overwhelmed and causing performance issues for your entire system.

4. Optimize your data model One of the biggest performance bottlenecks in etcd is the way it stores data. By default, all keys are stored as strings (even if they contain binary data), which can be very inefficient. To improve performance, consider using a more efficient data storage format like JSON or Protobuf.

5. Use compression Another easy win for improving performance is to enable compression on your etcd traffic. This will reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted over the network and can result in significant performance improvements (especially if you’re dealing with large amounts of data).

6. Monitor your system Finally, make sure you have good monitoring tools in place so you can quickly identify any issues or bottlenecks in your etcd cluster. This will help you proactively address any problems before they become critical and cause downtime for your application.

Six simple tips for optimizing etcd performance for large scale distributed systems. And if all else fails, just remember that at least you’re not using Consul because let’s face it, that’s a whole other level of terrible.