Caution: PHP X-Ray can interfere with a website, i.e. negative outcomes.

[ross]

Hi All.

I've been enjoying using PHP X-Ray recently for a number of websites on a number of VPS. It's definitely helped us to identify and resolve some performance issues.

Recently I enabled it (continuous tracing) for an old, cranky Drupal 7 website (to be replaced in about 6-7 months) running CloudLinux 6.10 and cPanel/WHM 110 on a single tenant VPS (so lots of old tech!)

1. It didn't record any results at all over 3 days, which is weird/suspicious in itself. Every hour of analysis recorded 0 results.

2. It caused performance issues on the site, including breaking some of the (custom) website functionality which was instantly restored when we stopped the tracing.

So just a word of warning for others.

[bogdan.sh]

Hi,

Well, originally it was designed to work with WordPress only, for other CMSes it is provided as is.

X-Ray affects website performance. Our tests show 5-10 % overhead from a website loading time with X-Ray tracing enabled. While it should not break website functionality at all. Can you please reveal more information of what was broken and how? Were there any errors in browser Web Developer Console?

[ross]

Hi Bogdan, sorry, I only just saw your reply.

I think I've given as much general information as I can in my opening post.

It's not massive deal... as I mentioned the site in question is old, lots of customisations, and is due to be decommissioned in a few months. The is actually quite a busy, high profile site, so I dare not enable PHP X-Ray again for it.

So really the point of me posting this was just to report the fact that this CAN happen under certain circumstances.