Microsoft Security Essentials MsMpEng.exe using high CPU Time

How to: Install for php and

In what seems the eternal quest of having a good performing hosting server one of the tools that are generally referred to is Memcache. What Memcache offers you is a centralized server/cluster that holds in memory cached information. Some of the reasons why it is so popular is because:

• It allows you to share a common cache store across servers. Think accessing db cached information obtained by Server01 on Server02 or sharing session information between servers.
• Because it stores information in memory, it is supposed to be fast.

WordPress can leverage Memcache either through php or with plugins. Php can leverage shared session for instance while a plugin like can use object caching through Memcache. This could provide a great performance improvement specially if your site is hosted on multiple servers.

Now, this installation instructions are meant to be simple and provide a quick way to deploy Memcache. I am no expert so some important settings might be overlooked but this should be a good starting guide for someone new to Memcache that wants to deploy it on a box.

Note: There are two flavors for the php libraries:  and . Fortunately for us W3 Total Cache has decided to go with memcache so we can avoid a lenghty discussion of which is better and why.

First install memcache and the php library in order for it to work with php and WordPress:

apt-get install memcached php5-memcache

and that’s it! Well, that was rather short. So now let’s go into some settings worth taking a look at:

I. Increase Max Memory Memecached can use

I know it says that the default (64MB) is enough, but you may need more. I am already using 64 mb for what I consider a small site.

Open /etc/memcached.conf  Look for value -m 64 Change it to -m 256 Restart memcached: sudo service memcached restart

II. Move PHP’s session storage to Memcache

Open /etc/php5/mods-available/memcache.ini

Add following lines:

session.save_handler = memcache session.save_path = "tcp://localhost:11211"

As mentioned this would effectively allow you to share session across multiple servers that use Memcache.

III. Web-Viewer for Memcache Stats

There are many options out there but I saw  and liked it, plus many sites referenced it.

To install visit the site to obtain the latest version: 

cd /var/www/memcache.CloudIngenium.com/wwwroot/

wget

tar -xvzf phpMemcachedAdmin-1.2.2-r262.tar.gz

chmod 0777 Config/Memcache.php

So now we need to configure :

cd /etc/httpd/conf.d

sudo nano memcached.conf include the following in memcached.conf

Because we didn’t specify the Allow from directive only localhost would be able to access this site. Don´t forget to add this site to Apache and restart for it to publish it.

If you wanted to use nginx you should use the following conf config as a template:

server {      listen 80;          server_name  memcached.CloudIngenium.com;          access_log   /var/ log /nginx/memcached.CloudIngenium.com-access. log  main;          location  / {              allow 10.0.0.1 /32;              deny all;              proxy_set_header Host $host;              proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;              proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;              proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;              proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;              proxy_pass http: //127.0.0.1:80;          } }