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cloud flare and the security of your campaigns (30)

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Hi guys,

I am looking to reduce my load times (for a large ppv traffic campaign) on my VPS and after working with my host for 1 WHOLE week, it seems like I can't do much except to upgrade.

Anyway, the last solution I found was to use something like www.cloudflare.com

The idea is that it is like a CDN, but you point your name servers to it and they sit between your traffic, and your website.

Sounds like a good plan to me except I am wondering about the security of our campaigns... Since they see what pages your traffic hits, even though they don't have access to the tracking system, they can still get urls and query strings which contain a lot of the valued info?

Has anyone used cloud flare for running campaigns?

Thanks. Please let me know your thoughts.



Warmest Regards,
Harry

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thats what a pull zone is on a standard CDN.....not sure that there is any advantage to doing cloudfare....

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hey polar, i am already using s3 to deliver my images, video, js, css... cloud flare is suppose to be in between the traffic and my site so it increases the speed even more...

here is what they say:

so, i guess the key point is: "Our CDN automatically caches your static files at our edge nodes so these files are stored closer to your visitors while delivering your dynamic content directly from your web server"

i am really frustrated with my host because dealing with them was been a nightmare...

then again, maybe i am just being too cheap on my hosting. i am on CentOS 5.5 64bit, 880 Ram, 75 GB, 1 CPUs

maybe that's simply not enough to serve ppv traffic?

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talk to tyler at beyond and s3 does nothing to speedup your page load.....

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s3 doesn't speed up page load? oh man, i have been misinformed... so it just saves the bandwidth from my own server?

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why not take your server, install nginx on it ( unless you already are ) and install Varnish and then use a PHP cache, and MySQL?

you could also do Nginx->Apache as a rev. proxy with PHP and MySQL optimized too.

I know plenty of guys on shit like Linode using a similar setup with good results from moderate PPV campaigns.

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I would second doing the varnish route. Just make sure you restart varnish after making any changes to exiting pages.

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i couldnt find the link, but i read a blog post a couple of days ago which had benchmarks that suggested that for largely static pages (ie ppv html popups), just nginx + phpfpm + memcached outperformed varnish.

ill try and find it, but even the might google with their vast database of my surfing history could not find the bloody page! Dont you hate that!

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Installing varnish and running nginx won't magically make your pages as fast as CDN. Nginx does a great job of handling high volumes of request, phpfpm is great for managing memory and keeping PHP running all the time vs being loaded for each request.

Varnish I've yet to see benefit anyone performance wise across the board beacuse your still bottlenecked to serving content from a single location.

A CDN stands for content distribution NETWORK. There are servers all over the world that get polled for the fastest server and that's why they perform so good.

S3 is a file hosting solution, its not a CDN. I'm pretty sure they only replicate the data once for redundancy purposes, its not spread across the world. (as far as I know thats how s3 works).

Feel free to PM me if you need help with your server.

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if your running s3 just activate cloudfront in the backend and swap out your links, eh voila!

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Was it a test with Varnish in front of the setup you just mentioned?

The only problem I have with studies like that is, you never know the experience of the person setting it up and what level of testing they went thru to make sure their test was valid. Im sure they went thru the proper checking and setup, but like everything else we do, you just gotta split test for yourself.

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Considering some of the benchmarks I have seen from comparing different CDN's, I am pretty sure 1 server setup properly with the right backbone could outperform a good number ( not all ) of CDN's to where the difference between the 2 where almost insignificant.

At the end of the day, MOST people have their CDN's set up MOST times to only serve their static content. Your server is still going to have to process any dynamic content your serving and at that point your server setup that you have will be the bottleneck. ( most setups I have seen, not all )

If my server can't handle the incoming traffic, its doesnt matter if my images and JS/CSS files are on a CDN, the page wont even load to call that content to begin with on the CDN since the page is taking forever on my server to load/generate/do magic with tracking scripts.

( This is with MOST CDN setups I have seen people do, not meaning this is how ALL CDN setups are ).

For the average PPV users running a lot of pops, they will get by easier with a good server setup before going to CDN. The proper attack would be:

1. Good Server SetUp
2. Then a CDN.

Having a good CDN, but a bad server is not the setup you want.

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Its really really frustrating that I cant find this. Im sure I bookmarked it but its no longer there.

They had tested a bunch of setups:

nginx + phpfpm + varnish
nginx + memcached
nginx reverse proxy to apache
etc
etc

And it was like a live page - ie new benchmarks being added all the time.

From memory the test tried to simulate high concurrency low latency.

Got to find this!

And to answer your question - yes I think it was varnish in front.

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I'm not why you think I speculated that a good server isn't needed.

Generating a dynamic page and serving that data takes VERY little amounts of bandwidth. Varnish and all the *static* content caching methods don't apply when your processing dynamic code to serve.

You should always have a good server setup, I guess *we* don't deal with the problem of having slow servers because of the time we spend monitoring VPS host nodes, networking, dedicated servers and VPS to make sure they are performing well.


And to be honest I'd be rather impressed to see a single server out perform a CDN in a national test for page rendering times. Distance is way more important than some people realize.

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While all of these are different methods to handle the content being served they all have a different purpose.

Memcached is useless if your application does not have code to use it, installing memcached won't make something faster out of the box.

Nginx proxying apache don't seem like a very practical setup as apache will still be a bottle neck. However it would be good to support legacy modules needed but still run a nginx front end and core. Nginx is good at protecting slowlorris DDOS methods to.

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Screw you post limit.

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Speed isn't about bandwidth alone.

If I am using a CDN like MOST people use it ( which is throw my LP on my main server with my tracking script, then in the HTML code link out all my static content to a CDN ) and then I get on board with Trafficvance, LI, MT, and then also some big media buys and my server gets overloaded with request for my LP which also has some PHP processing on that LP as well as hosting my P202 or CPVLab script for tracking.. Im going to get overloaded not only in request, but in CPU for processing PHP if I dont have the right server setup regardless of if I use a CDN or not.

I could have all the premium bandwidth in the world sitting in a DC next to my surfer serving up that static content, but if my server is getting hit with a ton of request/threads/CPU cycles, then my page is going to be slow as fuck while the server tries to process that 1 request with the thousands of others before the calls to the CDN to handle the static content even get made to render.

I am not against a CDN, I use them myself.. but I never put the CDN before the server setup.

The only thing I was against was you saying:
"Installing varnish and running nginx won't magically make your pages as fast as CDN"

While we could debate all day who is faster and why, if my downloadables were hosted on a server in my own house while I was browsing my own site at home, but my main server was not optimized ( which was the purpose of my first post in this thread ), a CDN is worthless because my main server would be overloaded from the wrong setup ( maybe it just plain Apache with PHP4 and MySql on Ubuntu ) and my page will take forever to even be served/loaded before the calls to the CDN are even made.

The OP thought he needed a new server or had a junk one and I was simply trying to let them know maybe their server itself was fine, but that he needed to optimize it to get the most from it. If he truly does have a junk setup, the CDN setup is pretty much worthless to him with the exception of handing off some server requests ( for the downloadables ) that normally would have been made to his main server to the CDN.

Thats all I was getting at.

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I think you did a great job stating the obvious about how php processing can affect a servers load.

But my concern for you is, how much traffic are you buying? I've got a few *special* customers doing 6-8 million clicks per hour through cpvlab to their mysql enabled landing page, on a single quad core with nginx + php-fpm (apc).

To be honest, if your running more volume than that per hour you should have a load balancer in front to handle a server locking up.

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on this note you don't have to set it this way with 202 with a lp you can pull all the content from a cdn as it handles most of the work client side via JS...

it can speed load times up alot buy doing this and it tracks fine...it loads no content off the local server.....you can cut your requests down by alot by just doing that alone...

it wont have any effect if you are just DL'ing...

cpvlab lacks this ability as it goes thru a redirect first....so it only applies to 202

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Well, I am not having issues with my hosting so no need for anything special here. I've been setting up my own for several years.

As far as the obvious, Im sure most people here have 0 clue about hosting setups, Apache, PHP or server load in general. A ton of people barely know how to code HTML.

How about putting this back on topic to the OP's request? He was having high load times, was worried about cloudflare, and thought maybe he was too cheap on his hosting, at which point I asked him if he could install Nginx and other stuff ( unless he already did ) to help with his load issues. Considering where ever he bought his hosting prob. had already installed Apache and PHP for him ( since there is only a few that will even have nginx preinstalled as an option ), I assumed he didnt have such a setup that I was referring too, which would speed up his load times considerably.

Considering I see guys with similar setups like his using hosting from places like Linode with similar specs, running some serious traffic, it was a worthwhile answer to him Im sure.

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Good points. Im not using P202 so I was using that as an example.

Hopefully the OP can take that advice and use it himself.

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notes taken guys. thanks for all your answers

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Hopefully I wont start a war with this but here goes.

I like to play with servers and I need to brush up on my skills so what is the recommended "best setup" for prosper202 on a vps? nginx + php-fpm (apc). ? Does any one have an recommend reading on setting this up?

I know I know Google it, but I there are so many varying opinions and options depending on what your doing so I figured lets ask the aff marketing experts. So how about it, whats your goto setup?

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Setup nginx
http://www.idolbin.com/blog/server-m...-ubuntu-10-04/

Setup SSL
http://www.idolbin.com/blog/server-m...nx-web-server/

Install php5 fpm apc
http://www.idolbin.com/blog/server-m...r-performance/

Config nginx & phpfpm
http://blog.martinfjordvald.com/2011...traffic-loads/
http://wiki.beyondhosting.net/PHP-FPM_and_Nginx

Secure nginx
https://calomel.org/nginx.html

Installing GeoIP
http://www.php.net/manual/en/geoip.setup.php
http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpGeoIPModule
http://www.maxmind.com/app/php

Several other good articles:

http://insready.com/en/blog/build-ng...ebian-5-server
http://endofweb.co.uk/2010/10/ubuntu...min-wordpress/
http://danielmiessler.com/blog/optim...-and-memcached
http://sudarmuthu.com/blog/installin...et-or-aptitude
http://serverfault.com/questions/179...-10-04-for-php

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I would set up a couple diff ones and see which one works best for you, thats the best way to do it.

Some people love litespeed, some love nginx, and some love apache, ( and some even love cherokee ). Then you have all kinds of configs on top of that as well with PHP, SQL, etc

Personally, for ppv I love using

Varnish -> Nginx -> APC caching

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I use Nginx + PHP-FPM + APC + Memcached and use P202 for tracking.

I used this tutorial to set everything up :

http://library.linode.com/lemp-guide...atabase_server

Hope that helps

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A more inclusive guide on this subject by us: http://wiki.beyondhosting.net/PHP-FPM_and_Nginx

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yep just looking through that BH wiki post again and its a great set of instructions!

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Having a heck of a time with

rpm -Uvh php-common* php-cli* php-5.3.3* php-fpm* php-pdo* php-mysql* php-gd* php-mb* php-mc* --force

Keeps kicking up warnings and causing problems.

Anyway Tyler you have and email about a vps

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Do:

yum install -y php-common* php-cli* php-5.3.3* php-fpm* php-pdo* php-mysql* php-gd* php-mb* php-mc*


I need to edit the entry, when we wrote it php-fpm was not available from repository's yet.

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