Drupal Performance and Scalability

Obtaining Optimal Performance From Drupal And The LAMP Stack.

This book is written by Jeremy Andrews and licensed under aCreativeCommons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Section 1: Drupal Performance

The first section of this book offers details on how to get good performanceout of your Drupal powered website, and how to scale it as demand grows.The majority of the features discussed in this section are available withoutmaking any modifications to Drupal.

Chapter 1: Setting Goals

This first chapter discusses the importance of understanding your ownperformance and scalability goals. It helps the reader to identify specificallywhat they hope to accomplish, showing them how to set concrete andattainable goals, breaking larger requirements into smaller pieces. Thischapter will teach the importance of maintaining historical performance logs,discussing several technologies and services that are available to aide in thiseffort. It will stress the importance of making regular backups, and of testingbackups before changes are made. Finally, it will explain the importance of first testing changes on development servers, and explain best practices fordeploying tested changes onto production servers.Setting GoalsPerformance and Scalability Checklist1.Understanding and Defining the Problem2.Goals versus Requirements3.1.Measuring ProgressSetting A Baseline1.Measuring Progress2.Online Services3.2.BackupsWhat To Backup1.3.

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Backup Schedules2.Validating Backups3.Staging ChangesTesting Changes1.Source Control2.Database Schema Changes3.Pushing Changes To Production4.4.

Chapter 2: Drupal Infrastructure

This chapter will provide an overview of what is coming up later in the book. Itwill talk about cheap $5/month web hosts, versus slightly more powerfulVirtual Private Servers, versus dedicated servers and server farms. It willcollect together network diagrams for the various configurations, and point tolater chapters where the various features are more fully explained.Bargain Basement HostingAdvantages1.Squeezing Water From A Rock2.Development and Testing3.Outgrowing Your Host4.Diagram5.1.Virtual Private ServersAdvantages1.What Is Virtualization?2.Competing For Resources3.Outgrowing Your Host4.Diagram5.2.Multiple Installations versus Multi-site InstallationsAdvantages1.Security Considerations2.Diagrams3.3.Dedicated HostingSingle Server1.Multiple Servers2.Sharing Files And File Systems3.Load Balancers4.High Availability5.Scaling Up vs. Scaling Out6.Caching7.4.

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Network Diagrams8.

Chapter 3: PerformanceConfiguration

This chapter introduces Drupal's built-in performance features. It explains howDrupal's built-in page cache works, and details how it can be configured. Thechapter also discusses Drupal's built-in CSS and JS aggregation andcompression. The importance of regularly purging Drupal's logs will bediscussed. And finally, the chapter will explore Drupal's throttle module.Drupal's Page CacheNormal Caching1.Aggressive Caching2.Minimum Cache lifetime3.1.CSS and JavaScript AggregationAggregation1.Compression?2.2.Purging LogsWatchdog Logs1.The Access Log2.3.The Throttle ModuleBackground1.Configuration2.Modules3.Blocks4.Integrating Custom Themes and Modules5.Why There Won't Be A Throttle In Drupal 76.4.

Chapter 4: Too Many Modules

This chapter takes an in depth look at Drupal's modular design. It explores theconcept behind Drupal's “hooks”, using the nodeapi as an example. It alsolooks at Drupal's menu system. The chapter then puts all of this together bytracing what happens when you enable a single Drupal module. Finally, itdiscusses the temptation to enable hundreds of contributed modules.Modules and HooksDrupal modules1.1.