I recently decided to install Zend Server CE on my machine to use as a local development environment. I chose the PHP 5.3 installation so I could update my PHP code to fit the new version. I was intrigued and excited to find that WordPress used a mere 2 MB of memory compared with 12-13 MB on my production installation.
| Zend Server CE | cPanel/Other Stacks | |
|---|---|---|
| Memory usage | 1.5-2 MB | 12-14 MB |
| OS | Windows XP Windows Server 2003 |
Linux Windows XP Windows Server 2003 |
| Installation | PHP 5.2.10/5.3 MySQL Apache 2.2.12 (Full) |
PHP 5.2.10 MySQL Apache 2.2.xx |
| WordPress Version | 2.8.4 | 2.8.4 |
| WordPress Plugins | Same | Same |
My primary testing was done on Windows Server 2003. Before installing Zend Server CE, WordPress was taking up what I would call an average amount of memory, 12 MB. After installing Zend Server CE with PHP 5.2.10, I found that peak memory usage went down to around 4 MB. After I found PHP 5.2.10 worked, I upgraded to 5.3, which resulted in yet another performance increase, bringing us to 2 MB peak memory usage.
Thoughts: I can’t find anything drastically different about the two installations, but I could be missing something. If anyone can solve this mystery, please comment!
If you install APC or another byte code cache in your CPanel stack, the memory usage will be very similar. And of course, your wordpress or any other app will run faster.
@KumbiaPHP framework
Thanks so much for the reply. I’ve been wondering about this. Is the Zend Data Cache component the byte code caching system or is it something else?
Any sites you would recommend on learning more about this?
@admin
Yes, Zend Data Cache is a byte code cache that comes with Zend Server CE, and is similar to APC
The byte code caching component in Zend Server is the Optimizer Plus.
Data cache supplies API to cache data between requests (and PHP processes)