Improving Drupal Performance on AWS with ProxySQL and Amazon Aurora MySQL

Running Drupal on AWS can present unique challenges and considerations. In this blog post, we will explore some of the possible challenges of running Drupal on AWS and provide insights on how to overcome them. Whether you are considering migrating your existing Drupal site to AWS or building a new Drupal site on AWS, this post will help you navigate some of the potential hurdles you may encounter along the way.

MySQL is a popular relational database management system (RDBMS) that is commonly used to store and manage data for Drupal sites. However, as traffic to a Drupal site grows, MySQL scalability issues can arise, causing slow page load times, database errors, and even site crashes. Whether you’re using Amazon RDS for MySQL/MariaDB or Amazon Aurora for MySQL, while vertical scaling of the database is a simple task, Drupal’s lack of built-in support for database read-write splitting will hinder your site performance when horizontal scaling of the database is needed.

As web applications grow in size and complexity, scaling becomes an essential part of maintaining performance and ensuring availability. Horizontal scaling, which involves adding more servers to distribute the workload, is a popular method of scaling for database-intensive applications like Drupal. However, scaling a database can be a challenging task, especially when you have to balance the read and write traffic to the database.

In this blog post, we will explore how to use ProxySQL to split read traffic to read replica instances of Amazon Aurora MySQL and explain the performance benefits of this approach for horizontal scaling of a Drupal web application.

Amazon Aurora MySQL is a high-performance, scalable, and fully-managed relational database service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to be compatible with MySQL, which means you can use your existing MySQL tools and applications with Aurora. Aurora provides read replicas that can be used to offload read traffic from the primary instance, which can improve performance and reduce the load on the primary instance.

ProxySQL is a high-performance SQL proxy that can be used to split read and write traffic to different instances of a database. It provides advanced load balancing, connection pooling, and query routing capabilities that can help optimize database performance and scalability.

To use ProxySQL with Amazon Aurora MySQL, you need to follow these steps:

Deploy ProxySQL: You can deploy ProxySQL on a separate instance or use a containerized version of ProxySQL. You can install ProxySQL using the package manager of your operating system or download it from the ProxySQL website.

Configure ProxySQL: After you have deployed ProxySQL, you need to configure it to connect to the primary instance and read replicas of Aurora MySQL. You can use the ProxySQL configuration file to specify the database credentials, connection settings, and routing rules for read and write traffic.

Test ProxySQL: Once you have configured ProxySQL, you can test it by connecting to it using a MySQL client and executing read and write queries. ProxySQL should route read queries to the read replicas and write queries to the primary instance.

Monitor and optimize ProxySQL: After you have tested ProxySQL, you need to monitor its performance and optimize its settings to ensure optimal performance and scalability. You can use tools like Prometheus and Grafana to monitor ProxySQL metrics and make data-driven decisions to optimize ProxySQL settings.

By using ProxySQL to split read traffic to read replica instances of Amazon Aurora MySQL, you can achieve the following performance benefits:

• Improved read performance: By offloading read traffic from the primary instance to read replicas, you can improve read performance and reduce the load on the primary instance. This can improve the overall performance of your Drupal web application and reduce the risk of downtime due to overload.
• Scalability: By using read replicas, you can scale read performance horizontally by adding more read replicas. This can help you handle increasing read traffic and ensure consistent performance as your application grows.
• Load balancing: ProxySQL provides advanced load balancing capabilities that can help you distribute the workload evenly across multiple read replicas. This can ensure that each read replica is utilized efficiently and reduce the risk of overload.

In conclusion, using ProxySQL to split read traffic to read replica instances of Amazon Aurora MySQL is an effective way to achieve horizontal scaling and improve the performance and scalability of a Drupal web application. By offloading read traffic from the primary instance to read replicas and using ProxySQL to optimize query routing and load balancing, you can ensure consistent performance and availability as your application grows.