Feature Requests

Please take this in consideration as features request:

1) Nginx as alternative for webser to Apache. 1') Apache 2.4 instead of 2.2

2) Nginx and Varnish as proxy servers in front of web servers.

3) HHVM or PHP-FPM when Nginx as alternative for PHP

4) MariaDB and Percona as alternatives for MySQL

For the moment I am using the default installation script, but replacing mysql-server-server and mysql-server-client with percona's. I have a better performance using Percona.

In Magento using Apache + PHP5.5 + MySQL against Nginx + HHVM + Percona I get 3 times more performance when using Nginx.

In case you cannot add these to Webmin/Virtualmin, please make tutorials for installing without creating any trouble, you know better than anyone your software.

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Comments

Howdy -- Virtualmin uses the packages that come with the distributions it supports. It does support MariaDB and Apache 2.4, though at the moment there are a limited number of distributions shipping with those.

It also supports Nginx, there are instructions for setting that up here:

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/web/nginx

Virtualmin doesn't support configuring a proxy, but it can work with one of that's manually configured. There's instructions for doing that here:

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/varnish

We have been reviewing PHP-FPM, and are considering it for the future.

Thank you very much for your answer. The part related to Nginx is still old, it is not a true replacement for Apache in Virtualmin (unfortunately).

Even you do not plan to get these working in Virtualmin, we need a manually solution for integrating them in Webmin. HHVM is wider adopted, Nginx too, performance is just great, Virtualmin should go further not remaining with stuff from the past.

We don't actually get many requests for HHVM support, unfortunately.

Most users are looking to run Virtualmin with Apache, and enough requested Nginx support that we made a module for that available.

Another option for improving speed is to use the Varnish cache. Varnish is extremely simple to setup, and works very well with Virtualmin -- and we did create a guide to using Varnish and Virtualmin.

We'll review whether creating a guide for that is feasible.

In the meantime, if you're looking to try it out, you could try following the instructions here in the section "Making it work with Apache":

https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/wiki/FastCGI

I can install all this stuff by myself without having Virtualmin installed. I came to Virtualmin about 6 month ago and I really like the project. If I can find a way to use Virtualmin with new stuff like HHVM it will be great. Anyway, I appreciate you for nice community you have and for providing support.

I am using Varnish in front of Apache to speed up Magento (Turpentine extension). I did all the modifications part in Virtualmin, part manually in files. It works great, over a week I can decide to go with this configuration for production.

Related to HHVM, comparing with PHP5.6, Facebook's stuff is doubling the number of requests per second. That's explains why many users are interested to work with it, especially in Magento. Some users skip using Apache/Nginx and use HHVM as a webserver replacement.