Performance Optimization

Optimize PHP performance

PHP-FPM configuration

PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation adjusted for better handling of the heavy workload.

The recommended configuration of the PHP-FPM is provided below.

[www]
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
; or
; listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock

listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1

pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 128
pm.start_servers = 8
pm.min_spare_servers = 4
pm.max_spare_servers = 8
pm.max_requests = 512

catch_workers_output = yes

Note

Make sure that Nginx fastcgi_pass and PHP-FPM listen options are aligned.

Optimize PHP Runtime Compilation

Use an OpCache bytecode engine to cache bytecode representation of the PHP code and save time on the repetitive runtime compilation.

Please install Opcache php-extension and configure it in the following way:

opcache.enable=1
opcache.enable_cli=0
opcache.memory_consumption=512
opcache.max_accelerated_files=65407
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=32
#http://symfony.com/doc/current/performance.html
realpath_cache_size=4096K
realpath_cache_ttl=600

Note

The opcache.load_comments and opcache.save_comments parameters are enabled by default and should remain so for Oro application operation. Please do not disable them.

Optimize Web Server Performance

You can improve your website performance by turning on compression and caching. This is configured on your web server.

For Nginx

1. To enable gzip compression, add the following into your nginx.conf or website configuration file:

gzip on;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_comp_level 5;
gzip_disable "msie6";
gzip_min_length 1000;
gzip_http_version 1.0;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/plain application/javascript application/x-javascript text/javascript text/xml text/css image/svg+xml;
gzip_vary on;

Note

Nginx.conf is usually located at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

2. To install pagespeed_mod for nginx, use the build ngx pagespeed from source guidance.

To enable HTML compression, add the following lines into your nginx.conf or website configuration file in sections server or http:

pagespeed on;
pagespeed FileCachePath "/var/cache/ngx_pagespeed";
pagespeed EnableFilters collapse_whitespace;
pagespeed Disallow "*.svg*";

Note

Nginx.conf is usually located at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

3. To enable caching, insert the following in the server section of your website configuration file:

server {
     # One week for javascript and css
     location ~* \.(?:css|js) {
       expires 1w;
       access_log off;
       add_header Cache-Control public;
     }

     # Three weeks for media: images, fonts, icons, video, audio etc.
     location ~* \.(?:jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|tiff|woff|eot|ttf|svg|svgz|mp4|ogg|ogv|webm|swf|flv)$ {
       if ( -f $request_filename ) { expires 3w; add_header "Cache-Control" "public"; }
       try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
       access_log off;
     }
}

For Apache

If you are using Apache as your web server, you already have the necessary configuration in the public/.htaccess file.

However, this configuration relies on the mod_deflate and mod_headers modules that are needed for the compression and caching to work. Ensure these modules are enabled in Apache configuration.

1. To enable compression, ensure that the mod_deflate module is loaded in your Apache config file as illustrated below:

   LoadModule deflate_module libexec/apache2/mod_deflate.so
   

   Note

   Apache configuration is usually located at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

   The out-of-the-box configuration for the compression in the .htaccess file is following:

   <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml application/xhtml+xml
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
       AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font application/x-font-truetype application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-otf application/x-font-opentype application/vnd.ms-fontobject font/ttf font/otf font/opentype
       BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
   </IfModule>
   

2. To install Pagespeed module for Apache, follow the guidance on installing from Apache-only packages. To enable HTML compression, ensure that these lines are uncommetned in pagespeed.conf:

   ModPagespeed On
   ModPagespeedFileCachePath "/var/cache/mod_pagespeed/"
   ModPagespeedEnableFilters collapse_whitespace
   AddOutputFilterByType MOD_PAGESPEED_OUTPUT_FILTER text/html
   

3. To enable caching, ensure that mod_headers is loaded in your Apache config file as shown below:

   LoadModule headers_module libexec/apache2/mod_headers.so
   

   The out-of-the-box configuration for caching in the .htaccess file is the following:

Optimize Elasticsearch

There are a few ways to tune up search speed performance:

• Give memory to the filesystem cache

• Use faster drives (SSD instead of HD, local storage over virtual)

• Search fewer fields

• Warm up the filesystem cache

See more information on optimizing search speed on Elasticsearch website.

To tune for indexing speed, you can try the following recommendations:

• Use multiple workers/threads to send data to Elasticsearch to use all resources of the cluster

• Increase index.refresh_interval to allow larger segments to flush and decreases future merge pressure

• Disable refresh and replicas for initial loads

• Disable swapping

• Give memory to the filesystem cache

• Use faster hardware

See more information on optimizing indexing speed on Elasticsearch website.

Also, keep in mind that using Elasticsearch with PostgreSQL, Redis and/or Rabbit on one server is not recommended to avoid slow performance.

Optimize Redis

To optimize Redis, try the following configurations for performance optimization:

• Limits

  maxclients 100000
  maxmemory 512mb
  maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru
  maxmemory-samples 3
  

• Append only mode

  appendonly no
  appendfsync everysec
  no-appendfsync-on-rewrite no
  auto-aof-rewrite-percentage 100
  auto-aof-rewrite-min-size 64
  

• Slow log

  slowlog-log-slower-than 10000
  slowlog-max-len 1024
  

• Advanced config

  hash-max-ziplist-entries 512
  hash-max-ziplist-value 64
  list-max-ziplist-entries 512
  list-max-ziplist-value 64
  set-max-intset-entries 512
  zset-max-ziplist-entries 128
  zset-max-ziplist-value 64
  activerehashing yes
  

The complete configuration recommendations is available in the Redis configuration file example.

You can find more information on memory optimization on Redis website.

Optimize PostgreSQL

The following recommendations can highly improve PostgreSQL performance:

• Increase the shared_buffers value in postgresql.conf. The shared_buffers parameter defines how much dedicated memory PostgreSQL uses for the cache. The recommended value is 25% of your total machine RAM, but the value can be lower or higher depending on your system configuration. Try finding the right balance by altering the values.

• Increase the effective_cache_size value in postgresql.conf. The parameter specifies the amount of memory available in the OS and PostgreSQL buffer caches. Usually, it should be more than 50% of the total memory. Otherwise, it may slow down the performance.

• Increase the work_mem value if you need to do complex sorting. But keep in mind that setting this parameter globally can cause significant memory usage. So it is recommended to modify the option at the session level.

• Increase the checkpoint_segments value to make checkpoints less frequent and less resource-consuming.

• Increase the max_fsm_pages and max_fsm_relations value. In a busy database, set the parameter to higher than 1000.

• Reduce the random_page_cost value. It encourages the query optimizer to use random access index scans.

For more optimization configurations, see PostgreSQL website.

Optimize Symfony

You can make Symfony faster if you optimize your servers and applications:

• Use the OPcache byte code cache to avoid having to recompile PHP files for every request

• Configure OPcache for maximum performance

  ; php.ini
  ; maximum memory that OPcache can use to store compiled PHP files
  opcache.memory_consumption=256
  
  ; maximum number of files that can be stored in the cache
  opcache.max_accelerated_files=20000
  

• Do not check PHP files timestamps. By default, OPcache checks if cached files have changed their contents since they were cached. This check introduces some overhead that can be avoided as follows:

  ; php.ini
  opcache.validate_timestamps=0
  

  After each deployment, empty and regenerate the cache of OPcache.

• Configure the PHP realpath cache

  ; php.ini
  ; maximum memory allocated to store the results
  realpath_cache_size=4096K
  
  ; save the results for 10 minutes (600 seconds)
  realpath_cache_ttl=600
  

• Optimize Composer autoloader

  composer dump-autoload --optimize --no-dev --classmap-authoritative
  

For more information on Symfony performance optimization, see the list of all recommendations on the Symfony website.

Improve Doctrine Performance

There are several things you can do to improve Doctrine performance:

• Use the EXTRA_LAZY fetch-mode feature for collections to avoid performance and memory problems initializing references to large collections.

• Mark a many-to-one or one-to-one association as fetched temporarily to batch fetch these entities using a WHERE ..IN query.

  $query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u FROM MyProject\User u");
  $query->setFetchMode("MyProject\User", "address", \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata::FETCH_EAGER);
  $query->execute();
  

More recommendations on improving Doctrine performance are available on the Doctrine website.

Optimize Message Queue Consumers

MQ consumers can take up a lot of CPU time. To avoid this, consider moving consumers to a separate node, or have enough CPU cores in the main node.

Use Blackfire to Profile Requests

You can use Blackfire at any stage of the application’s lifecycle to gather data about the behavior of your current codebase, analyze profiles and optimize the code.

Using Blackfire, you can find and fix performance issues by using the following methods:

• Profile key pages

• Select the slowest ones

• Compare and analyze profiles to spot differences and bottlenecks (on all dimensions)

• Find the biggest bottlenecks

• Try to fix the issue or improve the overall performance

• Check that tests are not broken

• Generate a profile of the updated version of the code

• Compare the new profile with the first one

• Rinse and repeat

Read more on how to use Blackfire in its documentation portal.