Scaling PHP Book: I will teach you to scale PHP to millions of users

Post by DanielN » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

snorkel wrote: post #38

Here's a short list: 1. Cache the output at the edges: Use Varnish or other reverse proxy cache. 2. Cache byte code: Use APC or XCache PHP opcode cache. 3. Cache and minimize database I/O: reduce database touches using memcached, redis, file caches, and application-level caches (ie. global vars) 4. Do event logging in local files, not to the database: Make all write operations as simple and fast as possible, any data…

Post by bira » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

Mikushi wrote: post #8

Good to know other people want to share about successful scaling with PHP. On the downside, I have a book cooking on the same exact subject, with release planned September (self-publish, about 80% done), but now not sure if it's worth continuing. [edit]Slight moment of "panic", as seeing someone else releasing a book on the same subject made me sad, but you're right, no reason not to continue.

Post by jakejake » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 9:35 PM UTC

rlander wrote: post #44

This fetishism with scaling... to me it's just procrastination. It feels like work because you're doing something technical but, in the end, you're adding very little to your product. Yesterday I had a meeting with a potential customer and I hated it. I hate to try to explain my SaaS software to non-technical people who treat me like some 17-year-old webmaster. I'd much rather be refactoring Clojure code. But I got o…

Post by duggan » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 10:25 PM UTC

DanielN wrote: post #61

snorkel wrote: post #38

Here's a short list: 1. Cache the output at the edges: Use Varnish or other reverse proxy cache. 2. Cache byte code: Use APC or XCache PHP opcode cache. 3. Cache and minimize database I/O: reduce database touches using memcached, redis, file caches, and application-level caches (ie. global vars) 4. Do event logging in local files, not to the database: Make all write operations as simple and fast as possible, any data…

I'm curious why you suggest avoiding ORMs. I've been debating this for a while and while I like the accessibility and abstraction that ORMs provide in Django and Rails I'm not familiar enough with Doctrine, DB_DataObject or the other PHP options to really have formed my own opinions yet. Is this a language specific suggestion or something broader? I would love to hear a deeper debate on the subject.

Post by dangrossman » Tue, Jun 05, 2012, 10:29 PM UTC

kenmazy wrote: post #68

dangrossman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you didn't, but we all knew you were talking about Hetzner. One company, selling consumer-grade desktop parts unfit for use in a production server, in one country, does not lend credibility to statements like you made. Neither does the NYC site with no info, no SLA, and again, desktop parts. It's something like saying salary isn't important to startups because labor costs in China are pennies per hour. It's 2012…

This is a bit of a tangent, but do you have any sources for consumer-grade desktop parts being lower quality than enterprise-grade? I'd like to read an in-depth hardware analysis that describes circuit board design, capacitor sourcing, etc. I'm really curious to see how different equivalently priced ASUS and supermicro boards differ.