Website slow response (all other users) when large MySQL query running - php

This may seem like an obvious question but we have a PHP/MySQL app that runs on Windows 2008 server. The server has about 10 different sites running from it in total. Admin options on the site in question allow an administrator to run reports (through the site) which are huge and can take about 10mins in some cases. These reports are huge mysql queries that display the data on screen. When these reports are running the entire site goes slow for all users. So my questions are:
Is there a simple way to allocate server resources so if a (website) administrator runs reports, other users can still access the site without performance issues?
Even though running the report kills the website for all users of that site, it doesn't affect other sites on the same server. Why is that?
As mentioned, the report can take about 10 minutes to generate - is
it bad practice to make these kinds of reports available on the
website? Would these typically be generated by overnight scheduled tasks?
Many thanks in advance.

The load your putting on the server will most likely have nothing to do with the applications but the mysql table that you are probably slamming. Most people get around this by generating reports in down time or using mysql replication to have a second database which is used purely for reporting.
I recommend trying to get some server monitoring to see what is actually going on. I think Newrelic just released windows versions of its platform and you can try it out for free for 30 days i think.

There's the LOW_PRIORITY flag, but I'm not sure whether that would have any positive effect, since it's most likely a table / row locking issue that you're experiencing. You can get an idea of what's going on by using the SHOW PROCESSLIST; query.
If other websites run fine, it's even more likely that this is due to database locks (causing your web processes to wait for the lock to get released).
Lastly, it's always advisable to run big reporting queries overnight (or when the server load is minimal). Having a read replicated slave would also help.

I strongly suggest you install a replicated MySQL server, then running large administrator queries (SELECT only naturally) on it, to avoid the burden of having your website blocked!
If there's not too much transaction per second, you could even run the replica on a desktop computer remotely from your production server, and thus have a backup off-site of your DB!

Are 100% sure you have added all necessary indexes?
You need to have a insanely large website to have this kinds of problems unless you are missing indexes.
Make sure you have the right indexing and make sure you do not have connection fields of varchar, not very fast.
I have a database with quite a few large tables and millions of records that is working 24/7.
Has loads of activity and automated services processing it without issues due to proper indexing.

Related

Zend Framework Multiple Database Stop Working with slow query

I'm running a big Zend Framework web application with 5 database, independent of each other, distributed on 2 database servers running on Mysql 5.6.36 - CentOS7 with 16gb ram 8 core processor each. However, if one of the 2 database servers stops responding because of slows query, the users on the other server cannot access the web application. The only way to turn on the application is to restart mysql on that server. I try different things without success. The strange thing is that if I turn off one of the servers the system continues to work correctly.
It's hard to offer a meaningful answer, because you've given us no information about your tables or your queries (in fact, you haven't asked a question at all, you've just told us a story! :-).
I will offer a guess that you are using MyISAM for one or more of your tables. This means a query from one client locks the table(s) it queries, and blocks concurrent updates from other clients.
To confirm you have this problem, use SHOW PROCESSLIST on each of your two database servers at the time you experience the contention between web apps. You might see a bunch of queries stuck waiting for a lock (it may appear in the processlist with the state of "Updating").
If so, you might have better luck if you alter your tables' storage engine to InnoDB. See https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/converting-tables-to-innodb.html

PHP/MySQL Performance Testing with Just PHP

I'm trying to diagnose a server where the website is loading very slowly, but unfortunately my client has only provided me with FTP access.
I've got FTP access so I can upload PHP scripts, but can't set up any other server side tools.
I have access to phpMyAdmin, but not direct access to the MySQL server. It is also unfortunately a Windows server (and we've been a Linux shop for over a decade now).
So, if I wan to evaluate MySQL & disk speed performance through PHP on a generic server, what is the best way to do this?
There are already tools like:
https://github.com/raphaelm/php-benchmark or https://github.com/InfinitySoft/php-benchmark
But I'm surprised there isn't something that someone has already set up & configured to just run through and do some basic testing of a server's responsiveness.
Every time we evaluate a new server environment it's handy to be able to compare it to an existing one quickly to see if there are any anomalies. I guess I'd just hoped that someone else had written up a script to do this already. I know I have, but that was before Github when there was a handy place to post scraps of code like this.
You've probably already done this, but just in case... If I were in your shoes, the first thing I'd be looking at are the indexes on the mysql tables and the queries in the application. I've seen some sites get huge speed boosts just by fixing a join or adding a missing index.
Don't forget to check the code for performance issues or calls to sleep(). If you haven't yet, it may be helpful to get the code running locally so you can run it through xdebug.

Two-way mySQL database sync between hosted and local production server

So the scenario is this:
I have a mySQL database on a local server running on Windows 2008 Server. The server is only meant to be accessible to users on our network and contains our companies production schedule information. I have what is essentially the same database running on a hosted server running linux, which is meant to be accessible online so our customers can connect to it and update their orders.
What I want to do is a two-way sync of two tables in the database so that the orders are current in both databases, and a one-way sync from our server to the hosted one with the data in the other tables. The front end to the database is written in PHP. I will say what I am working with so far, and I would appreciate if people could let me know if I am on the right track or barking up the wrong tree, and hopefully point me in the right direction.
My first idea is to make (at the end of the PHP scripts that generate changes to the orders tables) an export of the changes that have been made, perhaps using INSERT into OUTFILE WHERE account = account or something similar. This would keep the size of the file small rather than exporting the entire orders table. What I am hung up on is how to (A) export this as an SQL file rather than a CSV (B) how to include the information about what has been deleted as well as what has been inserted (C) how to fetch this file on the other server and execute the SQL statement.
I am looking into SSH and PowerShell currently but can't seem to formulate a solid vision of exactly how this will work. I am looking into cron jobs and Windows scheduled tasks as well. However, it would be best if somehow the updates simply occurred whenever there was a change rather than on a schedule to keep them synced in real time, but I can't quite figure that one out. I'd want to be running the scheduled task/cronjob at least once every few minutes, though I guess all it would need to be doing is checking if there were any dump files that needed to be put onto the opposing server, not necessarily syncing anything if nothing had changed.
Has anyone ever done something like this? We are talking about changing/adding/removing from 1(min) to 160 lines(max) in the tables at a time. I'd love to hear people's thoughts about this whole thing as I continue researching my options. Thanks.
Also, just to clarify, I'm not sure if one of these is really a master or a slave. There isn't one that's always the accurate data, it's more the most recent data that needs to be in both.
+1 More Note
Another thing I am thinking about now is to add at the end of the order updating script on one side another config/connect script pointing to the other servers database, and then rerun the exact same queries, since they have identical structures. Now that just sounds to easy.... Thoughts?
You may not be aware that MySQL itself can be configured with databases on separate servers that opportunistically sync to each other. See here for some details; also, search around for MySQL ring replication. The setup is slightly brittle and will require you to learn a bit about MySQL replication. Or you can build a cluster; much higher learning curve but less brittle.
If you really want to roll it yourself, you have quite an adventure in design ahead of you. The biggest problem you have to solve is not how to make it work, it's how to make it work correctly after one of the servers goes down for an hour or your DSL modem melts or a hard drive fills up or...
Start a query on a local and a remote server can be a problem if the connection breaks. It is better to each query locally stored in the file, such as GG-MM-DD-HH.sql, and then send the data every hour, when the hour expired. Update period can be reduced to 5 minutes for example.
In this way, if the connection breaks, the re-establishment take on all the left over files.
At the end of the file insert CRC for checking content.

Does a separate MySQL server make sense when using Nginx instead of Apache?

Consider a web app in which a call to the app consists of PHP script running several MySQL queries, some of them memcached.
The PHP does not do very complex job. It is mainly serving the MySQL data with some formatting.
In the past it used to be recommended to put MySQL and the app engine (PHP/Apache) on separate boxes.
However, when the data can be divided horizontally (for example when there are ten different customers using the service and it is possible to divide the data per customer) and when Nginx +FastCGI is used instead of heavier Apache, doesn't it make sense to put Nginx Memcache and MySQL on the same box? Then when more customers come, add similar boxes?
Background: We are moving to Amazon Ec2. And a separate box for MySQL and app server means double EBS volumes (needed on app servers to keep the code persistent as it changes often). Also if something happens to the database box, more customers will fail.
Clarification: Currently the app is running with LAMP on a single server (before moving to EC2).
If your application architecture is already designed to support Nginx and MySQL on separate instances, you may want to host all your services on the same instance until you receive enough traffic that justifies the separation.
In general, creating new identical instances with the full stack (Nginx + Your Application + MySQL) will make your setup much more difficult to maintain. Think about taking backups, releasing application updates, patching the database engine, updating the database schema, generating reports on all your clients, etc. If you opt for this method, you would really need to find some big advantages in order to offset all the disadvantages.
You need to measure carefully how much memory overhead everything has - I can't see enginex vs Apache making much difference, it's PHP which will use all the RAM (this in turn depends on how many processes the web server chooses to run, but that's more of a tuning issue).
Personally I'd stay away from enginex on the grounds that it is too risky to run such a weird server in production.
Databases always need lots of ram, and the only way you can sensibly tune the memory buffers is to have them on dedicated servers. This is assuming you have big data.
If you have very small data, you could keep it on the same box.
Likewise, memcached makes almost no sense if you're not running it on dedicated boxes. Taking memory from MySQL to give to memcached is really robbing Peter to pay Paul. MySQL can cache stuff in its innodb_buffer_pool quite efficiently (This saves IO, but may end up using more CPU as you won't cache presentation logic etc, which may be possible with memcached).
Memcached is only sensible if you're running it on dedicated boxes with lots of ram; it is also only sensible if you don't have enough grunt in your db servers to serve the read-workload of your app. Think about this before deploying it.
If your application is able to work with PHP and MySQL on different servers (I don't see why this wouldn't work, actually), then, it'll also work with PHP and MySQL on the same server.
The real question is : will your servers be able to handle the load of both Apache/nginx/PHP, MySQL, and memcached ?
And there is only one way to answer that question : you have to test in a "real" "production" configuration, to determine own loaded your servers are -- or use some tool like ab, siege, or OpenSTA to "simulate" that load.
If there is not too much load with everything on the same server... Well, go with it, if it makes the hosting of your application cheapier ;-)

Locking a SQL Server Database with PHP

I'm wanting extra security for a particular point in my web app. So I want to lock the database (SQL Server 2005). Any suggestions or is this even necessary with SQL Server?
Edit on question:
The query is failing silently with no errors messages logged, and does not occur inside of a transaction.
Final Solution:
I never was able to solve the problem, however what I wound up doing was switching to MySQL and using a transactional level query here. This was not the main or even a primary reason to switch. I had been having problems with SQL Server and it allowed me to have our CMS and various other tools all running on the same database. Previous we had a SQL Server and a MySQL database running to run our site. The port was a bit on the time consuming however in the long run I feel it will work much better for the site and the business.
I suppose you have three options.
Set user permissions so that user x can only read from the database.
Set the database into single user mode so only one connection can access it
sp_dboption 'myDataBaseName', single, true
Set the database to readonly
sp_dboption 'myDataBaseName', read only, true
I never was able to solve the problem, however what I wound up doing was switching to MySQL and using a transactional level query here. This was not the main or even a primary reason to switch. I had been having problems with MSSQL and it allowed me to have our CMS and various other tools all running on the same database. Previous we had a MSSQL and a MySQL database running to run our site. The port was a bit on the time consuming however in the long run I feel it will work much better for the site and the business.

Categories