User:GreenReaper/MakingMediaWikiFly

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Introduction
The problem
Code, data, web caches
  • The idea: deflect expensive requests to cache
  • APC - vital speedup for code and data
    • Share code, no cache message files, tune user TTL to > 1 day
    • Use spin locking or (failing that) pthreads - avoid file/IPC locking
  • Web cache - Squid or (better?) Varnish. Faster than Apache.
  • DB query cache? Maybe. Some results already in APC.
  • Don't use memcached - APC is fine for a single server
Reducing and spreading requests
  • Latency number one killer - 4kb initial transfer, 17k recv. window
  • HTTP compression - CPU cost minimal vs. latency, and cached
  • Use long cache times and ETags (ignore Yslow there)
  • Share skin images and CSS between sites too
  • Cut headers, comments, merge CSS/JS where appropriate
    • Cuts took us from 1.6kb to 1.06kb in the headers - saved on every page
  • Consider CSS sprites for homepage images
Minification of CSS/JS and image recompression
  • Huge win on first page load = first impression
  • Handheld devices may only cache small files
  • Consider Extension:Minify for user CSS/JS, but check CPU
  • Don't obfuscate for further wins - heavy client CPU penalty
  • Indexed PNGS < 256 colors (our logo is 2kb, you'd never know)
  • Try Google Page Speed, it will compress images for you
Multiple subdomains as virtual CDN - spread the load
  • Subvert HTTP connection limits
    • Don't overdo it - two to four max
  • Less necessary with newer browsers
  • Try to keep image domain cookie-free (second best: use pool)
Summary
  • Speed matters: fast pages = more users, edits
  • Cache everything, client and server side
  • Cut what you don't need, shrink what you do
  • Spread requests across multiple domains
  • Measure - Webalizer, APC, profiler, MRTG . . .
Bonus tips
  • Block robots from /w/ and Special:Random
  • HTML 5 to trim doctype and cut optional headers - like <head> (soon in WP)
  • Tune your server with a large congestion window
  • Use HTCP to purge the web cache
  • Are features really necessary?
  • We cut buttons, headers, http: in external/interwiki/lang links
    • Broke (and patched) MediaWiki multiple times + several web crawlers :-)
  • Double-check output for unnecessary comments (parser debug output!)
  • Separate hard disks for logs, DB, web server if available
  • Profiling: Heavy extensions like DPL, Google Maps can be a problem
    • Use dplcache=XXX and allowcachedresults=yes
Beyond one server
  • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Server_layout_diagrams
  • memcached on separate machine[s]
  • Web cache on different machines, different continent
  • Dedicated server for search [lucene, sphinx] and images [nginx, lighttptd?]
  • Database server on separate machine, add slaves
  • Dedicate one Apache to a popular language
  • Store revision text in secondary database, reduce primary load
  • concatenate and compress revision text further
  • More++ - see Domas' presentations
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