D'oh, Lonnie beat me. If you want to know more about why NFS can suck, this paper is a good read:
http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2007/cs4210_fall/papers/nfsOLS.pdf
Are there any big websites that use file-based sessions or are they all database-drive with huge clusters? We are using a database for sessions currently but it cannot keep up and brings the site to it's knees.
Mozy uses database sessions and they work quite well. Some things you may want to consider:
1. Modify your session handler so that it only reads/writes the session data as needed. In other words, if your session data doesn't get updated in a given request, don't serialize it. And if a given request isn't going to need any session data, don't read it. 2. Make sure you are using persistent db connections! If every request opens and closes a new db handle, then you are in for a world of hurt. 3. Consider making your session table in-memory only. This should speed things up. 4. Minimize what you store in the session to things that you really need from page to page (e.g. $user_id).
The last option I was considering was storing the session in a cookie as an encrypted, serialized array. What are the groups thoughts on this?
Not a bad approach either, just be sure to follow #4 above to minimize overhead.
Jon _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
