High performance PHP: Scaling and getting the most out of your infrastructure

High performance PHP: How do I make it go faster?
Maurice Kherlakian
Professional Services Consultant
maurice.k@zend.com

Agenda
What we will be covering
The network, database, and application aspects in optimization
Tools and techniques that assist in optimization (Code tracing, profiling)
OS level optimizations and tools
Best practices in application development for an optimized application
Server clustering
DEMO

The network
Entry point into your system
Needs to be secured
Firewall
Layer separation: External – DMZ - internal
Unless you have one server, need to find a traffic distribution mechanism – Load balancers
Different kinds of load balancers: hardware v/s software
Hardware appliances are costly but robust, do layer 7 lb
Software alternatives are cheaper, do a good job also
HAProxy
Ldirectord
Nginx, Apache with balancer modules

The network
Reverse proxy
Avoid having application servers in an externally accessible environment
Can also be used to load balance
Apache, nginx, lighttpd
Usually reverse proxy connect to backend servers

The web server
Different alternatives – choose based on performance
Apache – mod_php
Nginx, lighty with php-fcgi or php-fpm
Windows IIS – FastCGI
Zend Server
Apache-based, on Linux, Windows, IBM i
Zend engine

Web servers clustering
1st step towards scaling solution
After moving the database to a separate server
Configuration syncing: rsync, rmp/deb, svn
Application code deployment
ZSCM

Deployment strategies
SVN as a deployment tool
RPM/deb
PEAR
Zend Server .zpk
More info: watch deployment strategies webinar (http://www.zend.com/en/resources/webinars/php)
Check out Shahar’s Best practices in deploying PHP apps

Web servers session clustering
What is session clustering
Failing over to other servers
Mechanisms for session clustering
Memcached
Lightweight key/value server
Database
Zend Server SC

Opcode caching
What is it, why virtually every PHP site uses it
Drastic effects of code tracing
(Screenshot next slide)
Different opcode caches
APC, eaccelerator, xcache
Zend Server Optimizer+
Extra performance boost – check timestamp

strace with and without O+ activated
10 times less system calls with O+ active

Static content
Why should we separate static/dynamic content
Techniques for content separation
CDN
Separate sub-domains
Reverse proxying with rules for static content

Handling large files
Why large files should not be served from PHP
Serve large files from a lightweight web server
Lighty, nginx
Securing large files download
Modules for web servers – authentication logic, then offload to web server. Usually through headers
Zend Download server

To achieve an optimal cluster, many different packages
What if one solution existed that could do all this?
Zend server
Optimizer + for code caching
Full page caching
ZSCM for server sync
Code tracing/monitoring for app monitoring
Zend Download server

Zend Framework
Zend Server
PHP
Test
Application
Performance
Reliability &
Management
Scale-Out
Business-grade
PHP
Acceleration
Monitoring
Clustering
Hot Fixes
Optimization
Root-Cause
Job Queue
Support
Profile
Caching
Configuration
Downloads
Java Bridge
Zend Studio (Eclipse-based)
Debug
Collaborate
Linux
(rpm/web repositories)
IBM i
(PTF)
Windows
(MSI)
14
Zend Server

Database scaling
Scaling techniques
Replication
Functional separation
Sharding
Schemaless databases eg: MongoDB
For analytics, consider a column-oriented database like Infobright

Database results caching
Shared memory (APC)
Distributed caching (memcached)
Zend Server data cache
But all of that doesn’t matter if your application is not optimized!

The application
No cookbook for good application design
Don’t optimize in early development, risk over-optimization
Frameworks
Frameworks can make you fall in over-architecting trap
Possible mistakes using DBAL or ORM – like lazy joins
End up making a lot more queries than necessary

The application
Write application for what it is intended to be used
(ex: file processing: load entire file v/s one line at a time: first approach works well for a few queries, but under high load 2nd approach better)

The secrets to application optimization
Using the right tools
Xdebug
Zend Server Code tracing (demo)
Profiling (demo)
Monitor execution time and memory usage
Design intelligently
Know the hardware you’re writing for and how it operates. The more you know about it, the better your app will be

Database optimizations
Statements tuning
Tables indexing
Monitor all queries to DB
Use profiling tools, if using DBAL usually provides one
ZF provides Zend_Db_Profiler that allows logging of queries to later study them (demo)
Zend_Db_Profiler_Firebug: cool tool that allows displaying all queries on Firebug. Completely independent from page itself, no interference with JSON or XML requests
Use Explain, tune criteria, avoid lazy joins

How do we fix problems
Found a bottleneck, how do we fix it?
Rewrite logic to be less demanding, or more demanding, but get to endpoint faster
Caching
File caching
Shared mem caching
Distributed (memcached)
Adding caching should be easy on a well architected app
Domain model
Caching in most cases is NOT a silver bullet.

High server loads
App is optimized, traffic growing, servers start to cough…
Where is the problem?
Your application can be cpu-bound, io-bound or memory bound. So how do you find out?
Use tools like top, vmstat, iostat
Why is this important?

Recap
Be smart!
Look at the problem, understand it, and solve it.
Using var_dump is NOT the solution, neither is shooting in the dark
Use the right toolset
Wealth of resources (white papers/webinars…) on zend.com

Thank you!
Maurice Kherlakian
maurice.k@zend.com
http://framework.zend.com
http://www.zend.com

High performance PHP: Scaling and getting the most out of your infrastructure

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