The document discusses strategies to scale PHP web applications in preparation for peak seasons, emphasizing the importance of scalability over raw performance. It outlines best practices, such as breaking down applications into components, utilizing caching, optimizing server environments, and ensuring high availability. Key considerations include load balancing, reducing database connections, and effectively monitoring application performance.

1. Scale your PHP web app to get
ready for the peak season
harald.zeitlhofer@dynatrace.com
@HZeitlhofer

2. Harald Zeitlhofer
• Technology Strategist at Dynatrace
• Database and Web Development
• Love to discover new things

3. Our online shop is too slow!
We need to scale up!!!

4. Performance vs Scalability

8. Does performance matter?

15. Scalability is more
• Create well sized environment
• Ensure high availability
• Ensure high performance
• Handle large number of transactions
• Respond to changed load conditions
• Respond to feature requests
• Find and fix problems fast

16. ?

17. Bad News
PHP is slower than Java

18. PHP is not the
bottleneck
Good News

20. Prepare to scale
• Break your application down into smaller components
• Frontend
• Load Balancer
• Web Server
• Caching Server
• PHP engine
• Database
• Avoid bottlenecks
• Reduce load

21. Web Request handling

22. cached content
can still create roundtrips
to the network!

23. Split web server and PHP engine
http://www.slideshare.net/HaraldZeitlhofer/boost-your-website-by-running-php-on-nginx

24. 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;
server 192.168.58.21:9000 backup;
}
server {
listen 80;
root /var/www/mysite;
server_name www.mysite.com;
location / {
try_files $uri =405;
}
location ~ .php$ {
fastcgi_pass php;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}

26. Optimize first ?

27. Example:
“we have to catch more mice”

28. So far we only got two cats…

30. Focus on what’s needed
Do not over-optimize

31. PHP tier represents
a major global bottleneck
for page load times
Example: Performance hotspot PHP execution

32. lessc CSS
preprocessor
social login
module
slow PHP
execution
Major performance hotspots

33. less CSS preprocessor

34. server-side calls to
unused external services
Social Login Module

35. average contribution of
PHP compilation time
Slow PHP execution? Outdated PHP version?

38. 7:00 a.m.
Low Load and Service running
on minimum redudancy
12:00 p.m.
Scaled up service during peak load
with failover of problematic node
7:00 p.m.
Scaled down again to lower load
and move to different geo location
Deployments are no longer static

43. Performance problem after upscaling

47. Database Access
• Size server (cluster) appropriately for maximum number of connected
instances
• Reduce connections
• Reduce SQL statements
• Leverage caching

48. Caching != Caching

49. Client Side Caching

50. Server Side Caching

51. Varnish

52. Varnish

53. Nginx FastCGI cache
• Part of Nginx' FastCGI module
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;
}

56. Data cache with Memcached
<?php
...
function __construct () {
$this->c = new Memcached();
$this->c->addServer('memcached.server',11211);
}
function setCache ($key, $content) {
$this->c->set($key, $content);
}
...
// get data structure
$this->setCache('/gis/cave/getGeoJSON/'.$this->id, $this->getGeoJSON());
...
?>

57. Access cached data with Nginx
upstream php {
server 192.168.56.1:9000;
}
server {
location /gis/cave/getGeoJSON {
set $memcached_key "$uri";
memcached_pass memcached.server:11211;
error_page 404 502 504 = @notincache;
}
location @notincache {
fastcgi_pass php;
}
}

58. my first microservice architecture

59. Browser Cache Webserver PHP Database
3rd party 3rd party
Java, .Net,
Node.js, …

60. Application Performance Management

66. Database Health

68. Charting
data in
business
dashboards

69. What have we learned today about scaling?
• Create well sized environment
• Ensure high availability
• Ensure high performance
• Handle large number of transactions
• Respond to changed load conditions
• Respond to feature requests
• Find and fix problems fast
• Monitor properly

70. Harald Zeitlhofer
Performance Advocate
@HZeitlhofer
harald.zeitlhofer@dynatrace.com
http://blog.dynatrace.com
Dynatrace Free Trial
Free Personal License
Ruxit Free Trial
http://bit.ly/monitoring-2016