Optimizing NGINX + PHP-FPM + MariaDB for WordPress (10k hits/day)? - php

Question

I'm trying to optimize a VPN server that's running Nginx + PHP-FPM + MariaDB for a website that has a lot of traffic.
Machine specs are:
8GB RAM
8 CPU cores
1x30GB SSD
Machine uses CENTOS 7.1
Here's my nginx.conf:
# Server globals
user nginx;
worker_processes 8;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
# Worker config
events {
worker_connections 1024;
use epoll;
}
http {
# Main settings
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
client_header_timeout 1m;
client_body_timeout 1m;
client_header_buffer_size 2k;
client_body_buffer_size 256k;
client_max_body_size 256m;
large_client_header_buffers 4 8k;
send_timeout 30;
keepalive_timeout 60 60;
reset_timedout_connection on;
server_tokens off;
server_name_in_redirect off;
server_names_hash_max_size 512;
server_names_hash_bucket_size 512;
# Log format
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request '
'"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
log_format bytes '$body_bytes_sent';
#access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
access_log off;
# Mime settings
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
# Compression
gzip on;
gzip_comp_level 9;
gzip_min_length 512;
gzip_buffers 8 64k;
gzip_types text/plain text/css text/javascript
application/x-javascript application/javascript;
gzip_proxied any;
# Proxy settings
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_pass_header Set-Cookie;
proxy_connect_timeout 90;
proxy_send_timeout 90;
proxy_read_timeout 90;
proxy_buffers 32 4k;
# SSL PCI Compliance
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ciphers "ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA:AES128-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4";
# Error pages
error_page 403 /error/403.html;
error_page 404 /error/404.html;
error_page 502 503 504 /error/50x.html;
# Cache
proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=2 keys_zone=cache:10m inactive=60m max_size=512m;
proxy_temp_path /var/cache/nginx/temp;
proxy_cache_key "$host$request_uri $cookie_user";
proxy_ignore_headers Expires Cache-Control;
proxy_cache_use_stale error timeout invalid_header http_502;
proxy_cache_valid any 3d;
map $http_cookie $no_cache {
default 0;
~SESS 1;
~wordpress_logged_in 1;
}
# Wildcard include
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}
Also here's my domainname.conf:
[domainname.tld]
listen = 127.0.0.1:9003
listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1
user = admin
group = admin
pm = ondemand
pm.max_children = 70
pm.start_servers = 3
pm.min_spare_servers = 3
pm.max_spare_servers = 10
env[HOSTNAME] = $HOSTNAME
env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
env[TMP] = /tmp
env[TMPDIR] = /tmp
env[TEMP] = /tmp
And here's the main www.conf:
[www]
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1
user = apache
group = apache
pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 50
pm.start_servers = 5
pm.min_spare_servers = 3
pm.max_spare_servers = 35
And finally here's the my.cnf:
[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
symbolic-links=0
skip-external-locking
key_buffer_size = 512M
max_allowed_packet = 128M
table_open_cache = 1024
sort_buffer_size = 8M
read_buffer_size = 8M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 256M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 128M
thread_cache_size = 8
query_cache_size= 512M
thread_concurrency = 32
#innodb_use_native_aio = 0
innodb_file_per_table
max_connections=500
max_user_connections=250
wait_timeout=5
interactive_timeout=50
long_query_time=10
#slow_query_log=1
#slow_query_log_file=/var/log/mysql-slow-queries.log
[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log
pid-file=/var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid
#
# include all files from the config directory
#
!includedir /etc/my.cnf.d
The website is working, well okay because caching is enabled (page cache), I turned off the caching for a while on heavy load and there was error 500.
Also here's the memory usage:
#free -g
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7 2 2 0 3 4
Swap: 0 0 0
Any help is much appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

pm.max_children -- decrease the value unless you expect lots of really small pages
query_cache_size= 512M -- Inefficient. No more than 50M
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 4G -- see below
You really should be using InnoDB, not MyISAM.
If 10K hits/day leads to 80K database hits/day, that is only 1/second, which is trivial.