Best Practices for Liferay Performance Tuning

If you are steering the ship of a Liferay portal, you know it’s a robust vessel. But like any ship, it needs regular maintenance to stay fast and reliable. In this blog, we will explore the best practices for Liferay performance tuning to ensure your portal sails smoothly. Whether you’re an experienced captain or a new navigator, these tips will help you optimize your Liferay portal for peak performance.

Why Are We Talking About Liferay Performance Tuning?

Performance tuning is essential once your business portal is live. As traffic grows, so does the need for optimization to handle the load efficiently. Tuning helps identify and fix bottlenecks, resolve errors, and manage resource consumption, ensuring your system remains speedy and reliable.

Understanding Liferay Performance Tuning

Liferay performance tuning involves a series of optimizations aimed at enhancing the speed, efficiency, and reliability of your portal. It’s like giving your car a tune-up to ensure it runs smoothly and doesn’t break down in the middle of the road.

Why is it Important?

• Faster load times and smoother interactions lead to increased user satisfaction and retention.

• Optimized performance can directly impact sales and conversion rates by reducing bounce rates and cart abandonment.

• Effective performance tuning ensures better utilization of hardware and software resources, reducing operational costs.

• A well-tuned system can handle increased loads and user traffic more effectively, supporting business growth.

• Superior performance can differentiate your service from competitors, attracting and retaining customers.

• Faster websites are favored by search engines, potentially improving your search rankings and visibility.

• Regular performance tuning can help identify and fix potential issues before they cause significant outages.

• High performance and reliability foster trust and satisfaction, leading to better customer loyalty and word-of-mouth promotion.

• Ensuring your system operates efficiently can help meet regulatory requirements and reduce vulnerabilities.

• Optimizing performance can decrease the need for additional infrastructure investments, lowering overall costs.

• Improved performance allows for more accurate data collection and analytics, informing better business decisions.

• Faster and more reliable systems enable employees to work more efficiently, boosting overall productivity.

Portal Tuning Techniques

Servlet Filters

Servlet filters in Liferay are like bouncers at a club—they intercept and process requests before they reach the main application. However, not all filters are needed all the time. Disabling unnecessary filters can boost performance.

How to Disable Unnecessary Filters:

1. Edit the portal-ext.properties file.

2. Copy the servlet filters from portal.properties.

3. Set the unwanted filters to false.

Performance Properties

Liferay’s default configurations are set for development ease, not for production speed. Tweaking these properties can enhance performance.

Key Properties:

• CSS Fast Load:

  theme.css.fast.load=true

• JavaScript Fast Load:

  javascript.fast.load=true

Caching

Caching is crucial for improving application scalability and reducing database load. Think of it as storing frequently used items in an easily accessible place.

Levels of Cache:

• L1: Chip Level Cache

• L2: System Memory

• L3: Swap Space

Garbage Collection

Garbage collection (GC) in JVM ensures that memory is efficiently managed by cleaning up unused objects. However, it can halt processing, affecting performance.

How to Optimize GC:

• Use JVM switches to reduce halt time.

• Monitor GC with a profiler during load tests.

Runtime Tuning

Runtime tuning involves optimizing JVM parameters to ensure your Java programs run efficiently.

JVM Parameters

JVM parameters are like the settings on your car’s engine. Tuning them ensures optimal performance.

Common Parameters:

• NewSize and MaxNewSize: Define the size of the young generation space.

• UseParNewGC and UseConcMarkSweepGC: Enable parallel and concurrent GC.

• SurvivorRatio: Adjust the ratio of survivor spaces.

Monitoring

Monitoring tools provide real-time insights into your portal’s performance, allowing for proactive optimization.

Tools:

• VisualVM: Provides detailed information about Java applications.

• Lambda Probe: Monitors old generation, perm generation, survivor space, and more.

Wrapping Up

Performance tuning is an ongoing process that keeps your Liferay portal running efficiently. By following these best practices, you can ensure your portal is always ready to handle whatever comes its way.