Drupal, Memcached and Solr on Windows

Alessandro Pilotti@alexpilotti

MVP ASP.NET / IIS

MCSD, MCAD, MCSE, MCDBA, MCTRed Hat Certified Engineer

Why Memcached?It’s a very popular object caching system

To speed up web sites by offloading work from the DBMS

Simple key / value store with cache invalidation

Low CPU usage

Half client / half server

Servers are unaware of each other (no sync)

Memcached on Windows Memcached supports *nix daemon mode

Ports for Windows exist Most binaries available on the web are old (1.2.x)

The official git repository contains a Windows compatible branch git clone --branch engine-pu https://github.com/memcached/

memcached.git Currently version 1.6.0 beta

Older version 1.3.3 available here: https://github.com/trondn/memcached.git

Building Memcached on Windows is not difficult: http://trondn.blogspot.de/2010/03/building-memcached-windows.html

Build x64 version if you need more than 4GB of memory per instance

Prebuilt binaries: http://www.cloudbasesolutions.com/downloads/memcached_x86_1_3_3.zip http

://www.cloudbasesolutions.com/downloads/memcached_x86_1_6_0_beta1.zip

Installing Memcached on Windows

The best way is to run it as a service

We can use e.g. Apache Procrun to wrap it http://www.apache.org/dist/commons/daemon/binaries/wi

ndows/

For security reasons don’t use an account like Administrator or System to run it!

Open the required firewall port(s) Default: 11211

Limit the client IP range as a best practice

If possible use SASL for authentication

Script 1/2Create user:

net user memcached yourpassword /addwmic path Win32_UserAccount where

Name='memcached' set PasswordExpires=false

Set service rights note: using free Windows 2003 Resource Kitntrights –u memcached +r SeServiceLogonRightntrights –u memcached +r SeBatchLogonRight

Script 2/2Create Windows service using Apache Procrun

prunsrv install memcached --Startup=auto --StartMode=exe

--StartImage="c:\memcached\memcached.exe"

++StartParams=-p;11211;-m;256;-l;127.0.0.1

--ServiceUser=.\memcached --ServicePassword=yourpassword

For remote host access Remove “–l 127.0.0.1” Open firewall port

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="memcached" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=11211

Start service net start memcached

Memcached and PHPIt requires a PECL extension, two are available:

MemcacheWin32 binary: http://downloads.php.net/pierre/

MemcachedMore advanced

Drupal works with both

Memcached protocolMemcache can use an ascii (default) or binary

protocol (faster)

Binary protocol supported from version 1.3

Memcache PECL extension: PHP.INI

memcache.protocol = binary

Memcached PECL extension: Drupal settings.php

$conf['memcache_options'] = array(

Memcached::OPT_BINARY_PROTOCOL => TRUE,

);

Memcached and Drupal 7 drush @Drupal7 dl memcache

In “\sites\all\modules\memcache\dmemcache.inc”: comment //drupal_set_message(t('You must enable the PECL

memcached or memcache extension to use memcache.inc.'), 'error');

drush @Drupal7 -y en memcache_admin

In settings.php $conf['cache_backends'][] =

'sites/all/modules/memcache/memcache.inc'; $conf['cache_default_class'] = 'MemCacheDrupal'; $conf['memcache_key_prefix'] = 'drupal7';

You can now setup separate bins and servers Examples: http://drupal.org/node/1131468

Apache SolrOpen source search platform

Full text searchOptimized for high volume web trafficBased on Apache Lucene

Download version 3.5.0 from:http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/lucene/solr

Solr, Windows and Drupal 7

Drupal

drush @Drupal7 dl apachesolr

Expand the content of “example” in “apache-solr-3.5.0.zip“ to e.g. c:\Solr

Move c:\Solr\Solr\Conf folder to c:\Solr\ConfReplace solrconfig.xml and schema.xml and

protwords.txt with copies from: <drupal site>\sites\all\modules\apachesolr\

solr-conf Version 3.x: solrconfig-solr3x.xml schema-solr3x.xml

Create Windows Solr usernet user solr yourpassword /add

wmic path Win32_UserAccount where Name='solr' set PasswordExpires=false

ntrights -u solr +r SeServiceLogonRight

ntrights -u solr +r SeBatchLogonRight

Set proper folder permissions icacls c:\solr /inheritance:d /grant solr:(OI)

(CI)(F) /remove Users

Create Windows service Download and install Java JRE 7

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

Using Apache Procrun x64:

prunsrv install solr --Startup=auto --StartMode=jvm ++JvmOptions=-Dsolr.solr.home=C:/solr/;-Djetty.home=C:/solr/;-Djetty.logs=C:/solr/logs/ --ServiceUser=.\solr –ServicePassword=yourpassword --Classpath=C:/solr/lib/*.jar;C:/solr/start.jar --StartClass=org.mortbay.start.Main

Start service Net start solr

Open firewall port if remote access is required netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="solr" dir=in action=allow

protocol=TCP localport=8983

Setup Drupal 7 Solr searchEnable solr search module:

drush @drupal7 en –y apachesolr_search

http://yourdrupalsite/admin/config/search/settingsSet Apache Solr Search as the only active search

moduleSet Apache Solr Search as the default search module

http://drupal7/admin/config/search/apachesolr/settingsSet your Solr url, e.g.: http://solrserver:8983/solr

Autocommit maxTimeDefault settings is 120s

In Drupal, this means that after your data changes are received by Solr, your search results will not be updated for 2 minutes

To have a shorter delay (e.g. 20s) change maxTime in solrconfig.xml (in ms):

<maxTime>20000</maxTime>

Drupal cronDrupal sends data to Solr for indexing using cron

This might provide big delays between data changes

Download elysia_cron moduledrush @drupal7 dl elysia_crondrush @drupal7 en elysia_cron –y

Set cron scheduling as: Never / Use external crontab

Set apachesolr_cron settings to (e.g. every 2’)*/2 * * * *

“crontab” on Windows Windows uses scheduled tasks instead of crontab

To create a scheduled task for Drupal elysia_cron to run e.g. every 2’:

schtasks.exe /create /tn drupal7_cron /tr "wget -O - -q -t 1 http://drupal7/sites/all/modules/elysia_cron/cron.php?cron_key=yourcronkey" /sc MINUTE /mo 2 /ru solr /rp put wget.exe in the path Get your cron key from:

http://yourdrupalsite/admin/config/system/cron/settings

To run the task once (troubleshooting, etc): schtasks.exe /run /tn drupal7_cron

To delete the task: schtasks.exe /delete /tn drupal7_cron

Drush integration

drush @drupal7 solr-search something

drush @drupal7 solr-index

drush @drupal7 solr-reindex

drush @drupal7 solr-delete-index