monitoring disc reads

Question

Hi, i want to use apc in php, to avoid disc reads when including files. But how can i know if files are really coming from shared memory, instead of disc reads? Does anyone know how to measure the number of disc reads for a php script, or in a time interval? (on windows server 2003) Thanks a lot in advance,

regards,

Charles

Answer 1

APC has an info page APC.php which will answer a lot of your questions: http://www.electrictoolbox.com/apc-php-cache-information/

Using a Ram Disk you can force a cache to use RAM instead of a slow disk drive. Another possible solution is to use Solid State Drives (SSDs) which have much faster read speeds compared to platter drives. Setting up a RAID0 of fast SSDs would improve cache performance.

Answer 2

But how can i know if files are really coming from shared memory, instead of disc reads?

One simple solution might be to place the files in a USB drive (one of those that has a LED light for disk reads / writes so you can see) and use sleep() to make sure and include()s / require()s.