June 17th 2019: Added instructions for network speed test using speedtest-cli script. Oct 31st 2017: Also see this list of command line scripts. Nov 2nd 2016: Included quick dd commands to check cached vs uncached disk read performance. This article will highlight using the ‘dd’ Unix command for a quick benchmark of your Linux server or VPS. […]
Nginx tuning tips: TLS/SSL HTTPS – Improved TTFB/latency
June 14, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxSince 30th June 2018, the PCI Security Standards Council requires that support for SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 be disabled. TLS 1.1 or higher must be used and TLS 1.2 is strongly recommended. In addition, as of July 2018, Google Chrome began to mark ‘HTTP’ web sites as “not secure”. Over the past few years, the […]
When is it time to add more application monitoring?
June 12, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog GuestsGuest post by James Paden, Partner at Instrumental At Instrumental, we often talk about getting started with monitoring. In the past, we’ve covered the critical, but basic, metrics everyone needs on our Ultimate Monitoring Metrics Cheatsheet (many of which are gathered by out-the-box system and service monitoring). We also wrote the Quick-Start Guide to Monitoring […]
Zorin Linux – As a Windows OS (and MacOS) Replacement
June 10, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxThis article has been edited and updated from the original 2014 article. For 2019, I still recommend Zorin Linux as a Windows OS replacement and now as a MacOS replacement. Five years later and I’m more confident about this recommendation. You’ve probably heard about or been affected by the retirement of Windows XP support on April 8, […]
“MySQL server has gone away” error – Solution(s)
June 7, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxMySQL server has gone away error means that MySQL server (mysqld) timed out and closed the connection. By default, MySQL will close connections after eight hours (28800 seconds) if nothing happens. However, in some cases your web host, DBA or app developer may have decreased this timeout setting, discussed below. MySQL server has gone away, can be […]
How to Convert OpenSSH keys to Putty (.ppk) on Linux
June 3, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxPuTTYgen is an key generator for creating SSH keys for PuTTY. PuTTYgen is comparable in certain respects to the ssh-keygen tool. PuTTYgen can be used to create public and private key pairs (in .ppk file format). In addition, PuTTYgen can also be used to convert keys to and from other formats. On Windows PuTTYGen is a graphical tool. A command-line version is available for […]
25 Best CDN Providers 2019
May 24, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxA content delivery network, also referred to as a content distribution network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of data centers containing proxy servers. CDN Providers serve Internet content, including web objects (text, graphics and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (e-commerce, portals), live streaming media, etc… closer to and thus faster, to end users. Some of the main advantages […]
Pruning Magento Cache & Sessions Using Cron
May 22, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxNote: Magento 1.x only. Over the weekend a client contacted me because they had serious performance issues with their Magento based store. The three main issues were: Checkout taking more than 30 seconds to complete after clicking to submit payment. (Causing double orders/payments and users just leaving the store) Login to the front or back end […]
20 Top Server Monitoring & Application Performance Monitoring Solutions
May 8, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxUPDATE: 50 Top Server Monitoring & Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solutions Last Update – Fixed broken links. (including defunct, mergers, acquisitions, or changed links) Back in September I wrote about an article than touched on the subject of server performance monitoring. Then just last month a LinkedIn connection asked: “I am using New Relic to monitor my cloud servers […]
PHP Performance: Additional CPU cores or Faster CPU cores
April 30, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxSome time ago I received an email from a client experiencing slow performance issues with a LEMP (Linux, Nginx, MySQL and PHP web server). During a full audit, I found that the server’s load average was pretty low (see above screenshot). However, the website was indeed very slow. There were some misconfigurations, but one […]
PHP-FPM tuning: Using ‘pm static’ for max performance
April 23, 2019 by Hayden James, in Blog LinuxLets take a very quick look at how best to setup PHP-FPM for high throughput, low latency and a more stable use of CPU and memory. By default, most setups have PHP-FPM’s PM (process manager) string set to dynamic and there’s also the common advice to use ondemand if you suffer from available memory issues. However, lets compare the two management […]