Basic Tuning

Redis Single Server

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Major	30 minutes

Important

This guide is intended for UNIT3D v7.0.0 + instances.

Introduction

If your Redis service is running on your web server, it is highly recommended that you use Unix sockets instead of TCP ports to communicate with your web server.

Based on the Redis official benchmark, you can improve performance by upto 50% using unix sockets (versus TCP ports) on Redis.

Of course, unix sockets can only be used if both your Laravel application and Redis are running on the same server.

How To Enable Unix Sockets

First, create the redis folder that the unix socket will be in and set appropriate permissions:

sudo mkdir -p /var/run/redis/
sudo chown -R redis:www-data /var/run/redis
sudo usermod -aG redis www-data

Next, add the unix socket path and permissions in your Redis configuration file (typically at /etc/redis/redis.conf):

unixsocket /var/run/redis/redis.sock
unixsocketperm 770

Finally, set your corresponding env variables to the socket path as above:

REDIS_HOST=/var/run/redis/redis.sock
REDIS_PORT=-1
REDIS_SCHEME=unix

Ensure that you have your config/database.php file refer to the above variables (notice the scheme addition below):

'redis' => [
    'client' => env('REDIS_CLIENT', 'phpredis'),
    
    'options' => [
        'scheme' => env('REDIS_SCHEME', 'tcp'),
    ],

    'default' => [
        'url' => env('REDIS_URL'),
        'host' => env('REDIS_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
        'password' => env('REDIS_PASSWORD', null),
        'port' => env('REDIS_PORT', '6379'),
        'database' => env('REDIS_DB', '0'),
    ],

    'cache' => [
        'url' => env('REDIS_URL'),
        'host' => env('REDIS_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
        'password' => env('REDIS_PASSWORD', null),
        'port' => env('REDIS_PORT', '6379'),
        'database' => env('REDIS_CACHE_DB', '1'),
    ],
],

References

• Redis Official Benchmark on Socket vs TCP
• Laravel Documentation on Redis

Note

Keep in mind that when using unix socket you will now connect to redis-cli in terminal like so: redis-cli -s /var/run/redis/redis.sock

MySQL Single Server

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Major	10 minutes

Introduction

If your MySQL database is running on your web server, it is highly recommended that you use Unix sockets instead of TCP ports to communicate with your web server.

Based on Percona's benchmark, you can improve performance by upto 50% using unix sockets (versus TCP portson MySQL.

Of course, unix sockets can only be used if both your UNIT3D application and database are running on the same server which is by default.

How To Enable Unix Sockets

First, open your MySQL configuration file.

nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Then, uncomment and change (if needed) the socket parameter in the [mysqld] section of one of the above configuration files:

[mysqld]
user            = mysql
pid-file        = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket          = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port            = 3306

Close this file, then ensure that the mysqld.sock file exists by running an ls command on the directory where MySQL expects to find it:

ls -a /var/run/mysqld/

If the socket file exists, you will see it in this command’s output:

Output . .. mysqld.pid mysqld.sock mysqld.sock.lock If the file does not exist, the reason may be that MySQL is trying to create it, but does not have adequate permissions to do so. You can ensure that the correct permissions are in place by changing the directory’s ownership to the mysql user and group:

sudo chown mysql:mysql /var/run/mysqld/

Then ensure that the mysql user has the appropriate permissions over the directory. Setting these to 775 will work in most cases:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/run/mysqld/

Finally, set your database.connections.mysql.unix_socket configuration variable or the corresponding env variable to the socket path as above:

DB_SOCKET=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Once that's all done simply refresh your cache and then restart the services.

php artisan set:all_cache

sudo service mysql restart && sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm && sudo service nginx restart

References

• Percona Benchmark (Unix vs TCP)
• MySQL Unix Socket Setup
• MySQL Shell Connections Guide

Composer Autoloader Optimization

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Moderate	5 minutes

Introduction

Due to the way PSR-0/4 autoloading rules are defined, the Composer autoloader checks the filesystem before resolving a classname conclusively.

In production, Composer allows for optimization to convert the PSR-0 and PSR-4 autoloading rules into classmap rules, making autoloading quite a bit faster. In production we also don't need all the require-dev dependencies loaded up!

How To Optimize?

It's really simple. SSH to your server and run the following commands.

composer install --prefer-dist --no-dev

composer dump-autoload --optimize

References

• https://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/autoloader-optimization.md

PHP8 OPCache

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Major	10 minutes

Important

This guide is intended for UNIT3D v7.0.0 + instances.

Introduction

Opcache provides massive performance gains. One of the benchmarks suggest it can provide a 5.5X performance gain in a Laravel application!

What is OPcache? Every time you execute a PHP script, the script needs to be compiled to byte code. OPCache leverages a cache for this bytecode, so the next time the same script is requested, it doesn’t have to recompile it. This can save some precious execution time, and thus make UNIT3D faster.

Sounds awesome, so how can you use it? Easy. SSH to your server and run the following command. sudo nano /etc/php/8.2/fpm/php.ini This is assuming your on PHP 8.2. If not then adjust the command. Once you have the config open search for opcache.

Now you can change some values, I will walk you through the most important ones.

opcache.enable=1 This of course, enables OPcache for php-fpm. Make sure it is uncommented. AKA remove the;

opcache.enable_cli=1 This of course, enables OPcache for php-cli. Make sure it is uncommented. AKA remove the;

opcache.memory_consumption=256M How many Megabyte you want to assign to OPCache. Choose anything higher than 64 (default value) depending on your needs. 2GB is sufficient but if have more RAM then make use of it! Make sure it is uncommented. AKA remove the;

opcache.interned_strings_buffer=64 How many Megabyte you want to assign to interned strings. Choose anything higher than 16 (default value). 1GB is sufficient but if have more RAM then make use of it! Make sure it is uncommented. AKA remove the;

opcache.validate_timestamps=0 This will revalidate the script. If you set this to 0 (best performance), you need to manually clear the OPcache every time your PHP code changes. So if you update UNIT3D using php artisan git:update or manually make changes yourself you need to run sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm afterwords for your changes to take effect and show. Make sure it is uncommented. AKA remove the;

opcache.save_comments=1 This will preserve comments in your script, I recommend to keep this enabled, as some libraries depend on it, and I couldn’t find any benefits from disabling it (except from saving a few bytes RAM). Make sure it is uncommented. AKA remove the;

And there you have it folks. Experiment with these values, depending the resources of your server. Save the file and exit and restart PHP sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm.

Enjoy! 🖖

PHP 8 Preloading

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Major	5 minutes

Important

This guide is intended for UNIT3D v7.0.0 + instances.

Introduction

This is chaining off Want More Performance? Lets talk about OPCache! guide. You must have OPCache enabled to use preloading.

PHP preloading for PHP >=7.4. Preloading is a feature of php that will pre-compile php functions and classes to opcache. Thus, this becomes available in your programs with out needing to require the files, which improves speed. To read more on php preloading you can see the opcache.preloading documentation.

Enabling Preloading

SSH to your server and run the following command. sudo nano /etc/php/8.2/fpm/php.ini This is assuming your on PHP 8.1. If not then adjust the command. Once you have the config open search for preload.

Now you can change some values.

; Specifies a PHP script that is going to be compiled and executed at server
; start-up.
; https://php.net/opcache.preload
opcache.preload = '/var/www/html/preload.php';

; Preloading code as root is not allowed for security reasons. This directive
; facilitates to let the preloading to be run as another user.
; https://php.net/opcache.preload_user
opcache.preload_user=ubuntu

As you can see we are calling the preload file included in UNIT3D located in /var/www/html/preload.php. opcache.preload_user=ubuntu you should changed to your server user. Not root!!!!

And there you have it folks. Save the file and exit and restart PHP sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm. You are now preloading Laravel thus making UNIT3D faster.

PHP8 JIT

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Moderate	5 minutes

Important

This guide is intended for UNIT3D v7.0.0 + instances.

Introduction

PHP 8 adds a JIT compiler to PHP's core which has the potential to speed up performance dramatically.

First of all, the JIT will only work if opcache is enabled, this is the default for most PHP installations, but you should make sure that opcache.enable is set to 1 in your php.ini file. Enabling the JIT itself is done by specifying opcache.jit_buffer_size in php.ini. So I recommend checking the OPcache guide I made first then coming back here.

How To Enable JIT

SSH to your server and run the following command. sudo nano /etc/php/8.2/fpm/php.ini This is assuming your on PHP 8.2. If not then adjust the command. Once you have the config open search for opcache.jit.

If you do not get any results then search for [curl] you should see the following.

[curl]
; A default value for the CURLOPT_CAINFO option. This is required to be an
; absolute path.
;curl.cainfo =

Right above it add:

opcache.jit_buffer_size=256M

Its as simple as that. Save and exit and restart PHP. sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm

PM Static

Category	Severity	Time To Fix
🚀 Performance	Major	10 minutes

Important

This guide is intended for high traffic sites.

Introduction

Lets give a basic description on what these options are:

pm = dynamic – the number of child processes is set dynamically based on the following directives: pm.max_children, pm.start_servers,pm.min_spare_servers, pm.max_spare_servers.

pm = ondemand – the processes spawn on demand (when requested, as opposed to dynamic, where pm.start_servers are started when the service is started.

pm = static – the number of child processes is fixed by pm.max_children.

The PHP-FPM pm static setting depends heavily on how much free memory your server has. Basically if you are suffering from low server memory, then pm ondemand or dynamic maybe be better options. On the other hand, if you have the memory available you can avoid much of the PHP process manager (PM) overhead by setting pm static to the max capacity of your server. In other words, when you do the math, pm.static should be set to the max amount of PHP-FPM processes that can run without creating memory availability or cache pressure issues. Also, not so high as to overwhelm CPU(s) and have a pile of pending PHP-FPM operations.

Enabling Static

Lets open up our PHP configuration file. sudo nano /etc/php/8.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Set pm = static Set pm.max_children = 100

This will use around 10GB.

Save, Exit and Restart sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm

Conclusion

When it comes to PHP-FPM, once you start to serve serious traffic, ondemand and dynamic process managers for PHP-FPM can limit throughput because of the inherent overhead. Know your system and set your PHP-FPM processes to match your server’s max capacity.