For many years, Linux distributions provided conservative tooling for hosting Drupal. Apache 2.2, PHP 5.2 with mod_php, and MySQL 5.1 were the order of the day. Modern distributions (Ubuntu 14.04, RHEL 7) have come a long way and are now offering nginx, Apache 2.4, PHP 5.5 with php-fpm, and MySQL 5.5 or MariaDB. Each of these updated components offers advantages over their predecessors, and this session will tell you about them.

In this session you’ll learn how to use updated LAMP stack components included in modern Linux distributions to run an optimized Drupal stack. We’ll cover how to run php-fpm with either Apache 2.4 or nginx.

We’ll also take a look at Software Collections, which will allow you to run these modern versions of the stack on an older RHEL/CentOS 6 environment.

If you haven’t had enough time to take a look at what newer technologies like Varnish 4 or PHP 5.5 will bring to the table in your hosting setup, this session will be a good overview.

Concrete takeaways:

• Learn about new features in Apache 2.4 and nginx and how you can run PHP under php-fpm
• Learn how cgroups and systemd can help you limit monitor and limit resource contention for each part of your stack
• Learn about OPCache differs from APC and how you can tune and monitor it for PHP 5.5
• Discover new features in Varnish 4 that will reduce load on Drupal and deliver pages faster to end-users
• Find out how you’ll be able to host Drupal 8 on your older systems in a way that won’t make you (or your sysadmin team) shake their heads