Azure Worker Role multithread queue processing

Question

I have an azure Cloud service with classic configuration WebRole + Worker role. The Worker takes messages from a queue, process it than delete it once at a time.

My code is like this:

public override void Run()
    {
        Trace.TraceInformation("Worker is running");
            try
            {
                this.RunAsync(this.cancellationTokenSource.Token).Wait();
            }
            finally
            {
                this.runCompleteEvent.Set();
            }
    }

public override bool OnStart()
        {
            ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit = 500;
            bool result = base.OnStart();
            Trace.TraceInformation("WorkerAnalytics has been started");
            return result;
        }



private async Task RunAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
        {
            var queue = ....//omitted info for brevity
            CloudQueueMessage retrievedMessage = null;

            while (!cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
            {
                 try
                    {
                        retrievedMessage = await queue.GetMessageAsync();
                        if (retrievedMessage != null)
                        {
                            await ProcessMessage(retrievedMessage);
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
                        }
                    }
                    catch (Exception e)
                    {
                        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
                    }
                }
            }

        }

Now this works perfectly but the CPU is very low, at 3%, it process only one element at a time (about 1 sec each), but the queue have about 1000 new elements per second and it is not enough.

How can process more queue messages at a time using all the CPU power the machine has and without complicating too much this code?

Also what the ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit is for?

I searched for hours for an effective multithreaded solution for Worker Roles but is all WebJobs now or old frameworks that complicate things.

Thank you

Answer 1

You can try run multiple taks of RunAsync().

var tasks = new List<Task>();
tasks.Add(this.RunAsync(this.cancellationTokenSource.Token));
tasks.Add(this.RunAsync(this.cancellationTokenSource.Token));
tasks.Add(this.RunAsync(this.cancellationTokenSource.Token));
Task.WaitAll(tasks.ToArray());