Software Update = Best Service!

The work of updating the software that provides the various web services and databases for an internet service provider like us is very delicate, with this article we want to share with you how we managed to satisfy all users by updating the web server and database software, at the same time greatly improving the service provided.

History and experience teach us It's the oldest story in the world, updates are always very important for the security and performance of hosting servers, but they often create problems for some users who don't keep the software they use updated, so what can we do?

How do you think a user should feel who is told at any moment: "Your software is too obsolete for our platforms, your site will no longer work, and it needs to be updated, oh and you should do it NOW."

This sentence can only trigger one feeling: panic. So since we don't like giving our customers heart attacks, we decided to adopt another strategy.

The php interpreter When we were preparing to update the version of php (at the time it was 5.3) and make versions 5.5 and 5.6 available, we thought of doing it exclusively for those versions of the updated cms that would support it, trying to create a sort of compatibility list between the various existing software and php, obviously trying to favor the most updated versions of php.

It wasn't easy considering that, as we wrote in an old article, our users don't only use Joomla! After about 2 months of work we can happily say that 80% of the websites on our hosting servers run with an updated version of PHP (5.5 or 5.6).

Obviously it wasn't, as they say, "one hit = one death", for example even if the Joomla! 2.5 is compatible with version 5.5 of php, it happened that some particular third-party extensions caused a blank page on the site. In fact, around 200 support tickets were handled in which our help desk team helped all customers identify the non-working extension, update it and get the site back online.

All users who are still using version 5.3 of PHP (obsolete and no longer supported) have received and are still receiving suggestions to be able to migrate to the Joomla! or other more up-to-date CMS and can request a free upgrade to the latest PHP versions at any time.

And the database? The MySQL version also needed to be updated, but why not improve the service, during an update? Our Head of the Research & Development Department, Alessandro Fustini, explains to us what are the main reasons why we decided to migrate our 130 database instances from MySQL to MariaDB and therefore make it available to all our customers:

"One of the fundamental things for quickly accessing data in a relational database are the indexes on the tables but all this is true if our database also knows how to best use these resources. The part that has this intelligence is called the optimizer and every time operations are performed on the data, it is called into play to look for the best way (read it as the fastest) to perform the operation. MariaDB 10 has an optimizer born from the MySQL experience with many proprietary additions that make the difference in terms of performance.

MariaDB and Joomla!: Love at first sight The first widely used optimization for Joomla! is to transparently convert subqueries into plain queries with joins that can be optimized using the indexes available on the tables.

Even the way of reading the indexes with some engines has been optimized to try to examine as little data as possible. When in Joomlahost we set out to improve the performance of the Database we first did a meticulous tuning of the numerous configuration parameters on all 130 instances and then took real cases to time the display times before and after the migration to MariaDB 10.

In all cases analyzed we found greater performance and scalability with MariaDB 10 compared to MySQL, reaching peak queries per second that were almost double higher than MySQL. Naturally depending on the plugins present in the Joomla! this number may vary.

Another thing that has helped us a lot as a shared hosting provider is the management of the connection pool, which allows you to have a large number of active connections to the Database without a strong performance degradation.

For the more curious, on the official MariaDB blog there are other tests and trials regarding the general performance of this DB."

Everyone is happy. In conclusion, we know that software updates are necessary to keep the platforms always up to date in terms of security and performance and that the various internet providers are often "accused" of carrying out these operations too abruptly for users, we believe we have found a middle ground and have managed to improve the service, respecting users and... doing our job, leave your impressions in the comments!