xCache and eAccelerator
May 22, 2008
We are doing some testing of running xCache and eAccelerator on the server to help boost the performance of all php applications on the server. The obvious choice of this optimization is WPMU since that is the only application run on this server 
First, we tested out eAccelerator and it was a good thing to have installed. It helped us with serving up pages faster and helped with our concurrent users. Used in conjunction with object cache and will wp-super-cache the server was immediately running faster. What was disappointing to me is that not only does eAccelerator use loads of disk space, it also was more of a memory pig than I imagined it would be. I jumped to using an additional 100 MB of RAM and after 24 hours did not drop even though it was configured for 32 MB.
Next we ran xCache on the server and it seemed to be as fast as eAccelerator and in the beginning was also using some additional RAM but it must have been for the first caching. It eventually released the memory and had a smaller disk write for caching. With the addition of object cache and wp-super-cache it seems faster using less resources.
That is the one that we are sticking with for now. I am not sure why eAccelerator wouldn’t release the extra memory, but I was testing out 3 common configurations for VPS servers and nothing helped. xCache did drop the memory after the caching and seems a better fit for us right now. More after further testing.
April 2008 Review
May 2, 2008
April was much like March in terms of the traffic and resources required. We had just a shy less than 60,000 unique visitors serving up close to 200,000 page views with well over 300,000 hits in the month of April. Since Onvertigo Bloggers is still in beta (only 20 blogs) this was pretty impressive for us. The next stage of our beta invitations will be done in the month of May and June and we hope to have the service with 50-100 blogs by summer. Those interested in blogging here can still contact me if you want an invitation
The size of Onvertigo Bloggers will continue to be limited through invitations for the foreseeable feature to ensure that we are constantly optimizing our resources for the best user experience possible. This will help us with the transition of the social networking features that we are introducing over the next couple of months. We have some exciting things coming up!
April brought us the newest admin “dashboard” and some fairly large changes to the optimization of both our servers. We also changed around our ssl administration on our admin area to only secure the data that needs securing. This increased the speed of the dashboard to a massive degree! Hope everyone likes the new page loading times!
As always, if you have any questions or concerns you can now send me a message through the “dashboard” as well since May has brought us the first stage of our social features with our new member messaging!
Trent Adams