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.
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Trent Adams