Our recent update to AMIMOTO set PHP 7 as the new default for our AMIs. As we update AMIs and find improvements every of the way and this one is of the biggest yet. PHP 7 was long awaited by web developers for its promise of increased performance, security, and stability. We put this update to the test and here’s what we found.
We used our own website as a testing ground for this benchmark. Switching to PHP 7 we saw improvements in all areas including, CPU, Load Balancing requests, memory usage. The change after upgrading to PHP 7 was immediate. Our metrics were smoother and we saw a reduction in spikes and errors.
Why is this important?
Well, for starters WordPress running PHP 7 on AMIMOTO is going to deliver a performance bump with zero changes to your codebase. It’s a compatible upgrade any WordPress developer can take advantage of today. Also, you’ll get improved SEO since you site is faster. Google loves that. If you want to go a step further, add SSL for free with Let’s Encrypt following our how-to guide. We suggest heading over to PageSpeed Insights by Google and running a test. If you’re not happy with the results you should give one of our AMIs running PHP 7 a try. Which is now all of them.
CPU Utilization
WordPress sites with high-traffic demands would find big improvements regarding CPU usage. As traffic spikes, your server needs to process that request and deliver the correct info. The more traffic you receive the more demands it can get causing errors, timeouts, and delays. That means you users have to wait longer or maybe they’ll leave altogether.
As you can see the spikes are still there, that’s completely normal but what’s important is that they’re lower on average and less sharp.
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After
ELB Request Counts
Our site is setup with an Elastic Load Balancer using our AMIMOTO CloudFormation AMI which includes Auto Scaling. This CloudFormation template comes with an Elastic Load Balancer so your server doesn’t get flooded and traffic is sent to the most available channel.
Before
After
ELB Response Times
This area was the most surprising for us. ELB Response Times factor into what the user experiences. Longer response times here are longer page loads and latency for website visitors and admins.
Before
After
How can you upgrade?
Easy, just launch one of the AMIMOTO AMIs listed in the AWS Marketplace. They all come with PHP 7 now standard with the exception of those running HHVM which is also fast.