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What kind of stack are people using for speed?

timmmmyboy
We're looking at optimizing some servers for performance which is a huge topic with 100 opinions ranging from "optimize your code first" to "cache all the things". Let's assume this server would be running primarily WordPress and it's a mediumish-sized VPS with 8GB ram, 4 CPUs. I'm curious what folks are doing to mirror fancier setups like WP-Engine and Pantheon while still being able to have cPanel at the core. Some things we've either explored or are thinking about in some combination: * PHP 7 with Opcache * XVarnish (Varnish plugin for cPanel) * Engintron (Nginx plugin for cPanel) * PHP-FPM So yeah, I'd love to hear from others looking at stuff like this or folks who are running stuff in production that is working really well.

Comments

13 comments

Date Votes
  • rarod
    I am using xVarnish (now Cachewall) in some servers. Some things to take in account.
    • There is no stable release at the moment.
    • In the lasts months their support is almost null. [*https has some issues with mixing certificates between clients.
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  • 24x7server
    Hi, To my experience so far, Cachewall has been good. It has some issues at times, but if you speak about how it functions, then it is quite good. Engintron uses Nginx and Nginx is best well known for faster static content delivery. If you compare these both, I will advise Cachewall with having varnish cache to delivery more faster.. The other option is redis, which you can consider..
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  • timmmmyboy
    The other option is redis, which you can consider

    Ah yeah, that was one I forgot on my list but has been on my mind. Are there any good options out there that integrate Redis well with cPanel or are most folks doing manual installs?
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  • Anoop P Alias
    You can setup nginx full page caching in redis to directly serve the page from redis instead of php+mysql . This is the fastest you can get with Wordpress
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  • cPanelMichael
    Hello @timmmmyboy, WordPress provides a document on the topic of Optimization (you mentioned the server will primarily host WordPress websites) that you may find helpful as well: WordPress Optimization " WordPress Codex Thank you.
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  • sparek-3
    I'd have to wonder what just plain nginx as a web server (no Apache) with PHP-FPM would look like. I would think that would probably provide the best performance at the best price. (Litespeed might be better, but there's a licensing fee. Nginx is free). Configuring nginx might be problematic, since that kind of setup is not natively supported by cPanel. But if you're not actively adding accounts or domains to the server, it might be possible to set it up and just leave it.
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  • Anoop P Alias
    There are third-party plugins that provide native nginx support
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  • mehdix92
    Engintron + Memcached with Mod_Isapi and you should see some serious numbers :) Server load at 1 with 500 accounts on it.
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  • gryzli
    If you are having only WordPress based websites, then you could go just with Varnish + eventually some memory based storage (Redis or Memcache). You will need to have some good rules inside Varnish, which most of the times should handle the biggest part of the traffic. I don't think you will get much benefit from using Nginx + php-fpm, compared to Apache/mod_fcgid, especially if you have well configured caching layers (Varnish, and wordpress caching also). For the WP sites, you will also need some caching plugin enabled ,maybe W3TC with Disk Enhanced Caching (for a small/medium site) or using Memcache/Redis as a PageCache backend for some heavier web sites.
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  • inteldigital
    Engintron + Memcached with Mod_Isapi and you should see some serious numbers :) Server load at 1 with 500 accounts on it.

    But memcached isn't considered stable for cPanel is it? I'd love to run memcached over xVarnish and possibly look at using nginx instead of apache. But would memcached really work?
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  • cPanelMichael
    Hello @inteldigital, With the EA4 experimental package for memached, there is no SASL, and no per-user init files, which means it is not considered ready for shared environments. That said, you can still install it manually outside of the EA4 experimental repo. There's a thread on that topic at: Thank you.
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  • LucasRolff
    I'd generally recommend LiteSpeed because it's officially supported by cPanel, it's a single piece of software that offers things like QUIC, TLSv1.3, Brotli and LSCache - sure it has a license cost, but with the recent changes to licensing it might be different depending on the about of sites you need it for. When looking at licensing costs, you also have to take into account, if you'd have to build a similar solution using other open source products, what would the time you'd have to spend on it, and the ongoing support for it as well (and possible lack of features that you might not be able to use). I personally would never go back to Apache (also because LiteSpeed doesn't randomly cause blackouts during restarts), and I really don't wanna maintain a stack consisting of multiple web servers and caching solutions, to offer something a single piece of software can do for me, for not that much money :-D
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  • Waqass
    Hey Mehdi I also have recently configured mod_lsapi with engitron and saw a great reduction in load. Though I already had redis installed and didnt oberved any difference. Should I go with memcache as redis would be overkill with engitron/nginx?
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