[wolco]

Common approach is to serve static files with nginx and use apache / php_mod to process.

Why are you running php-fpm? Do you need to separate request's processes? The speed benefits of php-fpm are part of php 7 so using php_mod is faster now.

[cbg0]

> Common approach is to serve static files with nginx and use apache / php_mod to process.

Not sure how common that really is, I've personally never set things up like that and just use nginx + php-fpm and don't know anyone that still uses apache with mod_php.

[snuxoll]

Plenty of stuff still uses it, unfortunately. Performance is pretty janky, I just moved a Mediawiki install from Apache+mod_php to Nginx+php-fpm as part of getting the site(s) on kubernetes and it’s tremendously better to work with and uses less memory due to not needing mpm_prefork.

[wolco]

We went from php_mod to php-fpm but we started moving back to php_mod after php 7 came out showing the benchmarks.

[larzang]

That's true for us as well with our legacy applications.

Our newer applications are using litespeed instead, and we've found it to be significantly better. You basically get the features of a nginx + apache + varnish stack in a single easily managed service and with better performance too.

[locusm]

I think its the default on Plesk installs

[oefrha]

> Why are you running php-fpm?

Because running just nginx is more convenient than nginx + Apache, where Apache is only used for mod_php. For me anyway. (I only use nginx + php-fpm for a Wordpress instance; I have tons of stuff in other languages running on top of nginx too.)

[stephenr]

Why are you not running php-fpm with Apache is a more pressing question IMO.

[wolco]

Speed mostly.

[maxymajzr]

Can you elaborate? I've yet to see Apache + mod_php to be capable of coming even close to <anything> + PHP-FPM so I'm really interested in what you guys are doing.

[NightlyDev]

Mod_php was always faster at executing scripts. There is less overhead as you don't have to communicate like you have to with fpm.

For light scripts this is far superior to fpm. On the other hand, always loading php does have it's downsides too as memory consumption can get quite high depending on the number of threads.

This is was also the reason for the fpm hype a long time ago: don't waste memory on php when php isn't needed. It had nothing to do with it running php faster.

What you should choose depends on your need.

[maxymajzr]

> Mod_php was always faster at executing scripts

I've never, ever witnessed that mod_php came close to be fast, let alone faster than PHP-FPM. There's more work to be done in order to prepare everything needed for Apache to pass the data to PHP executable once it embeds it within its own process. Once opcache is up and running, PHP-FPM blows mod_php away (and there are tools to warm up the cache prior to letting the php-fpm node go live).

> This is was also the reason for the fpm hype a long time ago: don't waste memory on php when php isn't needed

I've been present when the "hype" as you called it hit. It had nothing to do with memory as much as it did with scaling. Added benefit was the ability to have PHP-FPM act as a multiplexer towards certain services (database to name one).

Today, there's no reason to use Apache and mod_php. It's slower and worse by definition. It can't be faster. If you receive results that show it is faster, you're either testing it wrong or your PHP-FPM runs on a raspberry pi.

[mtbcoder]

> Mod_php was always faster at executing scripts. There is less overhead as you don't have to communicate like you have to with fpm.

The "overhead" of communicating via CGI to a PHP process has nothing to do with the speed of execution of the script itself.

> For light scripts this is far superior to fpm. On the other hand, always loading php does have it's downsides too as memory consumption can get quite high depending on the number of threads.

It's not far superior as the "overhead" of CGI is negligible in the real world. Plus you can pool processes for better scaling. Also, if you are using prefork with mod_php (which is the most probable scenario) it means you are forking an entirely new Apache process and not just "loading PHP" with each request.

> This is was also the reason for the fpm hype a long time ago: don't waste memory on php when php isn't needed. It had nothing to do with it running php faster.

It's not hype, because for a long time, mod_php required prefork because it was not thread-safe (even now it's still a pain to manage re-compiling PHP to be thread-safe for mod_php + Apache)...which means you could not take advantage of mpm_event or mpm_worker.

[g8oz]

Yes CGI just allows you to scale in a way mod_php doesn't. Apache & mod_fcgid are a great combo imo.

[stephenr]

I was under the impression that a properly tuned mpm_event and fpm has very little difference to mpm_prefork and mod_php. What sort of machines are you running this on and what sort of child proc numbers are you running?

[shakna]

PHP-FPM + Nginx is the standard approach for OwnCloud & NextCloud. I'm sure they're not the only stacks that use that approach.