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Supercharged PHP & Server Optimizations

By Josh Copeland

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Josh Copeland

Programming Since 2006
Working with PHP since 2010
Founder/CTO of Remote Dev Force
PHP Vegas UG Leader since 2012

Socials: @OGProgammer

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Remote Dev Force

Specializing in PHP, TF, & AWS
12+ Sr. Developers
Hundreds of completed projects
Hire one dev or an entire team

Josh@RemoteDevForce.com

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Table of contents

Servers

PHP

Frameworks

01

02

03

How to optimize linux servers, apache/nginx, and database servers.

Optimizing PHP FPM & Core.

What your options are for optimizing Laravel & Symfony.

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Metrics

Speed Index

Time to Interact

DNS Lookup Time

Error Rate

Peak Response Time

User Satisfaction

Mobile First

Time to First Byte

Web Server

Time to First Paint

Minify JS/CSS + CDN

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Metrics

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Servers

01

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Memory

Finding Memory Allocation & Utilization with “free” command

free

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Swap Memory

To disable or not to disable, that is the question.

free

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CPU

dstat

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Processes

Find what process is using a majority of the systems resources.

top

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Processes

htop

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Disk

df -h

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Monitor Disk/Memory Usage

https://github.com/RemoteDevForce/disk-mem-monitor

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Disk

ulimit -n 4096

“Too many open files”

ulimit

vi /etc/security/limits.conf

* soft nofile 1024

* hard nofile 4096

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Network Traffic

nload

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Network Traffic by Process

nethogs

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AWS Graphs

AWS

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AWS Graphs

AWS

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Web Servers

HTTP/2
Gzip
Buffer Size
Log Buffering
Low timeout values

nginx/apache

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Caching

Network caching
HTTP caching
Reverse proxy server caching
Database caching

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Varnish Cache

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PHP

02

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Upgrade PHP

5 > 7 > 8

Upgrade PHP

More for security as there probably is no speed increase but something to consider esp if you use WordPress.

If you control the server to the point where you can twiddle disable_functions in php.ini, then you also control it enough to keep it, and all the installed software, up to date with security patches, set firewall rules, run things as fastcgi / suexec under an unprivileged user, and do other common-sense things that will provide a far, far greater level of real security than worrying about PHP functions that are "dangerous." PHP isn't the only exploitable or exploited thing that provides "dangerous" functions.

If you still want to do this thing, this question on Stack Overflow contains a comprehensive list of "dangerous" functions. Read through it and you will quickly understand why there are things you can do that will be far, far more effective than crippling the language.

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Profile your code

Xdebug + Webgrind

Blackfire.io

Any PHP APM (NewRelic/Datadog/etc.)

See hot spots? Refactor those.

Code Profiling

More for security as there probably is no speed increase but something to consider esp if you use WordPress.

If you control the server to the point where you can twiddle disable_functions in php.ini, then you also control it enough to keep it, and all the installed software, up to date with security patches, set firewall rules, run things as fastcgi / suexec under an unprivileged user, and do other common-sense things that will provide a far, far greater level of real security than worrying about PHP functions that are "dangerous." PHP isn't the only exploitable or exploited thing that provides "dangerous" functions.

If you still want to do this thing, this question on Stack Overflow contains a comprehensive list of "dangerous" functions. Read through it and you will quickly understand why there are things you can do that will be far, far more effective than crippling the language.

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Use the right data types

Array
Object
NULL
Resource

Boolean
String
Integer
Float

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php -m

Double check enabled modules

php-m

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php.ini

disable_functions = system, exec, shell_exec, passthru, phpinfo, show_source, highlight_file, popen, fopen_with_path, dbmopen, dbase_open, chdir, filepro, filepro_rowcount, filepro_retrieve, posix_mkfifo, pcntl_alarm, pcntl_fork, pcntl_waitpid, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wifstopped, pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wifcontinued, pcntl_wexitstatus, pcntl_wtermsig, pcntl_wstopsig, pcntl_signal, pcntl_signal_get_handler, pcntl_signal_dispatch, pcntl_get_last_error, pcntl_strerror, pcntl_sigprocmask, pcntl_sigwaitinfo, pcntl_sigtimedwait, pcntl_exec, pcntl_getpriority, pcntl_setpriority, pcntl_async_signals

disable_functions

More for security as there probably is no speed increase but something to consider esp if you use WordPress.

If you control the server to the point where you can twiddle disable_functions in php.ini, then you also control it enough to keep it, and all the installed software, up to date with security patches, set firewall rules, run things as fastcgi / suexec under an unprivileged user, and do other common-sense things that will provide a far, far greater level of real security than worrying about PHP functions that are "dangerous." PHP isn't the only exploitable or exploited thing that provides "dangerous" functions.

If you still want to do this thing, this question on Stack Overflow contains a comprehensive list of "dangerous" functions. Read through it and you will quickly understand why there are things you can do that will be far, far more effective than crippling the language.

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php.ini

realpath_cache_size = 4096K -> 8M

realpath_cache_ttl = 120 -> 600

This value should be increased on systems where PHP opens many files, to reflect the quantity of the file operations performed.

realpath_cache_size

realpath_cache_size int

Determines the size of the realpath cache to be used by PHP. This value should be increased on systems where PHP opens many files, to reflect the quantity of the file operations performed.

The size represents the total number of bytes in the path strings stored, plus the size of the data associated with the cache entry. This means that in order to store longer paths in the cache, the cache size must be larger. This value does not directly control the number of distinct paths that can be cached.

The size required for the cache entry data is system dependent.

realpath_cache_ttl int

Duration of time (in seconds) for which to cache realpath information for a given file or directory. For systems with rarely changing files, consider increasing the value.

If you control the server to the point where you can twiddle disable_functions in php.ini, then you also control it enough to keep it, and all the installed software, up to date with security patches, set firewall rules, run things as fastcgi / suexec under an unprivileged user, and do other common-sense things that will provide a far, far greater level of real security than worrying about PHP functions that are "dangerous." PHP isn't the only exploitable or exploited thing that provides "dangerous" functions.

If you still want to do this thing, this question on Stack Overflow contains a comprehensive list of "dangerous" functions. Read through it and you will quickly understand why there are things you can do that will be far, far more effective than crippling the language.

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php-fpm tuning

pm = dynamic -> static

pm.max_children = 10 -> memory_limit ÷ total available memory

For high traffic sites, a static amount of php-fpm workers is ideal.

dynamic is ok for low traffic or admin backend sites.

ondemand is good for cpanel/mass hosting for multiple pools that get little/no traffic.

php-fpm process management

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Setting	Value
max_children	(Total RAM – Memory used for Linux, DB, etc.) / process size
start_servers	Number of CPU cores x 4
min_spare_servers	Number of CPU cores x 2
max_spare_servers	Same as start_servers

Dynamic calculation

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php.ini or pool.d/www.conf

memory_limit = 128M -> 512M*

Large queries, xdebug, or heavy reports will bloat memory usage.

Offload report queries to background php cli workers.

* The lower the better but symfony/laravel tend to eat up memory.

Memory limit

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OPCache & JIT

40%+ Increase in speed

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OPcache Ext.

PHP 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 has a PECL Extension

PHP 5.5+ requires it to be compiled as a “shared extension”

To use OPCache with Xdebug, you need to load OPCache before Xdebug.

opcache

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OPcache + JIT - php.ini

zend_extension=opcache.so

opcache.enable=1

opcache.enable_cli=1

opcache.jit_buffer_size=500000000

opcache.jit=1235

Opcache + jit

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OPcache + JIT - opcache.ini

[opcache]

opcache.enable=1

; 0 means it will check on every request

; 0 is irrelevant if opcache.validate_timestamps=0 which is desirable in production

opcache.revalidate_freq=0

opcache.validate_timestamps=1

opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000

opcache.memory_consumption=192

opcache.max_wasted_percentage=10

opcache.interned_strings_buffer=16

opcache.fast_shutdown=1

Longhorn + jit

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OPCache Preload

Check your framework or find a package.

https://github.com/Laragear/Preload

https://symfony.com/blog/php-preloading-and-symfony

opcache.preload=/app/config/preload.php

Opcache preload

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Database queries are the bottleneck 🍾

Avoid full table scans

Add Indexes to queries that search too many rows

Check slow query logs

Avoid running queries in a loop

DB

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Frameworks

03

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Async php

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Do you even PROD?

APP_ENV to prod

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Laravel

Laravel Shift - the automated way to upgrade Laravel

Update!

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Laravel

https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-debugbar

Debugbar

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Laravel

https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-debugbar

Debugbar

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Laravel

Laravel Octane uses Open Swoole, Swoole, and RoadRunner.

Octane boots your application once, keeps it in memory, and then feeds it requests at supersonic speeds.

Octane

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Eloquent

if (!Cache::has('activeTeams'))

{

$teams = User::Where('status','Active')->with('Teams')->get();

Cache::put('activeTeams', $teams, Carbon::now()->addMinutes(1));

}

else{

$teams = Cache::get('activeTeams');

}

Results Cache

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Symfony

https://symfony.com/doc/current/performance.html

Symfony Application Checklist:

Production Server Checklist:

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Doctrine

https://symfony.com/doc/current/performance.html

result_cache_driver
query_cache_driver
metadata_cache_driver
second_level_cache (2LC)
region_cache_driver

1. *result_cache_driver*:

- *What it does*: Caches the results of a specific query.

- *Why it's useful*: If you run the same query multiple times, instead of hitting the database every time, it retrieves the results from the cache, improving performance.

2. *query_cache_driver*:

- *What it does*: Caches the parsed SQL of a DQL (Doctrine Query Language) query.

- *Why it's useful*: Parsing DQL into SQL can be CPU-intensive. By caching the parsed SQL, you avoid this overhead for subsequent requests with the same DQL.

3. *metadata_cache_driver*:

- *What it does*: Caches the metadata of your entities. Metadata includes information like field mappings, associations, and other configuration details.

- *Why it's useful*: Reading metadata from annotations or configuration files can be slow. Caching it speeds up this process, especially since metadata doesn't change often.

4. *second_level_cache (2LC)*:

- *What it does*: Caches entity data across sessions/request. Unlike the first-level cache, which is request-specific, 2LC persists across multiple requests.

- *Why it's useful*: Reduces the need to hit the database for entities that have been previously fetched, improving performance for frequently accessed data.

5. *region_cache_driver*:

- *What it does*: Used specifically by the second-level cache to cache data related to specific regions (a region is a logical grouping of cache entries).

- *Why it's useful*: Allows fine-grained control and optimization of the cache by grouping related cache entries, making it easier to manage and invalidate related sets of cached data.

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Check your framework docs

Caching
Methods
Testing
Best Practices
ORM
DI/Services/Facades

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Continue the hunt for optimizations

Advanced caching strategies

by Seb Armand

Unleashing Asynchronous PHP - Boost Performance with RabbitMQ and ReactPHP

by Florian Engelhardt

2pm Tomorrow

10am Tomorrow

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Bring it around town.

What do you got to work with? What do you need?

What can you squeeze out of what you have?

Cache and optimize what you aren’t.

Make what you have better.

Server

Refactor

PHP

Framework

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RemoteDevForce.com

We can help!

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Thanks!

Do you have any questions?

Josh@RemoteDevForce.com

+1 (702) 328-8657

@RemoteDevForce

@OGProgrammer

https://joind.in/talk/b3785

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