Magento Performance

Magento 2 Performance Optimization

Before writing code

Fetch live docs:

1. Web-search site:experienceleague.adobe.com commerce performance for performance best practices
2. Web-search site:experienceleague.adobe.com commerce configuration cache for cache configuration
3. Web-search site:developer.adobe.com commerce php development cache for cache development guide

Full Page Cache (FPC)

Varnish (Recommended for Production)

• Serves cached pages from RAM before hitting the web server
• Dramatically reduces TTFB (time to first byte)
• Magento generates VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) files
• Configure at Stores > Configuration > Advanced > System > Full Page Cache
• Generate VCL: bin/magento varnish:vcl:generate

Built-in FPC (Fallback)

• Filesystem-based cache — slower than Varnish
• Suitable for development only
• No separate service required

Cache Invalidation

• Automatic on entity save (products, categories, CMS)
• Manual: bin/magento cache:clean full_page
• Cache tags track which pages contain which entities
• Hole-punching for dynamic content (customer name, cart count) via private content/sections

Redis / Valkey

Cache Backend

Store all Magento caches in Redis for fast reads:

• Configuration cache, layout cache, block HTML cache
• Configure in app/etc/env.php under cache

Session Storage

Store PHP sessions in Redis instead of filesystem/database:

• Faster session reads/writes
• Better for load-balanced environments
• Configure in app/etc/env.php under session

Indexer Tuning

• Update by Schedule (production) — cron-based, uses changelogs
• Update on Save (development) — immediate but resource-intensive
• Monitor indexer status: bin/magento indexer:status
• Tune cron frequency for indexer jobs

JavaScript and CSS Optimization

Production Mode

Static content is pre-deployed and minified:

bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy --jobs=N

Minification

• JS minification: enabled via admin config
• CSS minification: enabled via admin config
• HTML minification: configurable

Bundling

• Built-in JS bundling (basic)
• Advanced bundling with Magepack (community tool) for page-specific bundles
• Critical CSS extraction for above-the-fold rendering

Hyva Performance Gain

If using Hyva themes: ~5 HTTP requests vs ~230, ~0.4MB vs ~3MB — eliminates most JS optimization needs.

Database Optimization

• Use MySQL 8.0+/MariaDB 10.6+ for latest optimizer improvements
• Tune InnoDB buffer pool size (ideally 70-80% of available RAM on dedicated DB servers) and use MySQL 8.0 optimizer hints where applicable
• Optimize slow queries: enable slow query log, analyze with EXPLAIN
• Clean log tables periodically (cron handles this)
• Use persistent database connections in app/etc/env.php

Profiling Tools

• Magento Profiler: enable in app/etc/env.php or via bin/magento dev:profiler:enable
• New Relic: APM integration built into Magento
• Blackfire.io: PHP profiling
• MySQL slow query log: database bottlenecks
• Varnish stats: cache hit rates

Best Practices

• Always use production mode in production
• Varnish + Redis is the standard production stack
• Set all indexers to "Update by Schedule"
• Pre-deploy static content during build (not on production server)
• Monitor cache hit rates — low rates indicate misconfigured invalidation
• Profile before optimizing — measure, don't guess
• Use CDN for static assets
• Enable HTTP/2 on the web server
• Consider Hyva for frontend performance

Fetch the performance documentation for exact configuration paths, VCL generation options, and Redis configuration format before optimizing.