Drupal server on ebox3300

[Andrew]

Hi all,

Just thought I would share my observations regarding drupal on the
ebox3300 now that the project is finished.

I installed debian 5.0 with apache/php5/mysql combination to ebox3300
using a high quality (x266) CF card. Then moved my drupal site
(bruceskiclub.ca) to the ebox 3300. Results were disappointing. I
found the site extremely slow, taking 5 or 6 seconds to render a page.
There are lots of ways to speed up drupal, so I removed the user
accounts feature and activated agressive caching. This helped, but not
enough.

Eventually I got the system working by switching from apache to nginx
and fastcgi and using drupal's boost module. However my conclusion is
that the ebox3300 might be able to serve static web pages but is not a
good platform for serving dynamic content.

later,
andrew.

[Kelvin Nicholson]

Andrew:

Although it sounds as though you've reached a definite conclusion, did
adjusting the mpm settings in Apache help at all? How about turning off
all logging, or moving it to non-CF based storage? Was the limiting
factor IO, CPU, or Mem?

I'm not using my ebox for anything dynamic, except MySQL on it is often
having a lot of data written/read.

Kelvin

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[Andrew]

I tried using a hard drive but it had no effect. The limiting factor
was always CPU. Apache also grabbed more memory than I liked: four
processes for every page fetch, each using 32MB. I didn't change any
MPM settings. I need the logs so I won't turn them off.

It could be that the drupal theme had too much php cruft. Simplifying
the php might help apache. Also, I've heard of some people using nginx
in front of apache: apache renders the page and nginx works as a
caching proxy. That just uses more memory and i had hoped to reserve
256MB for a ramdisk.

later,
andrew.