Development, Analysis And Research


Zend Platform (Buran Beta)

Posted in PHP, XML by Andrew Johnstone on the June 27th, 2005

Whilst using the Zend Platform on a clustered server enviroment, I came across a number of limitations, however many of these have now been resolved with the beta release of the Zend Platform named Buran.

I am excited to hear that the following features are/have been implemented in the Zend Platform.

  • PHP level session clustering (beta starting next week) - better performance than database or NFS solutions
  • User defined alert triggers and alert hints to allow better drill-down into scripts with many includes.
  • Reporting and graphs
  • event aggregation by server groups - to prevent alert storms in large clusters
  • PHP CLI/CGI mode monitoring

“Just to give you some history - as we were the first to bring out profiling for PHP (which doesn’t require any setting of flags in code) we have been working on other features until people started using it more. You’ll probably be astounded to know that many people don’t use profiling and don’t even know what it is….

Anyway, this is this second such request we’ve had in a week for improvements to the profiler so it’s now been moved up the priority list, I’m not sure whether it will be part of Zend Platform or part of Zend Studio, but I’ll collect some more details from you on Monday and we’ll take it from there.”

Please shout and scream to make this a priority!

  • Zend Studio Server Error (eventest.php?action=test&event_id=993)
    In order to connect to HTTPS addresses, you must use PHP higher than 4.3.0

    The current version of PHP on the production servers is PHP5.0.4
  • Server & Vhost
    Server: mtvi-ws2.hos.ws.com
    VHost: lamp.ws.com

    Desired VHost: lamp.ws.com/~user
    You don’t know which UserDir it is…
    Vhost is empty in some circumstances.
    (Apparently resolved in the beta)
  • Performance | Studio Server tabs
    after selecting a server it pushes you back to enter a password; I assume this is because of insufficient privileges? However why doesn’t it state that, instead it states “invalid password‿.
  • Currently all developers on the production server use a single user account on the Zend Platform (Not ideal really), however the developers account forbids any updates on events, ie close, ignore, delete.
    I’m still not sure whether events are logged globally and that each user account updates the status of that global event thus being the reason hosting & operations have disabled this feature?
  • Grouping and aggregating of events. I am told this is in the Buran Beta, however my understanding is that it is somewhat limited.
  • Comments to individual / grouped events would be a very handy feature forexample, steps to reproduce, fixes, or quick hacks that have been applied, hopefully will be added to the Zend Platform

Heres some API information that I have been sent, which is currently not live at present…



API instructions

you can find these in the future in http://int.zend.com/wiki monitor_custom_event

void monitor_custom_event(string $class, string $text[, integer $severe, mixed $user_data])

Description:

* Public Yes
* Product Version - Buran
* Return Values
* Parameters

register_event_handler

boolean register_event_handler($event_handler_func
[[,$handler_register_name],$event_type_mask])

* Description: Allow you to register a user function as an event handler.When a monitor event is triggerd all the user event handler are called and the return value from the handler is saved in an array keyed by the name the event handler was registered under. The event handlers results array is saved in the event_extra_data table.
* Public: Yes
* Product Version: Buran
* Return Value: TRUE on sucess and FALSE if an error occurs.
* Parameters: The first argument is a callback function that will be call when the event is triggered, object methods may also be invoked statically using this function by passing array($objectname, $methodname) to the function parameter. The second (optional) argument is name this function is registered under - if none is supplied, the function will be registerd under it’s own name. The third (optional) parameter is a mask of event types that the handler should be called on by default it’s set to MONITOR_EVENT_ALL.

unregister_event_handler

boolean unregister_event_handler(string handler_name)

* Description: Allow you to unregister an event handler.
* Public: Yes
* Product Version - Buran
* Return Value: TRUE on sucess and FALSE if no handler we registered under the given name.
* Parameters: string handler_name - the name you registered with the handler you now wish to unregister.


XML Report Sample…

<?xml version="1.0" ?> 
<event type event_id timestamp time severity> 
  <error type>error text</error> 
  <stats triggered_value avg load_average/>
  <source file line/> 
  <script name host uri> 
    <vardata type name value/> 
  </script> 
  <function name> 
    <args> 
      <arg num value/> 
    </args> 
  </function> 
  <included_files> 
    <file name> 
  </included_files> 
  <backtrace> 
    <call depth function file line/> 
  </backtrace> 
</event> 

downloads.zend.com
Zend Wiki (Currently Not Available)

2 Responses to 'Zend Platform (Buran Beta)'

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  1. on August 28th, 2005 at 9:43 am

    [...] of Zends Session Clustering that their marketing team had mentioned was due for a release (I assume this to have been delayed). Whilst I have been using standard file based s [...]

  2. spousaDow said,

    on December 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    Hi!
    My name is Jessika!

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