Enterprise-level EE: Uptime, Speed, and Scale

Reaching beyond EE tools and techniques to service enterprise clients

1. Intro 2. In-memory Caching 3. Load Balancing 4. Multi-environment setup with Docker 5. Scaling MySQL Tables 6. Monitoring / Logging

vectormediagroup.com/blog @VectorNYC

@abenjaminsmith benjaminsmith.com

Caching: Lowest-hanging fruit on the tree of optimization

Caching» Tag caching caching» Template caching» Query caching» HTTP proxy/accelerator

EE without reverse-proxy cache» Standard LAMP setup

EE with Varnish Cache» Sits between users and EE» Passes through requests to EE

EE with Varnish Cache» Sits between users and EE» Passes through requests to EE» Serves from memory if cached

Load Balancing example.com served by multiple web servers

No Load Balancing

Varnish Load Balancing

Multiple Environments» Local/development» Staging» QA» Production

The old way... 1. Checkout new branch from master 2. <do something amazing with code> 3. Add new fields to your local EE instance 4. Merge into staging branch 5. Deploy to staging server 6. Add new fields to your staging EE instance 7. Email the client for them to review!

Boo that» How to stage multiple WIP features at once?» Field ID conflicts» Which features are currently staged?» Stale data on Staging/QA servers

Docker Docker containers wrap up a piece of software in a complete filesystem that contains everything it needs to run» consistent and reproducible» isolated software» lightweight

The new way... vmg stage ProjectA feature-new-modal 1. Deploys feature to feature-new-modal.projecta.vmg.com 2. DB is latest snapshot from live site (< 1 day old) 3. Runs tests 4. Send notifcations to HipChat

How is this possible?» Docker images built nightly from live site data» Wildcard DNS» Docker volume persistance» Environment variable configuration (phpdotenv) $db['default']['database'] = getenv('db_name'); $db['default']['username'] = getenv('db_user'); $db['default']['hostname'] = getenv('db_host'); $db['default']['password'] = getenv('db_pass'); $db['default']['db_debug'] = getenv('db_debug');

Build the database!» Nightly script runs uploads MySQL dump to Amazon S3» Docker run command pulls in latest DB nightly and builds MySQL container image» Image is accessible from same machine as Docker LAMP stack./run.sh build-db clientname

What we have now» Docker image with runnable custom MySQL server and latest DB snapshot» Can be "run" in milliseconds

Stage a feature!» Project name: "clientname"» Git branch: "feature-new-modal"./run.sh stage clientname feature-new-modal

Stage a feature! 1. run Docker containers from pre-built images 2. git clone 3. composer install --no-dev 4. configure Apache to set environment variables 5. dynamic.htaccess config 6. set file/dir permissions 7. let proxy server know we're here!

Proxy server» Listens on port 80/443» Docker web servers, listening on random port» new Docker images tell proxy server the port assignment github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy

Basic MySQL optimizations» MySQL schema tweaks» indices» column types» MySQL 5.6+ (Percona)» InnoDB» Adding new channel fields?

MySQL doesn't like to ALTER

ALTERing tables leads to locking and downtime

pt-online-schema-change alters a table s structure without blocking reads or writes

pt-online-schema-change 1. create an empty copy of the table to alter 2. ALTER the new table 3. copy rows from the original table into the new table 4. moves away the original table and replaces it with the new one 5. drops the original table

build it!

./ee-schema-change eefield add

./ee-schema-change eefield add 1. Run the command!» Adds 2 new columns exp_channel_data» Adds 1 row to exp_channel_fields 2. Configure the field as needed in the ExpressionEngine CP

EE as a component in a larger application

» ExpressionEngine CMS/framework» MySQL database» Cron jobs (backup scripts)» Elasticsearch cluster» Worker queues» Cache invalidation» Data integrations/importing (CRM, ERP, API)

The old way... Scanning log files is not enough» Which server do they live on?» How to search? Grep/tail?» Standardized format?

The new way...

The new way... Decentralized logging for log shipping for storage/access/high-availability for visualzation / reporting

THANK YOU. Ben