This document provides tips and tricks for optimizing website performance. It discusses running PHP applications on Nginx instead of Apache to improve request handling efficiency. Specific optimizations covered include using PHP-FPM or HHVM as PHP run modes, caching static assets and database queries, and leveraging Nginx caching features like FastCGI caching and integration with Memcached. Migrating to Nginx from Apache and optimizing the PHP and Nginx configuration can significantly improve a website's performance and ability to handle high traffic loads.

1. 1
Tips
and
tricks
for
high
performance
websites
Harald
Zeitlhofer
Boost
your
website
by
running
PHP
on
Nginx
@HZeitlhofer
harald.zeitlhofer@dynatrace.com

2. 2
• Technology
Strategist
at
Dynatrace
• Database
and
Web
Development
• PHP
for
more
than
15
years
• Love
to
discover
new
things
Harald
Zeitlhofer

3. 3
Tips and tricks for high performance websites

4. 4
Web
ApplicaIons

5. 5

6. 6
Modern
Web
Pages:
lots
of
staIc
content
434
Resources
in
total
on
that
page:
230
JPEGs,
75
PNGs,
50
GIFs,
…
more
than
20MB
page
size

7. 7
Fifa.com
during
Worldcup
2014
hXp://blog.dynatrace.com/2014/05/21/is-­‐the-­‐fifa-­‐world-­‐cup-­‐website-­‐ready-­‐for-­‐the-­‐tournament/
largest
item
on
page:
favicon.ico
with
370
KB!!!
but
also
some
heavyweight
CSS
and
JS
files
with
up
to
288
KB!!!

8. 8
cached
content
can
sIll
create
roundtrips
to
the
network!

9. 9
Web
Request
handling

10. 10
Web
Request
handling

11. 11
PHP
run
modes
Apache
Module
– tradiIonal
approach
– used
for
most
PHP
environments
PHP-­‐FPM
– fast
process
manager
– run
mulIple
PHP
worker
processes
to
serve
FastCGI
requests
HHVM
– Virtual
machine
for
HipHop
– fast
PHP
engine
– can
serve
FastCGI
requests

12. 12
PHP-­‐FPM
FastCGI
Process
Manager
Available
since
5.3.3
Stable
since
5.4.1

13. 13
• InstallaIon
• Pool
configuraIon
/etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
PHP-­‐FPM
[www]
user = www-data
group = www-data
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000 # for Unix socket: unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
root@hzvm01:/etc/nginx/sites-enabled# ps -ef | grep php
root 6435 1 0 14:39 ? 00:00:32 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php5/fpm/php-fpm.conf)
spelix 6439 6435 0 14:39 ? 00:00:00 php-fpm: pool batch
spelix 6440 6435 0 14:39 ? 00:00:00 php-fpm: pool batch
www-data 10576 6435 1 18:45 ? 00:00:48 php-fpm: pool www
www-data 10920 6435 1 18:47 ? 00:00:47 php-fpm: pool www
www-data 10927 6435 1 18:47 ? 00:00:46 php-fpm: pool www
sudo apt-get install php5-fpm

14. 14
HHVM
HipHop
Virtual
Machine
Facebook's
PHP
engine
JIT
compiler
supports
PHP
and
Hack

15. 15
• InstallaIon
• start
server
cd /your/root/folder
hhvm --mode server -vServer.Type=fastcgi -vServer.Port=9000
echo deb http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu trusty main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hhvm.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hhvm
hhvm --mode server -vServer.Type=fastcgi –vServer.FileSocket=/var/run/hhvm.sock

16. 16
Nginx
Lightweight
HTTP
server
Event
based
request
handling
Open
Source
project
(BSD)
Development
started
in
2002
by
Igor
Sysoev
to
solve
the
c10k
problem
Commercial
version
NGINX
Plus

17. 17
Leading
among
top
100.000
websites

18. 18
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
# max_clients = worker_processes * worker_connections
worker_processes 8; # number of CPUs
pcre_jit on; # enable JIT for regex
events {
worker_connections 1024;
multi_accept on;
}

19. 19
• StaIc
content
served
by
Nginx
• Dynamic
requests
sent
to
PHP
IntegraIon
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.yourdomain.com;
root /var/www/test;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location ~* .(html|js|css|gif|jpg|jpe|jpeg|png|bmp|tif|pdf|ico)$ {
try_files $uri =404;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location ~* .php$ {
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}

20. 20
CommunicaIon
via
sockets
• TCP
vs
Unix
• Unix
slightly
faster
when
used
on
localhost
• Use
TCP
for
high
load
location ~* .php$ {
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
}
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;

21. 21
TransacIon
flow

22. 22
hXp://www.mysite.com/news/browse/2014
è
to
be
processed
by
index.php
URL
rewrite
...
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php
...

23. 23
hXp://www.mysite.com/news/browse/2014
è
to
be
processed
by
index.php
URL
rewrite
upstream php {
server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}
server {
listen 80;
root /var/www;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name www.mysite.com;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ @missing;
}
location @missing {
rewrite (.*) /index.php;
}
location ~ .php$ {
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass php;
}
}

24. 24
using
Nginx/PHP-­‐FPM
there’s
a
beXer
way:
URL
rewrite
upstream php {
server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}
server {
listen 80;
root /var/www;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name www.mysite.com;
location /images {
try_files $uri =404;
}
location /scripts {
try_files $uri =404;
}
location / {
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/index.php;
fastcgi_pass php;
}
}
<?php
$params = explode('/', $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_URI"]);
...

25. 25
• Easy
way
to
deploy
your
applicaIon
• All
source
files
packed
into
one
*.phar
file
PHAR
–
PHP
Archives
location ~* .(php|phar)$ {
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/myapp.phar;
}

26. 26
PHAR
example
root@hzvm01:/var/www/app/src# ls -lrtR
.:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 10 16:27 lib
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27 Oct 10 16:27 index.php
./lib:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 87 Oct 10 16:27 App.php
root@hzvm01:/var/www/app/src# cat index.php
<?php
$app = new App();
?>
root@hzvm01:/var/www/app/src# cat lib/App.php
<?php
class App {
function __construct() {
echo "Starting Applicationn";
}
}

27. 27
PHAR
example
location /myapp {
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/myapp.phar;
}
root@hzvm01:/var/www/app# phar pack -f myapp.phar src
lib/App.php
index.php
root@hzvm01:/var/www/app# l myapp.phar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6923 Oct 10 19:51 myapp.phar

28. 28
PHAR
execuIon

29. 29
Nginx
and
Caching

30. 30
• Part
of
Nginx'
FastCGI
module
Nginx
FastCGI
cache
fastcgi_cache_path /etc/nginx/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=APPKEY:100m inactive=60m;
fastcgi_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri";
location ~* .php$ {
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_cache APPKEY;
fastcgi_cache_valid 200 60m;
}

31. 31
FastCGI
cache
in
acIon

32. 32
FastCGI
cache
in
acIon
<?php
echo time()."n";
?>

33. 33
FastCGI
cache
in
acIon
<?php
echo time()."n";
?>

34. 34
Full
page
cache
with
Memcached
<?php
...
function __construct () {
$this->c = new Memcached();
$this->c->addServer('localhost',11211);
}
function setCache ($key, $content) {
$this->c->set($key, $content);
}
...
// get HTML content
$html = $this->renderPage();
$this->setCache($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $html);
...
?>

35. 35
Data
cache
with
Memcached
<?php
...
function __construct () {
$this->c = new Memcached();
$this->c->addServer('localhost',11211);
}
function setCache ($key, $content) {
$this->c->set($key, $content);
}
...
// get data structure
$newslist = $this->getNewsList();
$this->setCache('/data/news/getlist', json_encode($newslist));
...
?>

36. 36
• ngx_hXp_memcached_module
Full
page
/
data
cache
with
Nginx
and
Memcached
upstream php {
server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}
server {
location / {
set $memcached_key "$uri";
memcached_pass localhost:11211;
error_page 404 502 504 = @notincache;
}
location @notincache {
fastcgi_pass php;
}
}

37. 37
PHP,
5k
requests,
concurrency
100
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Apache+PHP
Nginx+PHP
Nginx+Memcached
<?php
echo "Hello World";
?>
7,28
4,6
3,05
total
Ime
in
sec

38. 38
• set
HTTP
response
expires
header
Caching
StaIc
Content
location ~ .(html|js|css|gif|jpg|jpe|jpeg|png|bmp|tif|pdf|ico)$ {
expires 365d;
access_log off;
error_log off;
log_not_found off;
add_header Cache-Control "public";
try_files $uri =404;
}

39. 39
• keep
handlers
for
requested
staIc
files
open
Filehandle
Caching
open_file_cache max=1000 inactive=5m;
open_file_cache_valid 60s;
open_file_cache_min_uses 5;
open_file_cache_errors off;

40. 40
Load
balancing
upstream php {
ip_hash;
server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock weight=5;
server 192.168.56.12:9000 weight=2;
server 192.168.56.13:9000;
server 192.168.56.14:9000 backup;
}
server {
listen 80;
root /home/www/test;
server_name test.hzvm01;
location / {
try_files $uri =405;
}
location ~ .php$ {
fastcgi_pass php;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}

41. 41
• Methods
• round-­‐robin
• least-­‐connected
(least_conn)
• session
persistence
(ip_hash)
• Weighted
load
balancing
• Health
checks
• max_fails
• fail_Imeout
Load
balancing

42. 42
more
performance
tuning
location ~ .(html|js|css|gif|jpg|jpe|jpeg|png|bmp|tif|pdf|ico)$ {
expires 365d;
access_log off;
error_log off;
log_not_found off;
add_header Cache-Control "public";
try_files $uri =404;
}

43. 43
news
from
the
NGINX
front

44. 44
• remove
the
spdy
parameter
from
all
listen
direcIves
!!!
HTTP/2
server {
listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
ssl_certificate server.crt;
ssl_certificate_key server.key;
...
}

45. 45
• first
preview
announced
at
nginx.conf
2015
• custom
JS
engine
• one
VM
for
each
request
• JS
snippets
embedded
in
NGINX
configuraIon
• evaluated
at
runIme
nginScript

46. 46
nginScript
–
js_set
http {
js_set $hello_world "
var str = 'Hello World!';
// JavaScript
str;
";
server {
...
location /{
return 200 $hello_world;
}
}
}

47. 47
nginScript
–
js_run
location / {
js_run "
var res;
res = $r.response;
res.status = 200;
res.send('Hello World!');
res.finish();
";
}

48. 48
nginScript
–
request
parameters
http {
js_set $summary "
var a, s, h;
s += 'Method: ' + $r.method + 'n' + 'HTTP version: ' + $r.httpVersion + 'n';
s += 'Host: ' + $r.headers.host + 'n' + 'Remote Address: ' + $r.remoteAddress + 'n';
s += 'URI: ' + $r.uri + 'n';
s += 'Headers:n';
for (h in $r.headers) {
s += ' header "' + h + '" is "' + $r.headers[h] + '"n';
}
s += 'Args:n';
for (a in $r.args) {
s += ' arg "' + a + '" is "' + $r.args[a] + '"n';
}
s;
";
server {
listen 8000;
location /summary {
return 200 $summary;
}
}

49. 49
• easy
distribuIon
of
3rd
party
modules
to
end
users
• migraIon
of
exisIng
modules
(rebuild)
• only
cerIfied
modules
loadable
in
NGINX
Plus
Dynamic
modules

50. 50
• Nginx
running
with
default
sepngs
• Apache
• AllowOverride
None
• MulI-­‐process
(prefork)
mode
to
allow
usage
of
mod_php
Benchmarking
Nginx
vs
Apache

51. 51
StaIc
HTML,
10k
requests
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
100
500
1000
2000
Apache/2.4.9
nginx/1.1.19
concurrency
Total
response
Ime
[sec]

52. 52
Performance
Monitoring

53. 53
• Load
Generator
(Apache
Benchmark,
Selenium,
JMeter)
• Firebug,
Google
Developer
Tools
Dynatrace
Ajax
EdiIon
• Dynatrace
Free
Trial
• Free
trial
license
for
30
days
• Free
personal
license
for
developers
My
favorite
performance
tools
hXp://bit.ly/dXrial

54. 54
www.dynatrace.com
Thank you !!!
Harald
Zeitlhofer
Performance
Advocate
#HZeitlhofer
harald.zeitlhofer@dynatrace.com
blog.dynatrace.com
Dynatrace
Free
Trial
Free
Personal
License
hDp://bit.ly/dDrial