PHP caching: shm vs. apc vs. memcache vs. mysql vs. file cache (update: fill apc from cron)

Lessons learned:
  • shm/apc are 32-60 times faster than memcached or mysql
  • shm/apc are 2 times faster than php file cache with apc
  • php file cache with apc is 15-24 times faster than memcached or mysql
  • mysql is 2 times faster than memcached when storing more than 400 bytes
  • memcached is 2 times faster than mysql when storing less than 400 bytes
  • php file cache with apc is 2-3 times faster than normal file cache
  • php file cache without apc is 8 times slower than normal file cache

Tests were made with PHP 5.3.10, MySQL 5.5.29, memcached 1.4.13, 64bit, 3.4GHz (QEMU):


shm
0.031 0.020 0.021 0.021 0.026 0.028 0.032 0.042 0.084 0.155 0.290 0.629 0.110
Total: 1.489, Avg: 0.115

apc
0.025 0.025 0.025 0.026 0.031 0.036 0.043 0.060 0.106 0.171 0.328 0.756 0.097
Total: 1.728, Avg: 0.133

memcache
3.116 3.014 3.005 3.072 3.077 3.910 3.929 4.067 4.308 10.371 15.323 25.013 3.281
Total: 85.488, Avg: 6.576

memcache socket
1.736 1.756 1.981 1.780 1.809 1.907 1.941 1.983 2.225 9.368 14.071 24.897 1.979
Total: 67.435, Avg: 5.187

memcached
2.241 2.540 2.713 2.769 2.897 3.249 4.286 5.298 7.729 10.539 16.021 28.060 2.578
Total: 90.919, Avg: 6.994

mysql myisam
3.267 3.291 3.310 3.295 3.700 3.777 3.888 4.078 4.368 6.272 6.930 9.626 3.726
Total: 59.529, Avg: 4.579

mysql memory
3.238 3.360 3.470 3.502 3.310 3.346 3.681 4.108 4.370 6.286 7.279 7.079 3.397
Total: 56.426, Avg: 4.340

file cache
0.593 0.595 0.593 0.609 0.546 0.563 0.574 0.600 0.648 0.800 1.115 1.956 0.775
Total: 9.966, Avg: 0.767

php file cache
0.177 0.176 0.175 0.180 0.187 0.188 0.195 0.210 0.236 0.318 0.479 0.901 0.228
Total: 3.650, Avg: 0.281

(10b 0.1k 0.3k 0.5k 1k 2k 4k 8k 16k 32k 64k 128k array)
Notes: Numbers in seconds, smaller numbers are better, connection times for memcached and mysql are not counted, file cache was done on tmpfs.

Cold cache, fill apc cache from cron:

All entries in apc cache are kept in shared memory. Shared memory is available to the web server and is not shared with the command line php (php-cli). When the web server is restarted, the cache is empty and refilling the complete cache can create performance problems. To fill the apc cache with a cron job, we use a second script to dump the cache to a binary file and load it inside the web server:


// php cron.php
$data = array("cached"=>1, "hello"=>"world");
apc_store($data);
apc_bin_dumpfile(array(), array_keys($data), "/var/cache/apc_cron.bin");

// bootstrap.php, http://myserver.com/...
if (apc_fetch("cached")===false) apc_bin_loadfile("/var/cache/apc_cron.bin");

echo apc_fetch("hello"); // gives "world"

Related articles:

Here is the test script:


<?php
// memcached -m 64 -s /tmp/m.sock -a 0777 -p 0 -u memcache
// memcached -m 64 -l 127.0.0.1 -p 11211 -u memcache
set_time_limit(3600);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set("display_errors", 1);
ini_set("apc.enable_cli", 1);
mysqli_report(MYSQLI_REPORT_STRICT | MYSQLI_REPORT_ERROR);

$data = array( // test are range from 10-128,000 bytes
"1111111110",
str_repeat("1111111110", 10),
str_repeat("1111111110", 30),
str_repeat("1111111110", 50),
str_repeat("1111111110", 100),
str_repeat("1111111110", 200),
str_repeat("1111111110", 400),
str_repeat("1111111110", 800),
str_repeat("1111111110", 1600),
str_repeat("1111111110", 3200),
str_repeat("1111111110", 6400),
str_repeat("1111111110", 12800),
array(0=>"1111111110", "id2"=>"hello world", "id3"=>"foo bar", "id4"=>42)
);

echo "shm\n";
$t = array();
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = shm(4000+$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "apc\n";
$t = array();
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = apc((string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "memcache\n";
$t = array();
$m = memcache_connect("127.0.0.1", 11211);
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = memcache($m, (string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "memcache socket\n";
$t = array();
$m = memcache_connect("unix:///tmp/m.sock", 0);
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = memcache($m, (string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "memcached\n";
$t = array();
$m = new Memcached();
$m->addServer("127.0.0.1", 11211);
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = memcached($m, (string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

/* not in memcached 1.x
echo "memcached socket\n";
$t = array();
$m = new Memcached();
$m->addServer("unix:///tmp/m.sock", 0);
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = memcached($m, (string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);
*/

echo "mysql myisam\n";
$t = array();
$m = new mysqli("127.0.0.1", "root", "", "t1");
mysqli_query($m, "drop table if exists t1.cache");
mysqli_query($m, "create table t1.cache (id int primary key, data mediumtext) engine=myisam");
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = mysql_cache($m, $key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "mysql memory\n";
$t = array();
mysqli_query($m, "drop table if exists t1.cache");
mysqli_query($m, "create table t1.cache (id int primary key, data varchar(65500)) engine=memory");
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = mysql_cache($m, $key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "file cache\n";
$t = array();
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = file_cache((string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

echo "php file cache\n";
$t = array();
foreach ($data as $key=>$val) $t[] = php_cache((string)$key, $val);
echo stats($t);

function stats($t) {
return "\nTotal: ".number_format(array_sum($t), 3).", ".
"Avg: ".number_format(array_sum($t) / count($t), 3)."\n\n";
}

function format($num) {
return number_format($num, 3);
}

function shm($id, $data) {
if (is_array($data)) {
$arr = true;
$data = serialize($data);
} else $arr = false;
$len = strlen($data);
$shm_id = shmop_open($id, "c", 0644, $len);
shmop_write($shm_id, $data, 0);
$start = microtime(true);
if ($arr) {
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = unserialize(shmop_read($shm_id, 0, $len));
} else {
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = shmop_read($shm_id, 0, $len);
}
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
shmop_close($shm_id);
assert(substr(is_array($v) ? $v[0] : $v, 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

function apc($id, $data) {
apc_store($id, $data);
$start = microtime(true);
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = apc_fetch($id);
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
assert(substr(is_array($v) ? $v[0] : $v, 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

function memcache($m, $id, $data) {
memcache_set($m, $id, $data);
$start = microtime(true);
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = memcache_get($m, $id);
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
assert(substr(is_array($v) ? $v[0] : $v, 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

function memcached($m, $id, $data) {
$m->set($id, $data);
$start = microtime(true);
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = $m->get($id);
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
assert(substr(is_array($v) ? $v[0] : $v, 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

function mysql_cache($m, $id, $data) {
$d = is_array($data) ? serialize($data) : $data;
mysqli_query($m, "insert into t1.cache values (".$id.", '".$d."')");
$start = microtime(true);
if (is_array($data)) {
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) {
$v = mysqli_query($m, "SELECT data FROM t1.cache WHERE id=".$id)->fetch_row();
$v = unserialize($v[0]);
}
} else {
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) {
$v = mysqli_query($m, "SELECT data FROM t1.cache WHERE id=".$id)->fetch_row();
}
}
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
assert(substr($v[0], 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

function file_cache($id, $data) {
file_put_contents($id, is_array($data) ? serialize($data) : $data);
$start = microtime(true);
if (is_array($data)) {
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = unserialize(file_get_contents($id));
} else {
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) $v = file_get_contents($id);
}
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
assert(substr(is_array($v) ? $v[0] : $v, 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

function php_cache($id, $data) {
$id .= ".php";
$data = is_array($data) ? var_export($data, 1) : "'".$data."'";
file_put_contents($id, "<?php\n\$v=".$data.";");
touch($id, time()-10); // needed for APC's file update protection
$start = microtime(true);
for ($i=0; $i<100000; $i++) include($id);
echo format($end = microtime(true)-$start)." ";
assert(substr(is_array($v) ? $v[0] : $v, 0, 10)=="1111111110");
return $end;
}

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