[imp] Performance and PHP accel question

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On Tuesday 21 February 2006 04:47, Tornoci Laszlo wrote:
>Question #1: is separation of the services a good idea and if yes, am
> I planning it the right way?

Separation of services can be a good idea. At the installation i 
administer, the e-mail server is separate from the Horde/Imp server. 
The e-mail server just does smtp and imap. The Horde server runs Apache 
and PostgreSQL to store settings. The split works out very well. We 
already have future plans to handle any performance problems that 
arise. One is to install either another CPU or a crypto card in the 
Horde server (access is via https only). If things got really bad 
(which i don't expect they will, but you never know) we could set up a 
third machine and move the database to it.

>Question #2: can the current box give me fast enough service (let's
> say < 5 sec waiting time) for Horde/Imp if I move all other functions
> to the new box? I consider using some of the tips in
> Horde/docs/PERFORMANCE, a PHP accelerator and the mcrypt module.

Yes, go through PERFORMANCE. When setting up Horde i implemented every 
technique that seemed reasonable to me. The difference was very 
noticeable.

>Question #3: which _free_ PHP accelerator do you recommend, what is
> your experience with them?

We use eAccelerator. I did some informal tests with it turned off and 
on. The accelerator sped things up by a factor of 3.5! Using Red Hat EL 
AS 4 it was quite easy to install:
    (note, the php-devel package is required for this):
        # tar -xvzf eaccelerator-0.9.3.tar.gz
        # cd eaccelerator-0.9.3
        # export PHP_PREFIX="/usr"
        # phpize
        # ./configure --enable-eaccelerator=shared \
          --with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/bin/php-config
        # make && make install
        # cp eaccelerator.ini /etc/php.d/
        # mkdir /var/tmp/eaccelerator
        # chown root:apache /var/tmp/eaccelerator
        # chmod 0770 /var/tmp/eaccelerator
    Edit /etc/php.d/eaccelerator.ini and set:
        extension="eaccelerator.so"
        ;zend_extension="/usr/lib/php4/eaccelerator.so"
        eaccelerator.cache_dir = "/var/tmp/eaccelerator"

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
+1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA