New customer looking for advice on CDN/PHP Accelerators

[Dmacleo]

have not had that issue yet but have been watching for it, with cpanel plugin I can be on or off cloudflare in 5 minutes if needed.

[MGBrose]

Note: Cloudflare does go down often and then your forums will down too. Use at your own risk. I am using cloudflare on one of my forums. Up time is not good for cloudflare.

I beg to differ: http://uptime.mazda626.net/

All July-September downtimes came back as issues with our server being in a new server center and many DDOS attacks.

October - 99.9% uptime.

Downtime on the 14th SQL Database Error (our fault)

Only unaccounted downtime is 4 minutes which could have been server related dont know.

The only time cloudflare has given us issues is occasionally, is the rare occasion where a CF datacenter gets attacked we might have 5-10 seconds of downtime but it's not even enough for our uptime checks to tell, but they reroute the traffic and problem resolved.

If used correctly cloudflare will make yoursite a hell of alot faster. The thing is most people with ipboard that I've seen complaining on the forum, don't understand how to leverage its strengths correctly, for their own needs.

Our TTFB is below 300ms for us visitors.

[mknobbe]

If used correctly cloudflare will make yoursite a hell of alot faster. The thing is most people with ipboard that I've seen complaining on the forum, don't understand how to leverage its strengths correctly, for their own needs.

I'm using cloudflare and have been happy with it reducing server loads.

Any tips for usage?

[Dmacleo]

watch it, be careful, test it to make sure.

just like anything else.

it is good for some, bad for others depending on needs. I would caution against loading up all its "apps" but just use common sense. there is no right answer here, so I can't be specific.

[Dalinar]

Well, dmacleo helped me with some server side optimizations (a big thanks to him), and I also installed Cloudflare, which seems to have further increased the speed of my website (granted, it's still unpopulated). However, I'm having issues with Firefox, Opera and even my Galaxy S2: on all of them my website is unavailable. I even turned off Always Online because I've read that it can cause issues, but it didn't help. I'm only able to browse it to Chrome, but that must be because of caching. What do I do now?

[Dmacleo]

looking like apf/iptables issue.

we'll know more tomorrow.

[MGBrose]

Well, dmacleo helped me with some server side optimizations (a big thanks to him), and I also installed Cloudflare, which seems to have further increased the speed of my website (granted, it's still unpopulated). However, I'm having issues with Firefox, Opera and even my Galaxy S2: on all of them my website is unavailable. I even turned off Always Online because I've read that it can cause issues, but it didn't help. I'm only able to browse it to Chrome, but that must be because of caching. What do I do now?

It really depends what your trying to do. Cloudflare can cause alot of JS issues with IPboard depending on your theme and what not.

My Recommendation:

Security settings: Entirely up to you, we run very relaxed security.

For Performance Settings:

the most important tip I can give is to start with a stable and conservative setup[which i posted below] and then tweak settings from there

• Custom
• Aggressive Caching
• TTL (longer the better, but just make sure you use url versioning, or purge the cache if you make any template/theme changes)
• Auto Minify --off (I have no boxes checked, when using only cloudflare I noticed minify gave some issues) - especially because I serve all my css/js content from amazon cloudfront
• RocketLoader --off, rocketloader caused lots of issues last time I tried it, its still very young, and has lots of issues with ipboards javascript
• Preloader, --off, disable it if it causes you issues, we have ours disabled
• Mirage --off
• Polish -- off

I can guarantee this setup will work with IPBoard as a stable starting setup. If your looking to leverage cloudflare start with this configuration than add items one at a time until you figure out which features cause issues and what doesn't.

We use Amazon as our CDN, so cloudflare caches very little content, But is still hugely helpful, especially for connect times, dns routing, etc. Its also great for caching images that somehow didn't make it onto our Primary CDN (Amazon). Which makes our site really speedy overall.

Only part of optimization

Cloudflare is only one step though. To have a fully speedy site you need multiple layers of optimization.There are hundreds of possible setups, but this one works fantastically for us

Our Layers of optimization:

1) DNS Routing = cloudflare (Cloudflare has one of the fastest DNS routing services in the world (http://www.solvedns.com/blog/major-dns-providers-speed-comparison/, not to mention can easily safeguard your from DNS level attacks)

2) Http Acceleration = Varnish for guests only using UNIXY Varnish WHM Plugin

3) PHP Handler = fastcgi + mpm prefork

4) PHP/OpCode Caching = Xcache

5) MYSQL = Good my.cnf setup (use a starting cnf that appropriately fits your ram and server settings, then tweak from there)

6) CDN = Amazon CloudFront (Primary) + CloudFlare (Secondary)

7) SITE CONTENT Level: Lower the total amounts of requests per pageload, image optimization, minified css/js (cloudflares performance settings can help with this but we did it manually)

As you can see cloudflare only solves 2-3 of the 7 major areas of optimization, so while its hugely helpful it doesn't do everything yet.

[Dmacleo]

you must have the business/enterprise level account right?

[MGBrose]

you must have the business/enterprise level account right?

Just Pro 20.00 a month account for mazda626.net, and then all my other sites use free cloudflare accounts.

I also use cloudflare for my redirect domains with cloudflare pagerules

m626.net is our shortcut domain to mazda626.net and takes usually around 70ms max to redirect a domain/url

[Dmacleo]

most of the advanced dns protection comes under the expensive accounts. the I'm under attack one is only for short period before they revert straight to your server (I forget specifics but its not long in a ddos ) so if often a target keep in mind.

its (cloudflare) a tool like any other, good for some and not others.

on Dalinars, for now until more data, I went mod_ruid2/dso over fcgi due to cpanel and it being a small 512mb vps. its been flawless with me with uploads up to 2gb where fcgi gave me issues. and a lot of that is cpanel fault.

I could not get xcache to work as well for me as apc so went apc, also its inclusion in php makes me think in long run it will be better.

used the free nginx admin for now.

but until site opened up and stuff its kind of just a guess, need to get traffic hitting it. not "tied" to any one setup. need to see how it works with normal operation, not closing mind off to anything. still learning stuff every day :smile:

have not touched my.cnf yet as I have no real baseline.

[MGBrose]

most of the advanced dns protection comes under the expensive accounts. the I'm under attack one is only for short period before they revert straight to your server (I forget specifics but its not long in a ddos ) so if often a target keep in mind.

its (cloudflare) a tool like any other, good for some and not others.

on Dalinars, for now until more data, I went mod_ruid2/dso over fcgi due to cpanel and it being a small 512mb vps. its been flawless with me with uploads up to 2gb where fcgi gave me issues. and a lot of that is cpanel fault.

I could not get xcache to work as well for me as apc so went apc, also its inclusion in php makes me think in long run it will be better.

used the free nginx admin for now.

but until site opened up and stuff its kind of just a guess, need to get traffic hitting it. not "tied" to any one setup. need to see how it works with normal operation, not closing mind off to anything. still learning stuff every day :smile:

have not touched my.cnf yet as I have no real baseline.

More than one way to skin a cat :D, And many work just as well as others for sure. I definitely don't want to give the impression that my way is the best, because like you said depends on your exact situation a YMMV(your mileage may vary) kind of thing.

Just to add to Dmacelos setup, I know for a fact that NGINX is generally a better handler than apache, so their is always something to running a NGINX based setup.

Cool to read up on your setup though, thanks for sharing!

[Dmacleo]

I learn more every day LOL

so am planning on keeping close eye on his stuff to make sure I don't do him wrong.

[Guest Ae9803]

Our site uses probably one of the most elaborate setups but it works beautifully.

High level Accelerator: Cloudflare Pro (Better DNS pings, Highly responsive to DNS changes) and HTTP Distribution

• Cloudflare drops about 500-600ms for TTFB for users in singapore/asia/australia (our servers based in Florida)
• The biggest thing for cloudflare is figuring out what you need it to do, we have cloudflare do very lttle in terms of "performance changes" other than routing our http around the world 2x as fast as we can.
• Also we used modcloudflare to fix the IP issue.

CDN: Amazon Cloudfront *Primary CDN* -> Cloudflare *secondary CDN* (for legacy images that aren't hosted via cnamed urls for our CDN)

• Cloudfront is also able to pass our minified js/css off to the CDN, which is a HUGE benefit. Here is how i set it up: http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/articles.html/_/server-resource-management/cdn-minify-guide-r625

HTTP Acceleration: Varnish, via UNIXY WHM Plugin

• We have our users routed around the cache to give them always fresh content and it works brilliantly. Varnish has reduced our processors usage to almost zero, while only requiring about 200mb of ram.

Apache: FastCGI + Xcache

• Works flawlessly with ipboard, and as mentioned one of the fastest php object caches around.
• If you don't have alot of experience messing with this stuff get a pro like gary to help you out, hes a wizard at optimizing your php handler

How do you find the unique version number for Enabled Minify CSS/JS