What is Zend Server?
Zend Server is a commercial PHP application server developed by Zend Technologies. It is designed to improve PHP application performance, reliability, and security.
Key features of Zend Server include:
- Zend PHP accelerator - caches and optimizes PHP code for faster performance
- Debugger - debugging and profiling tools for finding bottlenecks and optimizing code
- Monitoring - monitors PHP apps for usage metrics, errors, slow pages, etc.
- Page caching - caches full pages to improve PHP app response times
- Access control - restricts access to sensitive code and files
- Clustering - enables load balancing and failover across multiple servers
Zend Server works by compiling PHP code into intermediate bytecode which runs faster than parsing regular PHP on each request. It also monitors apps to provide metrics and recommendations on improving performance and reliability. The access controls secure code from unauthorized access.
Zend Server can help medium to large PHP-based web apps handle more traffic and requests through the caching, code optimization, and monitoring capabilities. The enterprise edition includes clustering for high availability configurations.