Running the Daemon on a dedicated host

Some operational scenarios require the Tideways-Daemon to run on a dedicated collection host that is different from the PHP application servers.

This is not a recommended deployment scenario for dedicated/virtualized environments. Running one Tideways-Daemon per dedicated machine or virtual machine will ensure quick and easy communication between the Tideways extension and the host.

When using Containers, please check our Docker install instructions instead.

By default, the PHP applications communicate with the daemon using a UNIX socket for improved networking speed, but this can be changed to TCP/IP.

As an example, let us assume we are deploying the Tideways-Daemon on a dedicated host reachable via 10.6.168.2 with port 9135 accessible. The following change to the configuration file /etc/default/tideways-daemon enables this:

TIDEWAYS_DAEMON_EXTRA="--address=10.6.168.2:9135"

This changes the way the daemon runs, and the PHP applications need to know this location to stop logging on the local socket. This is possible system-wide using the PHP extensions INI settings:

/etc/php/8.3/conf.d/20-tideways.ini
tideways.connection=tcp://10.6.168.2:9135

Now the extensions log to this address instead, and the tideways-daemon on the dedicated host can collect the data for you.

Downsides:

Usually tideways-daemon transmits the server name of the application server, but now a central daemon could collect data for multiple servers. You should therefore use --hostname to give the central daemon a meaningful name.

Still need help? Email [email protected]