Best real world server environment for CI

[eluser]Devyn[/eluser]
Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone can give me best combination of optimized server configuration for a VPS to run CI. What kind of services should install for optimized php performance.
For e.g, backend server (apache,lighttpd), front server (nginx), caching (memcache,xcache,..)
I also would like to know pros and cons of each combination.
I've searched round the forum first but couldn't find the answer.

Welcome your advices. Thanks

[Edited] What I want to know is how to get maximum transaction per second in LAMP with extra daemons.

[eluser]n0xie[/eluser]
Optimizing server for high traffic website is a beast on it's own which doesn't have much to do with CI in general. There are zillions of blogs about optimizing your webserver but in most cases it's a case to case situation.

By the time you need to worry about scaling you should have people walking around who know what's what. Everything before that is just cache, cache, cache, scaling up, then out. Then somewhere along the lines you worry about tuning hardware and maybe your code.

I can give you one tip though: stay as far away as you can from any Microsoft supplied solution. ;-)

[eluser]BrianDHall[/eluser]
Optimization is all about finding the weak link or the bottle neck, and considering both performance and reliability without sacrificing core functionality.

By necessity this means it is utterly dependent on your application, there is no real general advice other than using updated software. Everything after that is dependent on your needs.

For instance, is your application database intensive? If so, you'll probably want a stripped down machine that does nothing but operate your database. If your database is only used for sessions and the like then this could very well slow down your applications.

Do you have lots of static resources being served, like images and videos? Then perhaps they need their own 'content delivery' servers with feature-stripped static file servers instead of Apache that do little more than receive and deliver file requests. If this is not a problem then you might be slowing down your application by utilizing them.

Is your application memory or processor intensive? Why? If you are doing image processing you probably need to use a faster image processor like ImageMagik, which perhaps should be handed off to a "heavy processing" server that will just gently return the finished results when its done and won't bog down the rest of your site. If you do heavy database work then you need to look at stored routines to prevent lots of data exchange between the DB and PHP.

Is portability between OS an issue? If not and you do heavy processing tasks, maybe you need to write a program in a lower-level higher performance language to speed processing - like C, etc.

Trying to get the best of anything requires a definition of what you think 'best' is and what you are looking to get out of it. Take a hotel for example - what's better, Motel 6 or the Waldorf? If you are holding a delegation of world leaders, the Waldorf - if you are going cross-country on a tight budget, Motel 6.

[eluser]Devyn[/eluser]
Well, thank you all for your replies.
What I actually want to know is the best way to get maximum transaction per seconds in LAMP environment.
Sorry for making you confuse.

[eluser]bretticus[/eluser]
[quote author="Devyn" date="1253745427"]Well, thank you all for your replies.
What I actually want to know is the best way to get maximum transaction per seconds in LAMP environment.
Sorry for making you confuse.[/quote]

Though you may not realize it, your question has been answered for the most part. There is no magic recipe. And no one is willing to spend three days to setup a lab and test all the pros and cons for you. You will have to be the one to do it. And you will be the only one who really can because it's your equipment and your network.

Codeigniter is just PHP code. Yes, there are ways to optimize PHP and best practices for getting the best performance. However, your question encompasses much more than just Codeigniter. Perhaps you are posting in the wrong forum?

[eluser]Devyn[/eluser]
Thanks for pointing out what I missed.