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iFotos: image hosting at high traffic.

An in-house service developed over many years, from the application to the infrastructure delivering images at full network throughput.

OWN PROJECT

iFotos

A service for storing and sharing images online. The work covered the application, file delivery and server operations.

NginxPHP-FPMXCacheMySQL

The project

iFotos ran for many years as an image hosting service. Its development covered user-facing features and the technical foundation: file storage, metadata, view counters and image delivery at high traffic.

4dedicated servers
1 Gb/slink per server
~40%CPU use at full throughput

Full links with CPU capacity to spare

At peak hours, network links reached their throughput limits while average CPU usage stayed around 40%. Separating application logic from file delivery made better use of the available infrastructure.

How it worked

PHP handled metadata and cached view counters. After checking a request, it handed the file to Nginx through X-Accel-Redirect; Nginx delivered the image without tying up a PHP process for the transfer. MySQL stored service data.

Saturated network links with CPU headroom showed what a deliberate division of work could achieve on limited hardware.

iFotos was an in-house project. The figures describe peak hours and are approximate.

WHAT THIS BRINGS TO NEW PROJECTS

Find the real constraint.

The same approach matters in business applications, integrations and systems handling many files or large datasets.

01

Measurement

We identify where time and resources are spent.

02

Clear responsibilities

Each layer handles the work it is best suited to do.

03

Operating cost

Performance is considered alongside deployment and maintenance.

NEXT STEP

Is growing traffic slowing your system down?

Tell us what happens during your busiest hours.

Let’s talk about your project