Learn How to Meet Best Server Requirements for Magento Store?

Once you’ve built your ecommerce store using Magento, the next step is to look for the most optimized server to host your store.

The first thing to do here is to ask yourself some questions. What’s your targeted audience? Who are your existing users? How many products will you be selling? And stuff like that. Factors like these play a significant role in your choice of host. If you are prepared to launch your store with a great number of products and expecting great huge traffic, you should choose an optimized server that’s capable enough to handle all of them.

Secondly, when shopping for Magento 2 hosting, you will have multiple options to choose from, including shared hosting, VPS, or dedicated.- So which should you go for?

For those of you not interested in learning about serious server-related technicalities, I would suggest you go with cloud and managed hosting providers. That said, you do have to consider budget as well. My advice would be to make your hosting an investment because it will benefit you in the long run.

What every merchant needs to understand before finalizing a hosting plan is the Magento architecture. The multiple architecture layers include the Presentation layer, Service layer, Domain layer, and Persistence layer, all of which make the Magento platform more powerful and less dependent on external APIs.

Therefore, to leverage the complete performance you need to find the best Magento hosting provider that meets the complete server requirements recommended by Magento Officials.

In this blog, I’m going to explain what server resources Magento requires, and where to find it. So give it a full read.

Table of Contents

• What Are Magento Server Requirements?
  • Memory Requirement
  • Operating System
  • Web Servers
  • Database
  • PHP Versions & Required Extensions
  • PHP OPCache
  • Elasticsearch
  • SSL Certificate
  • System Dependencies Requirements
  • Cache Technologies
• Meet Best Server Requirements with Cloudways
  • RAM Usage (Memory Requirement)
  • Web Servers & Operating System
  • Database
  • PHP Version & Required PHP Extensions
  • Required System Dependencies For Magento Stores
  • Cache & Other Technologies
  • 1-click Free SSL Certificate
• Final Words

What Are Magento Server Requirements?

The latest Magento version 2.3.4 includes various functional fixes and enhancements. As a proactive approach and best practices, Magento recommends that you keep your installation up to date, so you can benefit from the latest advancements.

You need to gear up with the server requirements (the latest versions of Apache, NGINX, and other cache technologies) to witness the optimized performance, securely connect with the Magento software repository, and use PayPal effectively.

Let’s have a look at the areas that Magento recommends you consider before choosing a hosting provider.

Memory Requirement

The more, the better. Magento officially recommends this should be at least 2 GB of RAM.

Operating System

Linux x86 - 64 and distributions like RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and similar all support Magento. Please note that Magento is not supported on Windows and macOS.

Web Servers

Magento requires two web servers - Apache 2.4 and NGINX 1.x.

Database

Magento requires MySQL version 8.0 and MariaDB 10.4 for Magento Commerce Cloud projects. Besides, Magento is also compatible with MySQL 5.7.9, MariaDB 10.2, and Percona 5.7 (but since this has not been tested, we cannot officially recommend these).

PHP Versions & Required Extensions

Magento recommends and supports PHP 7.4.0. Following are the PHP extensions that need to be installed:

• Ext-bcmath
• ext-ctype
• ext-curl
• ext-dom
• ext-gd
• ext-hash
• ext-iconv
• ext-intl
• ext-mbstring
• ext-openssl
• ext-pdo_mysql
• ext-simplexml
• ext-soap
• ext-xsl
• ext-zip

PHP OPCache

Magento strongly recommends that you enable the OPCache for high performance.

Elasticsearch

Magento is tested with Elasticsearch version 7.6.x. It no longer supports 2.x, 5.x, and 6.x.

SSL Certificate

A valid and trusted SSL certificate is required for the Magento store.

System Dependencies Requirements

Here are some system tools required for Magento stores to streamline operations:

• bash
• gzip
• lsof
• mysql
• mysqldump
• nice
• php
• sed
• tar

Cache Technologies

Magento recommends developers use these cache technologies with their respective versions: Varnish 6.x (tested with 6.3.1), Redis 5.0 for page caching and session storage, and RabbitMQ 3.8.x.

As I mentioned earlier, this article covers Magento server requirements, and where these can be met. Now that we’re done with the first half, let’s dive into the second part.

Meet Best Server Requirements with Cloudways

Having used the Cloudways Platform specifically for Magento stores, I found it employs the exact server requirements recommended by Official Magento. Without further ado, let’s dissect these and find out if Cloudways does fulfill all recommended server requirements.

RAM Usage (Memory Requirement)

First thing, Cloudways offers a hosting plan with a minimum of 2GB of RAM for Magento 2 applications.

Web Servers & Operating System

Magento requires Apache and NGINX in terms of web server technologies. Cloudways offers both of these.

For NGINX, run the command dpkg 1

grep nginx via SSH. This will give you the following result:

For Apache, run the command dpkg 1

grep apache via SSH to find this result:

For OS, Cloudways uses the Linux distribution Debian.

Database

Cloudways offers MariaDB 10.1 as the default database. It also allows you to upgrade the MariaDB version to 10.2 or 10.3 as per your store requirements.

PHP Version & Required PHP Extensions

With Cloudways, you will get the default PHP version 7.3, which you can easily upgrade to PHP 7.4. Apart from that, you need to install PHP extensions that are compiled libraries and support specific functionalities in your PHP code.

Required System Dependencies For Magento Stores

Cloudways supports all the system tools required to run the Magento store operations without ambiguity. To check the system dependencies for your Magento store, connect your SSH, access your Magento application, and type: ls /bin/

Cache & Other Technologies

Magento recommends a few important caches for speed. For instance,Varnish, Redis and PHP OPCache can be configured with your stores. Cloudways supports these three cache technologies.

Under the Manage Services tab, you can find Varnish and Redis Cache. You can also control the minor operations as well, like restart, stop and purge. Along with that, you will also have Elasticsearch version 6.5.

And, under the Setting & Packages > Advanced tab you will see the OPCACHE MEMORY, which you can also change as per the requirement.

1-click Free SSL Certificate

With Cloudways, you can install free SSL certificates on Magento stores. Make sure that you have signed up for a full Cloudways Platform for Magento to configure an SSL certificate and pointed your domain to the target Magento application.

Final Words

And that’s a wrap!

There’s no denying that Magento has a strong architecture built to solve some complex ecommerce store operations. Thousands of people prefer Magento to build their ecommerce store, but often face disappointment when they are unable to manage their store performance. In most such cases, these performance related issues occur when server requirements are not being met.

That’s why this blog has highlighted the required server components for Magento platform. I hope readers come away with a better idea of how to meet the best server requirements, and sustain the better performance for customers and audience.