Initial Impressions of Apache 2.4.x, PHP 5.4.x, and FastCGI (mod_fcgid)

Over the past two weeks my main server for FantasySP has undergone a massive software update.  I wanted to make sure things will be rock solid for burstable traffic.  Sunday mornings during football season can be pretty rough unless you are prepared.

My previous configuration was Apache 2.2.x, PHP 5.3.x, and DSO ( mod_php).

The new configuration is  Apache 2.4.x, PHP 5.4.x, and FastCGI (mod_fcgid).

Let’s start off by showing you guys some performance graphs…

In order for you to see the correct data, I removed everything except php and httpd to get a fair comparison.  MySQL and other services are irrelevant.

You will notice a few trends:

1. Because I moved away from mod_php to mod_fcgid the memory allocation is completely different.  The drop in httpd memory is now passed to separate php processes.
2. CPU Usage is also different due to mod_fcgid and is now shown in the php process rather than httpd.
3. Overall CPU% is lower under the new configuration.
4. Overall Memory Usage is also lower under the new configuration.

What accounts for the lower CPU% and Memory usage?  Apache, PHP, mod_fcgid, or a combination?  The newest versions of Apache and PHP are supposed to have better memory utilization.  If you want to learn more about mod_fcgid in comparison to mod_php then this is a must read.

There are a few drawbacks to using mod_fcgid, most notably is that APC is no longer a shared cache to all processes.  Instead there are many instances of APC running, which can use more memory and cause higher loads to MySQL due to more misses than before.

I honestly did not anticipate this and had to react accordingly.  Load times to the site were noticeably affected.  I had no choice but to alter some of my caching to be saved to a separate MySQL table, rather than being stored in APC.

Huge pain in the ass, but something I considered doing previously for historical data purposes.

I’ve seen evidence from the PHP site that there will be speed increases just by upgrading to PHP 5.4.x from 5.3.x.  However, the jury is still out with this for me.  It appears that it could be true based on early New Relic data.  However, I’m still making caching changes due to APC and it has skewed the data a bit.

It appears that I’ve successfully offloaded slow load times to the odd hours of the day (12AM – 5AM), and by the time 8AM hits things are speedy. I won’t know for sure until a month goes by and things normalize.

The biggest question is if Apache 2.4.x is faster than 2.2.x.  Early benchmarks are mixed, but it is entirely way too early to make a definitive call.  I know for a fact that memory and cpu usage have decreased due to the new setup based on the NewRelic graphs above.  However, I cannot confirm that performance has improved.

Unfortunately I could not find my previous Apache Bench numbers based on my older configuration.  That would have likely given me all I needed to know.

I will continue to tweak Apache in the coming weeks and see what happens.  By the end of September I should know for sure if my current Apache configuration is noticeably better or not.  Though I do plan to stick with mod_fcgid for now and see where things go.

Stay tuned for a follow-up post down the line.

UPDATE: Check out the follow-up post here.