I gave a presentation to the Dallas PHP user group on May 11, 2010 on Creating Scalable PHP Web Applications.

Download the presentation in PDF.

Here is a basic outline:

• Introduction
  • Traditional Single Server and Dedicated DB-2 Server data flows.
  • What does it mean to be Scalable, Available and Redundant?
• Planning your Delivery Architecture.
  • Delivery Resource Types – html/image/pdf/email/rss
  • URL types and origins for main text/html, static images, user generated media
• Delivery Architecture Components
  • Web Servers
  • Database Systems
  • Load Balancers
  • Caching systems
  • PHP Application Code
• Web Server systems
  • Make fast and agile and identical
  • Key concept: Web systems must be thought of as being Disposable.
  • Storage of source and non-source delivery resources
  • Deployment of web servers – OS/PHP Load, Code Deployment/Updates
• Database systems
  • Hardest to Scale, throw money at this problem
  • Replication and caching layers can extend life/performance of primary database.
  • Make a plan to deal with Primary Failure – what in site will/won’t work.
  • Make a plan to deal with Primary Recovery
  • TEST THAT PLAN
  • Redundant MySQL Overview
  • Caching Layers Overview
• Load Balancers
  • Hardware/Software List
  • Primary Features
  • Secondary Features
  • Example Service/Content rule Pseudo-Config
• PHP Component Code changes
  • Sessions
    • Custom Session Data Handler
    • Basics and Gotchas
    • Example Session SQL Table
  • Non-Source File & Data Storage
    • Uploaded images/documents (avatars/photos)
    • System generated files (chart images for emails)
    • System Generated Data (calculated results data)
    • Data pulled from external system (RSS feed cache)
    • Store into shared system accessible by all front-ends
    • Admin system for forced pushes/cleanouts. Monitoring.
  • Resource Delivery
  • • Simple and complex examples.
    • Code for abstracting URL generation – App::URL(‘logo.jpg’, ‘branded’)
    • Example of complex URL structures.
    • Delivery issues with CSS and JavaScript
    • Serving SSL protected content with references to external static media; needs SSL too!
    • Using ErrorDocument to create a Just-In-Time delivery system to media servers.
  • Periodic Process Execution
    • Using Queues and Semaphores to control execution.

Posted by Brian Blood as Content Networking, Database, Hardware, MySQL, Servers, Web App Development, php at 11:47 PM UTC

No Comments »