You can get far by caching Drupal's content feeds. There are a lot of caching layers available. But when you need a bit of intelligence to your caching layer, drowning deep into the world of Varnish VCL configurations isn't the only option.

We went from trying to optimize Drupal's ability to deliver JSON-feeds out with MongoDB field storage and SOLR backed Views with a Varnish caching layer to a performance-optimized standalone Node.JS/MongoDB stack.

In this presentation we'll show a real-world case, where Drupal's content is optimized and indexed to MongoDB and then delivered out in JSON with astonishing speeds with a very simple Node.JS layer.

The setup serves most of the video content to Finland's biggest media corporation, Sanoma. It's the sole source of video content to their online TV service, Ruutu.fi.

The same setup could be used for serving as a backend for high-volume Javascript applications, replicating a lot of content around the world or optimizing the UX of a Drupal site by adding super-fast asynchronous APIs.

In the presentation we'll look at the architecture, the development phases, performance optimizations and lessons learnt in storing complicated data structures to Drupal and MongoDB. We'll also look at the current development efforts in getting the system in shape for Drupal 8 upgrade in the near future.