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Clustering with DDEV

Caution

Do not use this procedure in production. A staging environment for validation before production should exactly replicate the production environment. This is meant for development environment only.

This guide follows Install with DDEV and helps to extend the previous installation to locally replicate a production cluster.

In contrast to a production cluster, this setup has only one front app server. But the data sharing needed by a cluster of several servers can still be emulated.

The ddev config --php-version option should set the same PHP version as the production servers.

Tip

  • ddev describe displays a cluster summary that include accesses from inside and outside DDEV services
  • ddev ssh opens a terminal inside a service
  • ddev exec executes a command inside a service

Discover more commands in DDEV documentation.

To run an Ibexa Cloud project locally, you may refer to DDEV and Ibexa Cloud instead.

Install search engine

A search engine can be added to the cluster.

Elasticsearch

The following sequence of commands:

  1. Adds the Elasticsearch container.
  2. Sets Elasticsearch as the search engine.
  3. Restarts the DDEV cluster and clears application cache.
  4. Injects the schema and reindexes the content.
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ddev get ddev/ddev-elasticsearch
ddev config --web-environment-add SEARCH_ENGINE=elasticsearch
ddev config --web-environment-add ELASTICSEARCH_DSN=http://elasticsearch:9200
ddev restart
ddev php bin/console cache:clear
ddev php bin/console ibexa:elasticsearch:put-index-template
ddev php bin/console ibexa:reindex

You can now check whether Elasticsearch works.

For example, the ddev exec curl -s "http://elasticsearch:9200/_count" command checks whether the web server can access the elasticsearch server and displays the number of indexed documents.

See ddev/ddev-elasticsearch README for more information on topics such as memory management.

See Elasticsearch REST API reference for more request options, like, for example:

  • _count, as seen above
  • _cluster/health (don't mind the "yellow" status which is normal in the absence of replicas in the DDEV container)
  • _search?size=0", which is another way to get document count

Tip

You can use jq to format and colorize Elasticsearch REST API outputs.

Solr

To simplify the installation of Solr, you can use the ibexa/ddev-solr add-on:

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ddev get ibexa/ddev-solr
ddev restart

You can now check whether Solr works.

For example, the ddev exec curl -s http://solr:8983/api/cores/ command:

  • checks whether the web server can access the solr server,
  • checks whether collection1 exists and its status
  • displays collection1's numDocs that shouldn't be zero if indexing worked correctly

You can access the Solr admin UI from the host by using port 8983 on the same .ddev.site subdomain as the front. Use ddev describe to get that URL.

Share cache and sessions

You can add a persistence cache pool and a session handler to the cluster.

In the following examples:

  • the same service is used to store both persistence cache and sessions
  • the session handler is set on Symfony side, not on PHP side

Install Redis

The following sequence of commands:

  1. Adds the Redis container.
  2. Set Redis as the cache pool.
  3. Sets Redis as the session handler.
  4. Changes maxmemory-policy from default allkeys-lfu to a value accepted by the RedisTagAwareAdapter.
  5. Restarts the DDEV cluster and clears application cache.
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ddev get ddev/ddev-redis
ddev config --web-environment-add CACHE_POOL=cache.redis
ddev config --web-environment-add CACHE_DSN=redis
ddev config --web-environment-add SESSION_HANDLER_ID='Ibexa\\Bundle\\Core\\Session\\Handler\\NativeSessionHandler'
ddev config --web-environment-add SESSION_SAVE_PATH=tcp://redis:6379
sed -i 's/maxmemory-policy allkeys-lfu/maxmemory-policy volatile-lfu/' .ddev/redis/redis.conf;
ddev restart
ddev php bin/console cache:clear

You can now check whether Redis works.

For example, the ddev redis-cli MONITOR command returns outputs such as "SETEX" "ezp:, "MGET" "ezp:, "SETEX" "PHPREDIS_SESSION:, "GET" "PHPREDIS_SESSION:, etc. while navigating into the website, in particular the Back Office.

See Redis commands for more details such as information about the MONITOR command used in the previous example.

Install Memcached

First, if not already there, append the following new service to config/services.yaml:

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    app.session.handler.native_memcached:
        class: Ibexa\Bundle\Core\Session\Handler\NativeSessionHandler
        arguments:
            - '%session.save_path%'
            - memcached

Second, install and set up the add-on. The following sequence of commands:

  1. Adds the Memcached container.
  2. Sets Memcached as the cache pool.
  3. Sets Memcached as the session handler.
  4. Restarts the DDEV cluster and clears application cache.
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ddev get ddev/ddev-memcached
ddev config --web-environment-add CACHE_POOL=cache.memcached
ddev config --web-environment-add CACHE_DSN=memcached
ddev config --web-environment-add SESSION_HANDLER_ID=app.session.handler.native_memcached
ddev config --web-environment-add SESSION_SAVE_PATH=memcached:11211
ddev restart
ddev php bin/console cache:clear

You can now check whether everything went right.

For example, the watch 'ddev exec netcat -w1 memcached 11211 <<< "stats" | grep "cmd_.et "' command checks whether the web service can access the memcached service, and displays the increase of cmd_get and cmd_set while navigating into the website.