In MySQL performance tuning, few variables wield as much influence as innodb_buffer_pool_size. This essential MySQL configuration parameter directly impacts the performance of InnoDB, the most commonly used storage engine in MySQL. In this second installment in our series on MySQL database performance optimization, we continue to delve into the intricate world of MySQL configuration variables by […]
Linux benchmark scripts and tools
This list of Linux benchmark scripts and tools should prove helpful for quick performance checks of CPU, storage, memory, and network on Linux servers and VPS. Check each script before running from the command line. Most of these scripts will benchmark the CPU, memory, storage, and network. In most cases, the CPU Model, frequency, and […]
Your Web Host Doesn’t Want You To Read This: Benchmark Your VPS
Aug 13th, 2023: added Yet-another-bench-script benchmarking tool. Sept 27th, 2021: Added link to a great list of command-line benckmark scripts. June 17th, 2019: Added instructions for network speed test using speedtest-cli script. Nov 2nd, 2016: Included quick dd commands to check cached vs. uncached read performance. This article will highlight using the ‘dd’ Unix command […]
NGINX Reverse Proxy Metrics to Monitor
NGINX is one of the most popular web servers nowadays, especially for Linux web servers. According to nginx.com, it powers more than 400 million websites. It is, however, probably even more commonly used as a reverse proxy. Since it acts as a go-between for your application and your users, it’s important to properly monitor NGINX […]
100 Top Observability Tools (+ Server Monitoring and APM solutions)
Looking for application monitoring and observability solutions? On this page, I’ve listed the top application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, and observability solutions to date. The listings are updated periodically as APM and observability solutions continue a rapid evolution. While I haven’t tested all of these solutions, I’ve used more than a third of them. […]
25 Best CDN Providers 2023
A 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, to name closer to and thus faster, to end-users. Some of the […]
50 Top Observability and Monitoring Solutions – 2023
Back in 2014, I compiled a list of top server and application performance monitoring solutions. Sharing that list publicly was a great way to gain feedback and recommendations on other tools available. Over time that list grew from 20 to over 100 server monitoring and APM solutions! Because of its growing size, I’ve created a smaller, more […]
Top Serverless Monitoring Tools + Serverless Resources
Technology continues to evolve, and solutions for hosting applications continue to expand. One such method of application hosting that has been growing in popularity is serverless computing and, as a result, the increased demand for serverless monitoring. What is Serverless Computing? Serverless Computing is a cloud-computing execution model managed by cloud providers who run the […]
PHP 8 Compatibility Check and Performance Tips.
PHP 7 was first released back on 03 Dec 2015. Yes, it’s been around a while! The PHP team encouraged upgrading to PHP 7, hailing its improvements such as being twice as fast, consistent 64-bit support, removing old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions, and improved fatal error resistance, to name a few. A few years […]
Serving your blog from full-page-cache CDN locations
Ask yourself, would you stick around if this page didn’t load almost immediately, but instead, there was a blank white page for a few seconds? Around half of the internet’s users leave if it takes longer than 2 seconds to load a web page. Two years ago, I used Cloudflare’s Page Rules, specifically the “Cache […]