Running Apache with mod_spdy and PHP-FPM
SPDY is new protocol proposed by Google as an alternative for HTTP(S). Currently Chrome and Firefox browsers are using it as default if available on server. It is faster in most cases by few to several percent. The side effect of using mod_spdy external link is that it’s working well only with thread safe Apache’s modules. PHP module for Apache is not thread safe so we need to use PHP as CGI or FastCGI service. CGI is slow - so running mod_spdy for performance gain with CGI is simply pointless. FastCGI is better but it’s not possible to share APC external link cache in FastCGI mode (ex. using spawn-fcgi), so it’s poor too. Best for PHP is PHP-FPM external link which is FastCGI service with dynamic process manager and could use full advantages of APC. In such configuration I could switch from apache prefork to worker which should use less resources and be more predictable. ...