How many fast-cgi processes to use with PHP-FPM and NginX

fastcgiphp5

Does anyone know of a good source out there – or possibly can answer this in here – that can guide me as to how many Fast-cgi processes and Nginx processes I need to have running to serve a moderatly popular website. Between 75-100k pageview / day, quite intensive PHP-filled pages with decent cache for the heavy queries in mysql.

I'm using Apache mod_php today and is relatively new to running php as cgi but the early setup I've done using APC + Memcache + Nginx + PHP-FPM (fast cgi) on PHP 5.3.0 is very fast and not consuming too much memory under very light load. However, I'm unsure how I could test this under heavy load without moving my most popular site on it but I don't want to do that until I know if my current settings of 5 cgi processes and 5 nginx processes is enough.

Thanks

Best Answer

I recommend Siege over ab (Apache Bench).

Also, note that current PHP-FPM releases support Static as well as Dynamic threads (so always 10, vs 5-30, for instance). It would be good to test that while you're at it.

I haven't yet found a magic number, but it seems that the default of 10 static threads is good for 250-300 requests per second, on a single core, 1gb ram instance at SoftLayer, with an availability rate of ~90-95%.

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I think your max_children is too low

<value name="max_children">3</value>

Also you can try switching from TCP port to unix socket for php-fpm:

php-fpm.conf

<value name="listen_address">/tmp/php.sock</value>

nginx.conf

fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php.sock;

Elaborated:

Unix sockets are ~20% faster
You don't use time-wait sockets for each connect

Nginx – How to restart php-fpm

Note: prepend sudo if not root

Using SysV Init scripts directly:

/etc/init.d/php-fpm restart    # typical
/etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart   # debian-style
/etc/init.d/php7.0-fpm restart # debian-style PHP 7

Using service wrapper script

service php-fpm restart    # typical
service php5-fpm restart   # debian-style
service php7.0-fpm restart # debian-style PHP 7

Using Upstart (e.g. ubuntu):

restart php7.0-fpm         # typical (ubuntu is debian-based) PHP 7
restart php5-fpm           # typical (ubuntu is debian-based)
restart php-fpm            # uncommon

Using systemd (newer servers):

systemctl restart php-fpm.service    # typical
systemctl restart php5-fpm.service   # uncommon
systemctl restart php7.0-fpm.service # uncommon PHP 7

Or whatever the equivalent is on your system.

Best Answer

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