Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Comparison Litespeed V apache

[J Gwynne PC Repair]

Hi all,

just migrated from Apache + Nginx to Litespeed + Nginx (don't know how much work nginx is doing yet)

The test.

The server is a managed VPS with clubuptime 2 GB of ram (4 burst)
75GB of disk space and 750Gb of bandwidth.

The loadimpact website is usefull for seeing the stress a simulated load can put on a web server it's also good at seeing how long it takes for your page to load.


A test result with Litespeed+Nginx

http://loadimpact.com/result/www.jgw...86a97ca21791a4

I have to be honest i didn't expect the page load times to drop that dramatically but have heard lots of things about litespeed's benefits over apache.

but the evidence speaks for itself with apache at 50 users page load times averaged 5 seconds, with litespeed page load time is about 2.5 seconds at 50 users.

joe

[XelionOne]

I think that your calculations are still a little bias...

Being on a VPS you are bound to have different results everytime you run the tests, as it is still a shared environment.

Something important to note is that Apache needs to be correctly configured in order to run at its best. A fully optimised and correctly configured apache should run as fast as any litespeed (providing same server, load, etc...)

I have run tests on both before, same datacenters, same servers, same connectivity and saw very little difference.

(although I admit it was a while ago now...)

[HostXNow]

Should also try Varnish http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1017369

[J Gwynne PC Repair]

I have to agree about configuring apache but its not the easiest to configure I have no bias at all

You are right about a vps being a shared environment but I have to say with apache over the last few days the test results have been fairly similar. 5 ish seconds at 50 users however at 10-30 the speed was an acceptable 2-3 seconds per page.

However that is the 1st test I have performed with litespeed and its good so far

one thing with apache is memory usage and processor load this is a hell of a lot less with litespeed apache would run between 3.5 and 5 % however litespeed seems to max at 0.81%

joe

[J Gwynne PC Repair]

I've tried varnish but got concerned with its caching to memory and I couldn't find out what would happen if I ran out of ram(by googling and asking the people in the know).

So I went back to nginx which isn't as fast granted but has been around for forever and is used by lots of people

[HostXNow]

Originally Posted by J Gwynne PC Repair

I've tried varnish but got concerned with its caching to memory and I couldn't find out what would happen if I ran out of ram(by googling and asking the people in the know)

Joe gives info about this at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpo...&postcount=269

[CH-Shaun]

I use nginx and Apache on one of my websites. Nginx serves the static content while Apache processes the PHP requests. My site does thousands of hits per second and the server copes well.

[XelionOne]

Never tried Varnish - any good??
i know Nginx - worked with that for a while... Not bad - does help apache a bit!

Oh and I agree!! Apache is a complete B***H to optimise!! It depends on so many factors!

[J Gwynne PC Repair]

Varnish is great,when i tested it on loadimpact the results where amazing

the only concern i had was the ram caching (running out of ram)

joe

[Scientist]

That doesn't sound right at all. If your main site is static html then I would expect similar performance levels between Nginx and Litespeed.

[J Gwynne PC Repair]

No my site is a joomla template which is php.

Joe

[fshagan]

Can Varnish be installed on a site with active sites (without reinstalling all the sites?)

[Kevin K]

Originally Posted by fshagan

Can Varnish be installed on a site with active sites (without reinstalling all the sites?)

To keep it simple, yes it can.

[Scientist]

Ah, well I'm assuming you run suPHP so it will be slower than a "fastcgi" like PHP (LSAPI) that litespeed uses.

[UNIXy]

Originally Posted by J Gwynne PC Repair

Varnish is great,when i tested it on loadimpact the results where amazing

the only concern i had was the ram caching (running out of ram)

joe

You can limit the amount of memory that Varnish can consume on a server. Be it 8M, 9M, 21M, or 2.6G. If it needs more RAM than it's allocated, it will starting moving unused objects to disk (similar to swapping).

Regards
Joe / UNIXY