Zend vs. IonCube

UPDATE: vBSEO no longer requires Zend or IonCube encryption. We provide non-encrypted, visible source code.

We would like to gather feedback from you regarding Zend and IonCube to determine which should be the suggested installation when both are supported.

Please contribute by answering the poll & posting any related comments.

Zend performes better due to small size of the output encrypted files, and doesn`t need extra files like ioncube does. I always look for Zend encrypted files, plus zend has it`s own optimizer most hosts ( like me ) install automatically.

I have had a much easier time once I switched to Zend. I recommend it over IonCube.

I've installed both, Zend performed far better.

However, I think it's important to note that different versions of php can make a difference.

APC Cache has some issues right now with PHP 5.x, especially 5.1.x with apache segfaults, timeouts, etc.. so eAccelerator is preferred if that's the version you have.

The vBulletin team on the official .com forums currently reccomend going with Zend and eAccelerator if you have vbSEO installed as well.

Also as has been mentioned, Zend has its own optimizer.

The lack of need for downloading external files (the ones that come with vbSEO 3 RC3 currently do not work, and you have to download them from another website [ also there's no mention of this in the troubleshooting guide, had to search for it on the forums ] makes Zend also preferred I would believe.

Since APC doesn't like Zend, I needed to stick with ionCube.
IonCube + APC = Fast vBulletin
Zend = Lazy vBulletin

Originally Posted by libertylounge

The vBulletin team on the official .com forums currently reccomend going with Zend and eAccelerator if you have vbSEO installed as well.

They actually recommend the oposite. The only cache class that works flawlessly in vB is for APC, eAccelerator still have some problems.
The devs mentioned this several times.

I've installed both at one time or another and never noticed any true difference in performance.

Originally Posted by TECK

They actually recommend the oposite. The only cache class that works flawlessly in vBulletin is for APC, eAccelerator still have some problems.
The devs mentioned this several times.

Not according to the information I've found.

vBulletin Community Forum - View Single Post - New server - need optimization

And in any case, APC has issues with PHP 5.x currently that make apache segfault.. not good when trying to run an active forum.

Aren't these programs (zend and ioncube) simply encryption systems (compilers) to help prevent the theft of code?

Both Zend and IonCube do encrypt PHP source code. Zend also functions to optimize code.

I won`t argue, but Zend does perform mucho better. Why ? Well...hmm...file sizes are ALOT smaller. I am using Modernbillv5, WHMAutopilot and other scripts with encrypted source, aka Zend encrypted. All have significant smaller size then the ones without Ioncube. And speaking of performace, I really think it matters the type of OS that you have, firewall installed on your server and scripts and modules for APACHE and mysql and php. I use eaccelerator alot, but it won`t work with php in cli .But wait !! Did anyone know that hosting providers ( like me ) can get Zend Optimizer and Ioncube installed and running without noone needing any other files ( I was refering to the vbSEO encrypted with ioncube ).
Yes it`s possible, and tricky, since Zend has been known not to tolerate good ioncube ( and the other way around ). I guess both companies designed their soft like that ( competition ) .
I would suggest using any of the files, but Zend for smaller file size and their optimization enabled environment.

Originally Posted by libertylounge

Not according to the information I've found.

vBulletin Community Forum - View Single Post - New server - need optimization

And in any case, APC has issues with PHP 5.x currently that make apache segfault.. not good when trying to run an active forum.

I'm sorry, but those are the words from the devs, more exacly Scott MacVicar.
They run eAccelerator on their site, but Scott told me to use APC, since it's fully compatible with vBulletin (not the same story with eA, still bugs in the cache class).
Post: Zend Optimizer and Ioncube installed both..

Take a look:
APC INFO

No more problems with bbcode_alt file, since the upgrade to 3.0.11.
As you notice, I use PHP 5.1.5

I have been running zend since the start. Installed Eaccelerator a couple months ago and my forums became blazing fast.

I was going to try ioncube just to see the difference, but things are working too well to mess with it.

They recomend APC Cache perhaps with vanilla vBulletin, but every piece of information I've seen has pointed to zend + eaccelerator when running vbSEO.

Hi All!

A bit late contributing to this, but worth doing so to clarify some of the mistakes in earlier posts and hopefullly help some folks.

File Size: ionCube encoded files do tend to be larger, but this is for beneficial reasons, and does not mean slower performance. In fact, the results have historically been the opposite. Larger file size is partly due to files typically having an ASCII encoding layer around the binary layer. Binary files, which used to be the ionCube default format a few years ago, are easily corrupted by FTP when installed due to incorrect use of ASCII transfer modes causing cr/lf (linebreak) conversion and failed files that need to be reinstalled. ASCII formatted files may still get converted by FTP or WinZIP, but the line breaks are not part of the data and so there is no corruption. Other reasons for larger file size can be the nature of the security algorithms used and the amount of data compression used.

At an implementation level, files are not read using file I/O but by memory mapping the files into the process memory space. Whilst more intensive compression algorithms may require increased runtime overhead to process them, memory mapping a file of 2K vs. 3K, the contents of which are likely to be cached by the OS, may be equally as efficient and the larger file size wins overall. Benchmarks from one third party give some comparisons.

Performance: The best performance for ionCube files comes when the Loader is installed in the php.ini file as opposed to the runtime install method. The script's execution speed is actually the same, but runtime install whilst popular from its convenience adds a few 10's of milliseconds overhead on each request. This wouldn't be noticable except perhaps on an overloaded or low spec server, but is definitely measurable, and for those having control over their servers a php.ini install is best.

The other thing to note with performance is that on unencoded scripts, ZO and any code optimiser may slow servers down and not make them faster. We've measured this when working on compatibility and tuning the Loader, as have other third parties when they sat down to actually check and not just assume that there would be a speedup. The reason here is that whilst ZO does a fair job of optimising the compiled code and files will generally execute faster, the optimisation takes time too and it can take longer to optimise than you get back with speed improvements. Whether there is a net benefit or not depends very much on the nature of the PHP scripts and factors such as how long requests take to run, the percentage of code actually executed, the script design and so on. Long running scripts such as computing prime numbers benefit because the optimisation gains are cumulative whereas the optimisation time is independent of execution time, and the longer a script takes to run the more benefit there is from the optimisation. Percentage of code executed is a factor because any code not executed is not only excess time in the parser and compiler, but wasted optimisation effort. For the best performance gains, a code cache should be used such as Zend Performance Suite or others.

Compatibility: The ionCube Loader and Zend Optimiser are compatible, and many hosts install or use both together. Care must be taken to ensure that the Loader appears first in a php.ini file and this can catch people out, but reading the install docs make this clear. To help out, the Loader should log an error if that mistake is made. If there are problems then making sure that the latest Loader is installed is prudent, as it is with ZO, system drivers and any software really. Bizarrely, one version of ZO a couple of years ago did contain code to explicitly check for the Loader and then cause a crash to feign incompatibility, however with a new Loader we quickly worked around that sculduggery and the same ZO and new Loader once again played nicely together as they always had. Our approach is to maximise compatibility for the end user as far as possible because it makes no sense to do anything else and is counter productive.

At the end of the day it won't usually matter which you install provided that you take care if installing binary files. If either ZO or the Loader are already installed, and this is shown with a phpinfo page, then picking the corresponding download makes sense and should work out of the box. If neither ZO nor the Loader are installed on the server and if there isn't access to the php.ini file, runtime install of the Loaders is likely to work and avoids having to request the php.ini file to be modified by the host if on a shared server. Lastly, if one goes for an ionCube install and needs help with that or would like more information about encoding technology in general then we'll always do our best to help out if a support ticket is logged.

Hope this helps, and good luck!