Written by:

Yuri Golovko
Alexey Samorukov
Powering Magento with
Ngnix and PHP-FPM
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER NGNIX
NGNIX AND STATIC CONTENT
HOW TO USE NGNIX
NGNIX SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
NGNIX SETUP AND LOAD BALANCING
Ngnix Conguration
Load Balancing on Multiple Hosts
Conguring Virtual Hosts
Using a Dedicated PHP-FPM Server
3
4
6
8
10
12
13
14
15
16
Copyright 2013 X.commerce Inc. All rights reserved.
3
Introduction
Anyone looking for a simple Magento hosting solution should consider LAMP (Linux/Apache/
MySQL/PHP). However, there are cases when Apache with mod_php may not be an optimal
solution, particularly if your web sites have dynamic content which is generated by PHP scripts in
addition to static les. The purpose of this article is to explore the reasons behind this observation
and to demonstrate how using Ngnix with PHP-FPM can help.
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Why You Should Consider
Ngnix
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5
Why You Should Consider Ngnix
When dealing with many simultaneous HTTP/HTTPS connections, Apache uses a high amount
of RAM and CPU cycles--especially when talking about a standard Apache conguration with the
mod_php prefork. In general, each Apache child process consumes around 100MB of RAM on each
request within a typical Magento installation. (To be clear, only resident memory is included in this
statistic, minus shared RAM.) On average, a dedicated web server with 16GB of RAM can handle no
more than roughly 150 concurrent requests.
The major difference between Nginx and Apache is that Apache is process-based while nginx is
event-based. Because Nginx is event-based it doesnt need to spawn new processes or threads
to increase its level of concurrency, so its memory footprint is very low. Nginx also exploits non-
blocking, asynchronous I/O. Socket() and setsockopt() calls return results without blocking,
whereas connect(), send(), recv() and close() may experience some blockage at times. Nginx calls
the preceding functions only after conrming there will be no lag. To prevent blockage, for connect()
as an example, the socket is changed in advance to a non-blocking socket using ioctl(). As for send()
and recv(), epoll is used to prevent blockage. Codes for calling send() or recv() are composed in an
event-driven format. Each event is composed of a socket, a socket state, and an operating function.
Nginx is operated by a pre-set number of worker processes. Each process operates as a single
isolated process. Ngnixs non-blocking, event-driven architecture allows a single worker process to
handle requests by multiple clients.
As stated on the Nginx wiki:
Nginx is one of a handful of servers written to address the C10K problem. Unlike traditional
servers, Nginx doesnt rely on threads to handle requests. Instead it uses a much more
scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but more
importantly, predictable amounts of memory under load.
Even if you dont expect to handle thousands of simultaneous requests, you can still benet
from Nginxs high-performance and small memory footprint. Nginx scales in all directions:
from the smallest VPS all the way up to clusters of servers.
All of these factors allow Nginx to handle approximately 10,000 HTTP/HTTPS requests per second
using just 10 to 20 MB RAM and utilizing about 10% to 15% of average CPU. (When dealing with
HTTPS, CPU usage will be higher of course, because HTTPS decryption/encryption routines are
highly CPU-intensive.)
Why You Should Consider Ngnix
6
Ngnix and
Static Content
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Ngnix and Static Content
While the advantages of using Ngnix over Apache may be appealing, there is a specic drawback
to using Ngnix in that it has nothing like mod_php to execute PHP applications directly its under
control.
Nginx is a static content web server and a reverse HTTP or FastCGI proxy. This means that it cannot
run Magento directly, but must use another means to do so. Currently, the most benecial method
is to use PHP-FPM (also referred to as the FastCGI Process Manager (http://php-fpm.org/)). PHP-
FPM is specically designed for running high-load web sites with PHP web applications. It consumes
a fairly small amount of resident memory (about 30 MB for each child FPM process, roughly three
times less than Apache mod_php would consume) and offers a number of unique features. These
include:
Adaptive process spawning
Ability to start workers with different uid/gid/chroot/environment and different php.ini
Advanced logging including slowlog for slowly executing PHP scripts
Emergency restart in case of accidental opcode cache destruction
Real-time information on server activity and performance (includes real-time memory usage,
CPU usage is more detailed, and you can output JSON, XML, HTML, or text). Provides more
detail than Apache mod_status
Ngnix and Static Content
8
How to
Use Ngnix
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9
How to Use Ngnix
An ideal usage of Ngnix to power Magento might include a frontend which provides:
Reverse FastCGI proxy handling all HTTP/HTTP connections
All static le delivery
Caching
PHP-FPM, FastCGI process manager as a backend for executing Magento
In this setup Nginx acts like a reverse FastCGI proxy for all dynamic content requests: it proxies
such requests to a backend PHP-FPM application, waits for a response, and delivers it back to the
user. Nginx can also act as a load balancer, which implies that you can have one Nginx frontend and
several PHP-FPM backends. Using this approach provides:
Backend failover
High availability and scalability for your Magento installation
Using Ngnix as a load balancer eliminates the need for a hardware load balancer and any associated
expenses.
How to Use Ngnix
10
Ngnix System
Requirements
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Ngnix System Requirements
Here is the list of necessary components for high performance Magento hosting:
OS: One of the following x86_64 Linux avors: Redhat (RHEL 5/6), Debian GNU/Linux
stable, Ubuntu LTS. Any 64-bit Linux is ne, although these particular distributions are
recommended because they have long-term support and are very stable. One caveat is that
the ofcial OS repositories typically contain old versions of packages we are interested in. For
Redhat/CentOS, you can optionally use the Remi repository, while for Dotdeb can be used for
Unbuntu/Debian distributions.
Web server: nginx (versions > 1.2.0)
PHP: php5-fpm (versions > 5.3.8)
This article provides sample conguration les based on Debian setup. For RHEL or other
distributions, le system paths or other options may vary slightly.
Ngnix System Requirements
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Ngnix Setup and
Load Balancing
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Ngnix Conguration
Congure nginx using its .conf le (/etc/nginx/nginx.conf) that includes other congs as well.
Following is a sample conguration of the main le /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:
user www-data;
worker_processes 5;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 2048;
}
http {
##
# Basic Settings
##
sendfle on;
keepalive_timeout 5;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
map $scheme $fastcgi_https { ## Detect when HTTPS is used
default off;
https on;
}
##
# Logging Settings
##
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log notice;
rewrite_log on;
log_format main $remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request
$status $body_bytes_sent $http_referer
$http_user_agent $http_x_forwarded_for;
##
# Gzip Settings
##
gzip on;
gzip_disable msie6;
Ngnix Setup and Load Balancing
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gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 5;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript
text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
##
# Virtual Host Confgs
##
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
Create the conguration le upstream.conf as follows to dene your upstream servers (for a single-
host conguration, dene PHP-FPM on localhost bound to port 9000) /etc/nginx/conf.d/upstream.
conf):
upstream fpm_backend {
server 127.0.0.1:9000; # backend server:port address
}
If both Nginx and PHP-FPM run on localhost, there is no point in using a network; instead, use Unix
sockets for performance reasons. In this case the upstream.conf should look like this:
upstream fpm_backend {
server unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
}
Load Balancing on Multiple Hosts
In a multiple-host setup, you may have several upstreams and load-balance among them using
persistent connections:
upstream fpm_backend {
server 192.168.100.101:9000;
server 192.168.100.102:9000;
server 192.168.100.103:9000;
server 192.168.100.104:9000;
keepalive 128; # use fxed number of persistent connections to backend
Ngnix Setup and Load Balancing
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This example distributes load across four backend servers. You have the following options:
Dene the weight of each upstream if you have backends of different capacity or otherwise
do not want load to be distributed evenly.
Use ip_hash feature to provide sticky user sessions (so that logged-in users always
connect to the same upstream server).
Nginx provides a basic health check feature. For more detailed explanations please refer to ofcial
documentation (http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpUpstreamModule).
Conguring Virtual Hosts
Create an Nginx virtual host le to specify your Magento instance. Below is a sample conguration
le /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/magento.conf:
server {
listen 80 default;
server_name magento.lan www.magento.lan; # like ServerName in Apache
root /var/www/magento; # document root, path to directory with fles
index index.html index.php;
autoindex off; # we dont want users to see fles in directories
location ~ (^/(app/\|includes/\|lib/\|/pkginfo/\|var/\|report/confg.
xml)\|/\.svn/\|/\.git/\|/.hta.+) {
deny all; #ensure sensitive fles are not accessible
}
location / {
try_fles $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; # make index.php handle requests for
/
access_log off; # do not log access to static fles
expires max; # cache static fles aggressively
}
location \~\* \.(jpeg\|jpg\|gif\|png\|css\|js\|ico\|swf)$ {
try_fles $uri $uri/ @proxy; # look for static fles in root directory and
ask backend if not successful
expires max;
access_log off;
}
Ngnix Setup and Load Balancing
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location @proxy {
fastcgi_pass fpm_backend; # proxy everything from this location to backend
}
location \~\.php$ {
try_fles $uri =404; # if reference to php executable is invalid return 404
expires off; # no need to cache php executable fles
fastcgi_read_timeout 600;
fastcgi_pass fpm_backend; # proxy all requests for dynamic content to
# backend confgured in upstream.conf
fastcgi_keep_conn on; # use persistent connects to backend
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root${fastcgi_script_name};
fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_CODE default; # Store code is defned in
#administration > Confguration > Manage Stores
fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_TYPE store;
}
}
Also under location ~\.php$, an extra parameter should be passed to the backend to use secure
checkouts and/or secure access to the Magento Admin Panel:
fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https;
In this setup, Nginx serves static content from its root directory (DocumentRoot in Apache terms)
and proxies all requests for dynamic content to upstream/backend servers with PHP-FPM. Nginx
might as well cache content and serve it from cache rather than from the PHP-FPM backend. Please
refer to ofcial documentation about fastcgi_cache and related directives.
Using a Dedicated PHP-FPM Server
It is also recommended to use pm = static mode (instead of pm = dynamic) if you decide to
dedicate a server for PHP-FPM exclusively, as there is no need for dynamic allocation of resources
to PHP-FPM. The pm part of the conguration is more or less the same as if you were to congure
Apache.
* parameters directly correspond to Apache conguration directives (pm.max_children equals
Apaches MaxClients, pm.max_requests equals MaxRequestsPerChild, and so on), so a system
administrator familiar with Apache performance tuning should have no problem adjusting to a PHP-
FPM conguration.
Ngnix Setup and Load Balancing
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Got Questions?
Contact ECG at consulting@magento.com