This group is dedicated to solutions and approaches for high traffic, high performing Drupal sites. As such, it will deal with a lot of information around the rest of a typical Drupal "stack" -- the operating system, web server, database, and PHP tweaks that combine to support the Drupal application.
This is not a support channel or a place to post bug reports.
If you think you have found a bug, use the issue queue for the appropriate project.
If you need support, see http://drupal.org/support for options.
Managing Performance of Drupal when in Maintenance mode
One of my sites runs behind two Varnish dedicated servers with something like 12 web servers running Pressflow 6 and four MySQL full InnoDB database servers. This more than handles the load the site runs on.....until.....I put it into maintenance mode.
At this point Varnish stops caching the pages as they aren't sending HTTP 200.
The load average on the Apache/PHP boxes shoots very quickly to above 100 and in general the boxes are looking for cliffs to jump off.
I'm wondering what others do about this.
I think these are some options.
Read morePartial page caching
Hi,
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask. I need to improve my drupal performance, so I'm investigating possible solutions: boost, memcache, native drupal DB cache etc.
I've a minor issue: some of the pages contains dynamic data, like counters. the counter is a field of a custom node type. And this field can be updated at the database by some other scripts. So, the anonymous user should see the correct counter value even if we have a caching. Actually we need something like partial page / node caching. The page should be cached but that counter should be taken from DB.
Nginx reverse proxy , Apache Drupal and Boost
A nice way to add performance to your drupal site is by adding Nginx in front of your web server to act as a reverse proxy. I have summarized my configuration which puts Nginx in front of an existing Apache / drupal site. Not only can it serve images and other static files, but I have made the tweaks to the configuration file to serve up the boost cached files directly from the Nginx front end.
My testing shows it to be very, very quick. The best thing, is that it can be tested on a production server with no impact.
Read moreRolling Deploys
I am researching how we can build a rolling deploy architecture for Drupal. Here is the high level goal:
1) I begin a software deploy, users are not affected by this
2) Software deploy is complete, users are not affected by this
3) I switch my load balancer such that only certain networks are directed at the new code, my internal testers test. External normal users are not affected by this.
4) After verification, I open the site wider, allowing a small % of normal users into the site. Most normal external users are not affected by this.
Nodjs.module alpha4 released
Hot off the press:
http://drupal.org/node/1100868
What else do people want to see before we start considering beta tags?
Read moreRecommendations and Best Practices for making MySQL DB changes per tuning-primer.sh and mysql slow table log.
I am running tuning-primer.sh and mysqltuner.pl
mysqltuner.pl says:
General recommendations:
Run OPTIMIZE TABLE to defragment tables for better performance
Adjust your join queries to always utilize indexes
When making adjustments, make tmp_table_size/max_heap_table_size equal
Reduce your SELECT DISTINCT queries without LIMIT clauses
Increase table_cache gradually to avoid file descriptor limits
Variables to adjust:
join_buffer_size (> 128.0K, or always use indexes with joins)
tmp_table_size (> 50M)
max_heap_table_size (> 50M)
Amazon s3 file serving with nginx & proxy_pass
Hello,
Problem: Drupal hosted on a VPS and files(images/css/pdfs etc) served from amazon S3
I'm aware of CDN module, but instead of rewrite urls I would like to instruct nginx to serve amazon s3 files transparently. Is it possible ?
Read moreAutomated performance testing for core - BOF/discussion notes
This is a summary of some of the discussions around automated performance testing of core at DrupalCon Chicago. It's incomplete, but this is a wiki so please help fill in the gaps.
Test runs
Rather than trying to integrate this with PIFR, we want to run tests against git branches triggered by git pushes. Initially this would allow for post-commit/push testing of HEAD, which would only find regressions after the fact, but from there we can extend this to forks of HEAD in sandboxes, per-issue branches etc.
Read moreMulti-colo site architecture options / example sites
Hi,
I'm an architect working on a project to rebuild our current consumer site, possibly using Drupal, and am new to Drupal and learning as much as I can as fast as I can. We currently serve all users to our site out of a single colocation (colo), but in the near future are planning to add additional colos in other geographic locations and serve the site concurrently from them all, with users being routed to the nearest colo.
Read moreMonitoring & Instrumenting Drupal Performance in Production via New Relic
Hi everyone - New Relic is here at DrupalCon and we've had a ton of conversations with folks here about drupal performance and visibility into Drupal's behavior. Dries' even mentioned it as a core pillar moving forward at his keynote. We're focused on performance and want to make sure we open up the ability for anyone in the Drupal community to sign up for our free month program. Sign up here: https://rpm.newrelic.com/signup/18 and enter the promo code "DRUPALCON" . For more information, read Dries' blog post. http://buytaert.net/playing-with-new-relic-on-acquia-hosting
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