Forum: NGINX Nginx, PHP, Wordpress, VirtualBox

Dunno if anyone's running anything similar.  I recently shifted to Nginx
from Cherokee - and in so doing I setup a virtual server using
VirtualBox to run it in.  My primary use is for serving a pair of
Wordpress sites.

This is not (currently) a high-traffic server - but I do want it to run
well regardless.  My current configuration for the virtual hardware is 1
CPU and 1G RAM.  Nginx (obviously) is installed, as is php-fpm.  Mysql
is running on the host - both host & guest are Ubuntu.

Generally, of that 1G I see half in-use, a quarter cached, and a quarter
free.  So my first reaction is I don't THINK I'm starving the VM for RAM
- but maybe I'm missing something.

I generally don't seeing anything actively running except for php during
a request - which hits 25% usage.

Any suggestions for modifying my virtual or nginx config?  Or do I need
to focus on Wordpress caching?
--
Daniel

On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 15:40 -0800, Daniel L. Miller wrote:
> Generally, of that 1G I see half in-use, a quarter cached, and a quarter
> free.  So my first reaction is I don't THINK I'm starving the VM for RAM
> - but maybe I'm missing something.
>
> I generally don't seeing anything actively running except for php during
> a request - which hits 25% usage.
>
> Any suggestions for modifying my virtual or nginx config?  Or do I need
> to focus on Wordpress caching?

You don't say what the problem is, but if it's performance, look at:

1. Host database config
2. PHP config - memory use
3. Add an opcode cacher - APC seems to work best on php-fpm
4. Nginx config - compression, expiry headers, fpm resources.

TBH I feel that WP caching options are for those without the ability to
to the job properly - ie cannot tune their servers.

...but it all sounds ok to me TBH. I run pure nginx servers on KVM VPSes
with 128MB - and they only use half of that.

hth,

Steve

On 1/10/2013 3:49 PM, Steve Holdoway wrote:
>>
>
>
LOL - you're right!  I didn't mention what my problem might be!

Yes, it was a performance concern.  My site's rather small - basically a
corporate vanity site - and I haven't been slashdotted yet...so I don't
think it's a huge issue now...

It just "felt" like it was running slow.  I did just switch from xcache
to apc - and also adjusted the apc settings to where they might do some
good.

I also just realized that many of my caching options get invalidated
when I access the site as a logged-in admin.  That all by itself makes a
HUGE difference!
--
Daniel

> On 1/10/2013 3:49 PM, Steve Holdoway wrote:
>> You don't say what the problem is, but if it's performance, look at:
>>
>> 1. Host database config
>> 2. PHP config - memory use
>> 3. Add an opcode cacher - APC seems to work best on php-fpm
>> 4. Nginx config - compression, expiry headers, fpm resources.
>>
>> TBH I feel that WP caching options are for those without the ability to
>> to the job properly - ie cannot tune their servers.

Not sure what you are referring to here. The premise is that caching for
WordPress is a must:

I am running a WordPress site with nginx, php-fpm, and APC on a low
performance machine with two cores. Without caching, it is able to serve
about 5 page requests per second. At this request rate, php-fpm
constantly produces 100 % CPU load on both cores. The take-home message
is that WordPress is bloated and requires its resources. Maybe this is
still tunable in order to increase performance by a few or even 100
percent. But this is not worth the effort, because with enabled nginx
fastcgi_cache the server easily answers thousands of requests per
second, i.e. exhibits several orders of magnitude more performance.

Some people are using a caching plugin for WordPress itself -- which is
a good solution when using a shared hosting platform without the chance
to change the web stack or change the web server configuration.

Others implement caching below the web application level as I did. This
is a cleaner and probably faster solution. In any case, caching for
WordPress is a must.

Cheers,

Jan-Philip

On 11/01/13 22:04, Jan-Philip Gehrcke wrote:
>
> enabled nginx fastcgi_cache the server easily answers thousands of
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jan-Philip
So you agree with me then...

On 1/10/2013 3:49 PM, Steve Holdoway wrote:
> ...but it all sounds ok to me TBH. I run pure nginx servers on KVM VPSes
> with 128MB - and they only use half of that.
>
Do you have php or other services running on other VM's than the ngninx
servers with such minimum settings?
--
Daniel

On 12/01/2013, at 6:49 AM, "Daniel L. Miller" <dmiller@amfes.com> wrote:

>>
> http://mailman.nginx.org/mailman/listinfo/nginx
Yes, they were running on the physical server.

Steve