How to Install Memcached on Amazon Linux 2023 AMI

The Amazon Linux 2023 AMI is an image maintained by AWS. I found it interesting to use it to install my WordPress solution to leverage the power of ElastiCache using Memcached.

I first tried the WordPress AMI Certified by Bitnami, but unfortunately I wasn't able to install it successful. I followed the guides to install Memcached into it, but WordPress never recognised it. If anyone has done this successfully, please feel free to drop a comment or message.

Now let's discuss how to install Memcached on Amazon Linux 2023.

To be able to use Memcached in Wordpress, the php-memcache extension needs to be installed, as it is not included by default on this AMI.

To install php-memcache on an Amazon EC2 instance running Amazon Linux 2023 AMI, follow these steps:

1. Install PHP and required packages:

sudo yum install -y php php-pear php-devel

2. Download the latest php-memcache release from PECL repository.

pecl download memcache

3. In the previous step you downloaded the source, proceed to extract and compile the php-memcache package.

tar -xzf memcache-8.2.tgz
cd memcache-8.2
phpize
./configure
make
make install

4. Edit php.ini and add extension=memcache.so

sudo vi /etc/php.ini

5. Restart PHP-FPM service.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm

6. Confirm if the extension is loaded properly by running php -m or checking the output of phpinfo(). You should see the package module memcache listed.

<?php
	phpinfo();
?>

7. Login to your Wordpress portal. In my case I use the W3 Total Cache plugin to configure Memcached.

Note: If you're interested in how to install the plugin, check this post.

Then, go to Performance > General Settings > Database Cache and click on the dropbox Database Cache Method. You’ll see Memcached ready to select.

Congrats! Now the WordPress is ready to use Memcached!