Performance improvement of WordPress using Unix Domain Socket

As mentioned by this tweet, I am interested in accelerating web service.

参考になる。
　最後の製品紹介は抜きにしても。https://t.co/V1eNveC0nU
— ヤッチ@外資系車載機器組込エンジニア (@linux_fun) September 24, 2021

In this article I switched to use Unix Domain Socket instead of TCP Socket between each container.
– Nginx <-> WordPress
– WordPress <-> Mysql
By Unix Domain Socket, each process doesn’t need to perform 3-way handshake and hence whole process will be lightweight!

I performed benchmark before and after.

You can see where it is.

What I did

Let me use this docker-compose as base.

GitHub - kurofuku/wordpress-container

Contribute to kurofuku/wordpress-container development by creating an account on GitHub.

Nginx <-> WordPress

Let’s do it.
First Nginx <-> WordPress.

Please change /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf which should have server in Nginx configuration.

-fastcgi_pass wordpress:9000;
+fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;

This is php-fpm configuration.
– /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/zz-docker.conf

-listen = 9000
+listen = /var/run/php-fpm.sock

In docker-compose.yml /var/run/ should be shared.
– In this directory Unix Domain Socket file is located.

version: '3.1'

services:
  nginx:
   volumes:
    - php_socket:/var/run


  wordpress:
    - php_socket:/var/run

volumes:
  php_socket:

That’s it for communication line between Nginx and WordPress.

WordPress <-> mariadb

Please modify wp-config.php.

-define( 'DB_HOST', 'db:3306' );
+define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost:/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' );

mariadb is already configured to listen by /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock.
So what we need to do is to share /var/run/ directory so WordPress can see this file.

version: '3.1'

services:
  db:
    - php_socket:/var/run

volumes:
  php_socket:

Before vs after

I use this article image which runs on Raspberry Pi 4 as “Before”.

I measured with below condition.

- Using LightHouse in Developers Tools of Chrome browser.
  Checking Performance only
- Taking median as representative(n = 5).
- Measuring on secret tab of Chrome.

Before
<—Mobile Desktop—>

After
<—Mobile Desktop—>

Mobile improved 2 points, Desktop did 1 points!

There is a few improve, but it’s OK.

Conclusion

How was it?

You can do it without any difficutly!