Magento has known many functional and technical updates, as well as major security flaws, in 2014 and 2015. Many clients wish to migrate their platforms to Amazon, and to set up ASGs (Auto Scaling Groups). This presentation shows the best practices we developped or saw our clients and partners set up during these years.

1. Bargento 2015
Magento performances
Best practices 2015
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2. 7 years of experience
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

3. Realities and the myths
• Myth: SSD disks are a major key to performances
• Myth: HHVM could save us
• Myth: Varnish will save us
• Reality: PHP is the bottleneck
• Reality: MySQL is overly queried by Magento
• Reality: separation is a key
• Reality: added code is often the root cause of problems
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4. Most common problems
• Misconfigured cache systems
• Not leveraging the Reverse Proxies’ help
• Crowded .htaccess files (& lots of them)
• Crowded databases
• Terrible SQL queries
• Wrong design (load all products on the homepage)
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5. PHP
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

6. PHP: FPM can help but, first, version matters a lot
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PHP versions in
use in our parc
PHP 5.2
3%
PHP 5.3
51%
PHP 5.4
37%
PHP 5.5
9%

7. PHP: FPM can help but, first, version matters a lot
PHP performances progresses
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PHP 5.3 (deprecated) → PHP 5.6 +39,6%
PHP 5.4 (end of life) → PHP 5.6 +12,7%
PHP 5.5 → PHP 5.6 +3,5%
PHP FPM instead of Mod PHP +18,6%
Nginc + PHP FPM vs Apache PHP FPM Marginal
PHP 7 or HHVM vs PHP 5.6 *experimental* +200%

8. PHP: benefits of a 3 tiers architecture with FPM
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• Better layers and function separation (view, logic, data)
• Better stability through process independency
• More efficient resources consumption
• Easier troubleshooting
• Capacity to boost specific tiers depending on the need

9. MySQL
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

10. MySQL: Percona, a transparent booster
Not a single change needed, just pure bonus.
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MySQL 5.5 → MySQL 5.6 +17%
MySQL + Percona +20%
MySQL + Percona + XtraDB Not meaningful

11. Database: separate your key tables
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• Magento can use different database servers
• Based on accessed tables
• It is easier to specialize/customize their settings
• It avoids delaying one request, blocked by another
• Allows for more granularity (catalog, orders, logs, etc.)
• Can separate reads & writes (hence locks)

12. Database: some key settings
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• « Defaults » settings are not available since they depend on the DB
content
• Cache query is nearly mostly inefficient (& always > 1000
queries/sec)
– innodb_thread_concurrency
– table_open_cache (should be big enough to store modules tables)
– innodb_read_io_threads
– innodb_write_io_threads
– innodb_buffer_pool_size (big enough to store both data & indexes)
– max_heap_table_size
– tmp_table_size

13. Clean the database often & defragment them
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14. Can I do it with my Magento?
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

15. Versions & compatibility
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16. Caches
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

17. Black cache – PHP validates & assembles
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18. FCP very few PHP calls
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19. Custom blocks: performance killers
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20. When caches are inefficient
Example of a wrongly configured fast/slow cache duel
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21. When caches are inefficient
Example of a cache limit at 80% filling reached
Careful, 1.14.0 has compatibility issues with Redis 2.6.x
Memcached prior to 1.4.20 has a bug triggered under heavy load
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22. Key local.xml settings
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• Caches
– <slow_backend_store_data>0</slow_backend_store_data>
– <auto_refresh_fast_cache>0</auto_refresh_fast_cache>
– <compress_data>0</compress_data>
– <compress_tags>0</compress_tags>
– <lifetimelimit>86400</lifetimelimit>
• Sessions
– <timeout>3</timeout> <!-- 2.5 can lead to problems -->
– <max_concurrency>10</max_concurrency>

23. Varnish: amplifying the good, not hiding the worse
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• The problem
– Magento sends the frontend cookie with every request
– This keeps Varnish from being efficient
• Keeping SSL under control
– SSL pages are not cachable by Varnish (with Apache)
– Delay the use of SSL to Tunnel & BO (non cachable anyway)
• Use ESI best practices
– To properly leverage Varnish FPC, one needs to « punch holes »
– Those holes are filled by the dynamic information coming from the
server (server side included)
– The other parts of the page are FPCed (no PHP calls)
– Magento’s extension, « Turpenting » does this

24. Use Quanta Computing
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• In depth Magento troubleshooting
– Allow to identify bottlenecks
– Allow to measure a per user resource consumption
– Tracks blocks generation timings
• Tracking performances overtime
– Can monitor cache flush
– Can relate new code in production with performance variation

25. Code
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

26. Bad added code is the main pain point
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• Community extensions
– Most plugins are not tested by Magento
– Most are utterly wrongly done or unoptimized
– Loading too many of them burdens the whole Magento
• Home-made custom code & extensions
– Your blocks are unknown from Magento’s cache system
– Be careful about the endless « Natural Join » queries
– Test/monitor your site before and after new code is added
– Never, ever touch the CORE (or we kill a kitten)

27. Bad templates are no better
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• Sleek design is the key
– Don’t overcrowd the pages with useless features
– Don’t load too many categories / products on the homepage
– Avoid including lots of gadgets like Facebook
– Avoid including too many external services / JS
– Try to Ajaxify things
– K.I.S.S: Keep It Super Simple
– Don’t load tons of extensions as soon as the homepage
– Avoid CSS/HTML/JS errors
– Load images at the display size (not 3Mo for 300ko displayed)
– Avoid having too many (Magento) blocks on pages
– Avoid all information deactivating Varnish or FPC

28. Architecture
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

29. One server, one role
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• Caches
– Redis instances MUST be separated
– Even Redis databases should be separated (especially for multi stores)
– Redis doesn’t support latency
– So the cohabitation with DB, PHP or Apache/Nginx is bad
• PHP
– Separated processes (FPM) are better
– Separation of BO / FO / order tunnels with SSL allows for better
performances
– No need to handcuff them with the Web server
• Database
– Separate reads from writes
– Isolate highly demanded tables in another instance

30. Warnings on latency issues
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• Database
– Machines, to be redundant, have to be in separated datacenters
– Even a 2 ms latency makes a difference in the database output
• Redis
– It’s even worse for Redis

31. Amazon
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

32. AWS: use native tools
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• Taking advantage of the *real* AWS killer feature
– A Magento can be done the same way on Amazon, but you would miss
90% of the benefits of AWS
– Leveraging RDS (Postgres, Oracle, Mssql, MySQL, Aurora) is key
– RDS allows autoscalling, auto backup, auto update, replication in multi
AZ
– ELC allows to use Memcached / Redis in multi zone & fail over
– Leveraging ELB, R53, Cloud front and S3 allows a shop to be nicely
distributed

33. AWS: adjustments needed
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• No NFS or shared filesystem as such
– Use an extension to distribute media to S3 buckets
– The medias cannot be modified only on one machine
– The deployment systems must be adapted
– File locks can be tricky to handle
– Generated reports are usually local to the server
– The backoffice is handled differently (and isolated)
– Thumbnails are per servers, meaning a different way to share

34. Auto Scaling Group: doable, but technical
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• Auto Scaling Groups
– Fantastic on paper but not natively supported in Magento
– Can be achieved in several ways
– EBS can be counter productive, ephemeral FS can be better
– Since the extensible machines are mounted & dismounted on the fly,
scripts will have to post process the installation
– Doable but need a perfectly « dry » setup
– Threshold can be tricky to configure
– Less than 1/1000 of Magento stores are running (and can run) on AWS
Processing & DevOps are the key to success

35. Fine tuning
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• Caches
– Aoe_AsyncCache
– Aoe_CacheCleaner
– Aoe_static (make page cachable by Varnish)
• Magento
– Disable logs on high throughput instances
– Separate heavy duty tables in different RDS instances
http://bit.ly/1FWjn5p : Angry birds in the Cloud
http://bit.ly/1N3fuev : high performance Magento on Amazon
http://bit.ly/1R2jPiI : Basic tips & tricks about Magento per

36. AWS: a different architecture
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37. Code publishing
Magento performances
Best practices 2015

38. Code publishing automation
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• Using Git|Jenkins|Chef|Subversion|Capistrano|Turtoise
– Allows to keep track of versioning
– Allows to roll back when the site go AWOL
– Allows to use post process scripts & report
• Automating the code publishing
– The main difference is usually the local.xml file
– And some databases settings potentially
– Scripts can (& should) do the job
– Rollback should be thought carefully because of the orders registered
between the new and old site database

39. Contact
NBS System
Adresse :
8 rue Bernard Buffet,
Immeuble Le Cardinet – 5ème étage
75017 Paris
Mail : contact@nbs-system.com
Téléphone : +33.1.58.56.60.80
Support technique : +33.1.58.56.60.88
Fax : +33.1.58.56.60.81
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Atelier présenté le 13 octobre 2015 au
Bargento 2015 par Philippe Humeau
Présenté par Philippe Humeau