How come all of wordpress files not uploaded in EFS?

[wobeng]

Hi,

How come all of WordPress files not uploaded on EFS? This will make updating wordpress much easier.

[mwunderl]

Hi Welby,

I think that could work if you copy all of the WordPress files onto the file system during deployment and use the document_root option serve the mounted directory. You would need a script to manage the copy operation and avoid overwriting the files after installation.

[wobeng]

Can you elaborate on "You would need a script to manage the copy operation and avoid overwriting the files after installation"

Also this would mean I can just update the files on EFS and have it instantly change on all the servers right? (I don't have to go through eb deploy)

[oadam]

I agree with @wobeng that things would be easier if the setup was just a php beanstalk environment with document root pointing to an EFS folder. Plugins could be installed and updated through the UI without any redeployment.

I've googled a lot and nobody seems to be doing this. Do you know why ? Is it only for performance reasons or would it cause stability issues ?

[wobeng]

I'm going to test this out with OPcache to see how well it works

[mwunderl]

After the mount script, you could have another script copy the WordPress files onto the mounted file system. You only want to do this once, but the script will run every time an instance is added to your environment by AutoScaling, or if you upgrade to a newer Beanstalk platform version. Please try it and post your findings!

[oadam]

@mwunderl not sure if we are all on the same line. In our scenario there would be nothing to copy because the whole wordpress install will be in EFS.
As long as the mount is done the machine should be ready to go, no ?

[wobeng]

@oadam that's exactly what I was going to ask.

[mwunderl]

How would you get the WordPress files onto EFS?

[wobeng]

@mwunderl I was thinking of updating EFS separately from ELB. This way if I update my EFS, all my servers are updated instantly

[wobeng]

github --> codebuild --> mount efs --> upload/update files

All elb servers updated.

[oadam]

@mwunderl my setup would be mounting the EFS on my personal machine, unzip a fresh wordpress in it, and launch the environment using the EFS volume as the webroot.
Still it puzzles me a lot that all wordpress tutorials are using EFS/NFS only for the wp-upload folder. There must be a good reason but I haven't found it yet.

[wobeng]

@oadam there might a lag maybe..that's why I suggested OPcache

[mwunderl]

The benefit of the current design is portability and ease of setup. Everything runs through Beanstalk environment creation and deployment. I would like to see an alternate version where the EFS file system is independent (see 15) as long as the deployment was automated with CloudFormation templates and scripts. Processes that involve mounting shares or SSHing into hosts locally are too fragile.

[mwunderl]

The wp-config.php in this project is modified to use environment variables through Beanstalk for configuration. The mount configuration is built with that and the deployment concerns noted above in mind.

[wobeng]

The flaw with the current setup is not being able to install a plugin or update WordPress via admin panel. so it's easy to setup for hard to maintain.

Mounting EFS local for development and mounting EFS as web root in ELB seems to be the best option.