Your PrestaShop Store is twice as fast with Zend OPcache

Article by Damien Metzger - CTO at PrestaShop

Following the release of PHP 5.5 a few days ago, I decided to look at the Zend OPcache extension which is now available without using PECL anymore.

The Zend OPcache provides faster PHP execution through opcode caching and optimization.

Therefor, I ran a quick benchmark to check the performance improvement with PrestaShop and the result is exceptionally good!

On my small dedicated hosting service on OVH (where PrestaShop is now natively integrated as an operating system), I compared the execution time and the memory usage without cache, with OPcache and with eAccelerator, the cache system that I usually use.

(The lower the better)

If PrestaShop performances with eAccelerator are significantly better without any cache, then the performances with OPcache greatly exceeded my expectations!

Simply by activating OPcache on my web server, I immediately gained 50% in terms of execution time and even more in terms of memory usage.

If you are the administrator of your own dedicated server for your PrestaShop Store, then it is worth considering using OPcache. You can start by following the official tutorial on php.net : http://www.php.net/manual/en/opcache.installation.php