Drupal Performance and Scalability With Excessive I/O Load Or Memory Exhausion

On many occasions, we see web site performance suffereing due to misconfiguration or oversight of system resources. Here is an example where RAM and Disk I/O severely impacted web site performance, and how we fixed them.

A recent project for a client who had bad site performance uncovered issues within the application itself, i.e. how the Drupal site was put together. However, overcoming those issues was not enough to achieve the required scalability with several hundred logged in users on the site at the same time.

Articles
Drupal Performance
Drupal Planet
Disk
Memory

Memory usage revisited: when the Open Buffet is not to blame, rather Views

We have written before about Drupal Memory usage by modules, and the Open Buffet binge syndrome.

But this time, it was different. Modules were not to blame.

While inspecting a site that had several performance problems for a client, we noticed is that memory usage was very high. From the "top" command, the RES (resident set) field was 159 MB, far more than what it should be.

We narrowed down the problem to a view that is in a block that is visible on most pages of the site.

Articles
Drupal Planet
Apache
Views
Open Buffet
APC
Memory

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