Azure server recommend
If there is a thread that answers this already, you can point me there... thanks.
I've got my own server at a co-lo and it's a Xeon based server that's about 4 years old and due for an update soon. I've been thinking of moving to Azure instead so I don't have to maintain the hardware. I've set up cPanel on Azure to test with an A4_v2 level (which is fairly low), but the speed of the server seems to be about the same as I have now. I have about 30 websites hosted on my server. None of them are very busy.
On my server, pages in WordPress take several seconds to render - about 4-7 seconds which seems slow compared to other WordPress sites I've seen that are hosted on Bluehost, for example. Is there any info on what level of Azure server would give decent performance? I know I can scale up to 2 or 4 or more CPU's and more RAM, but that can get costly pretty quick as more CPU's and RAM can double or triple the monthly cost and it would be nice to know ahead of time what is needed to approximate costs.
If I have to spend say $200-$300/month to get decent speed, I might as well stay with my co-lo server and upgrade it since I will still need the co-lo for other things. Along with this, is there any way to see where bottlenecks are? My sever is fairly quick running CPU benchmarks, but slow to render. Maybe the hard drives are the bottleneck if the CPU isn't very busy?
So in summary, what I'm asking is what level/price do we need from Azure to get decent performance on WordPress sites? Can we compete economically with the big boys that host WordPress like nexcess, bluehost, hostgater, etc. or do we need the equivalent of a $5,000+ rackmount server with SSD's to get fast performance?
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Hi @computica, Have you used Litespeed, as an alternative to Apache with LSCache? Whenever we migrate websites from an EIG Host such as Bluehost to our infrastructure, we see the sites performance improve dramatically. 0 -
@ZenHostingTravis I have not. How exactly does it work? I see that cPanel sells it as an add-on. So does it replace my Apache with Litespeed and sites go faster? What kinds of improvements in speed have you seen? I see there is an 8GB version and unlimited for $25/$45. Is that for the amount of RAM on the server? So if I'm running CentOS LAMP, this will basically replace the Apache and be compatible with WordPress sites and make them faster? This sounds too good to be true. :) I looked up EIG and that's interesting. I didn't know about that umbrella company. I assume each company bought up had their setup for hosting and maybe are being brought under one system, but I recognize many of the companies as being on lists of "fastest WordPress hosting companies". Last question... If I were to go to Azure and run cPanel there since it runs CentOS, could I still use Litespeed there? Thanks Frank 0 -
Hi Frank, You can replace Apache with Litespeed entirely or run both web servers on different ports. It's advertised as a drop-in replacement which suggests you don't have to do anything but turn it on but in my experience, some .htaccess files for websites have had to be changed after the switch. Litespeed with LSCache can significantly improve performance of Wordpress websites. 8GB does refer to the RAM, yes. You could use Litespeed on any VPS instance from companies offering VPS services such as Azure. Hope that helps! 0 -
Thanks for the replies. I'll look into it. If I get a chance, I'll let you know how it goes. 0 -
Thanks for the replies @ZenHostingTravis - @computica you may get more details on questions like this at a forum like WebHostingTalk where it is specific to hosting plans and hardware. 0 -
Thanks for the replies @ZenHostingTravis - @computica you may get more details on questions like this at a forum like WebHostingTalk where it is specific to hosting plans and hardware.
I assume WebhostingTalk was a forum on cPanel.net but I couldn't find anything of the like in the Forums list. Are you proposing I go to the outside www.webhostingtalk.com site or is there something on the cPanel.net site? If you're directing me to go outside, then can I surmise that cPanel.net is just for specific issues/problems/configs for cPanel and general things like specific servers is not covered? Also, ZenHostingTravis mentioned Litespeed which is something that cPanel.net resells, right? I'm interested in that if it will speed things up. Where do I find more info on that and try it out to see if it will make things faster? Thanks Frank0 -
WebHostingTalk is a separate forum that is not affiliated with cPanel - I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. That site is designed more for hosting recommendations and reviews, while we're more focused on the cPanel side of things. If you have determined that your slowness is directly linked to Apache, it's possible Litespeed could help, and yes, we do sell those licenses directly through our store. 0 -
WebHostingTalk is a separate forum that is not affiliated with cPanel - I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. That site is designed more for hosting recommendations and reviews, while we're more focused on the cPanel side of things. If you have determined that your slowness is directly linked to Apache, it's possible Litespeed could help, and yes, we do sell those licenses directly through our store.
No worries. I'm a little bit of a newb to the web hosting world. While I've had cPanel for many years, I never got too much into it. Now that I'm looking to get a little more speed, I have to get myself up to speed on the different programs/sites/forums, etc. Now that I understand what WebHostingTalk is, I thank you for the recommendation. It looks to be full of info and I'll be lurking and learning from it. :)0 -
You're welcome @computica Webhostingtalk.com is indeed a great resource. Feel free to link us to any post you make on their forums so I can check it out because I frequent this forum more than that one :-) 0 -
@cPRex On a related note, I'd like to test the speed of things on other hardware and Azure, etc. I got a trial license for WHM/cPanel but it's only good for 15 days. I've already set it up and by the time I could get things set up and tested it expired. I own a Premier license but it's only good for 1 IP address - my production server. What's the best way to do longer term testing? Do I need to purchase a cPanel Solo (which is about 1/3 the cost of the Premier) or do I need another Premier since this will be on a dedicated server? Also, I'm almost clear on the difference between Cloud (for VPS and Cloud) and Metal (for dedicated). Would Azure be considered "metal" since I would be using the whole server for WHM/cPanel? And what exactly would VPS and Cloud be? I know what VPS is. Would cloud be a site that rented me some Linux space on a server, but since it's not my own dedicated server, it's considered "cloud". Azure is considered cloud so hence the confusion. If there are some online docs that better explain it, I can read it so you don't have to explain it all over again. 0 -
If you need to do testing that's longer than the 15-day trial, it would be best to get the cheapest license option that will fit your needs. If you can do that with Solo, that would work. Metal is still for fully-dedicated hardware, so a tool like Azure would still identify as a Cloud system for the purpose of our licensing. 0 -
@cPRex @ZenHostingTravis If you guys are still around... I have a few questions that you maybe can answer. If possible, I can also buy you a coffee(s), beer or pizza (or a kale smoothie if that's your way of life) for your help. :) So I've looked into LiteSpeed. I got my Azure server running (A1v2: 1CPU, 2GB RAM) and installed LiteSpeed and I was impressed with the speed. I had a few speed bumps along the way with getting the crawler to work so that all pages get cached, but I can work on that later. One page that took about 15 seconds to render on a site I host came down to 1 second with Litespeed since it's cached and rendered, etc. as we'd expect. Even going from my server to Azure with 1 CPU got the speed down to 6 seconds and with an A2v2: 2CPU, 4GB RAM) it went down to 2 seconds I believe and with Litespeed, it's almost instant. So this brings me to a point of making a decision. With rolling my own solution, I would have to get Azure which is somewhere around $100 per month plus cPanel which is $51.50 ($48.50 + $3 for kernel care) per month plus $26 or $36 for Litespeed depending on the RAM. That's a total of $177.50 per month and with that I might need some more offsite storage to store backups, etc. In doing research, I ran into MonsterMegs and they seem to be pretty good. I looked up other hosting companies that use Litespeed, etc. and they either use SSD's or maybe cost more, etc. From this page Semi-Dedicated Hosting | MonsterMegs I can get basically everything I need (75-125GB NVMe storage, unlimited domains, cPanel, SSL certs, etc.) for $92-$132 per month. I don't need to manage my own hardware or have an Azure server. I'm fine having someone else handle the infrastructure and troubleshooting. MonsterMegs seems to be pretty good in the reviews. Some say they don't scale up to the enterprise level, but I don't need that. I host small sites that just need a speed bump with Wordpress since it's fairly slow to render. (I think WPBakery might be part of the slowness too, but I'm fine with throwing more power at the problem rather than try to get every last drop out of the software by tweaking things.) Questions 1. This would be a semi-dedicated server and I know that means I might be sharing resources, but these days it's probably fine and fast enough. Years ago (10-15 years ago) I had a GoDaddy shared server and it got slow and they couldn't say why and to just pay them to figure it out or upgrade. That's when I got my own server. But with the costs going down it's looking better to outsource again. 2. If the pricing for outsourced makes sense, I don't need to go to MonsterMegs necessarily. I know there are plenty out there like A2, LiquidWeb, Hostinger, etc. I've looked around webhostingtalk.com per your recommendation and I see MonsterMegs advertising on there a lot. There's no real feedback on them but they seem to be a good company around since 2010. So if this is a way to go, any good hosting companies to consider with fast servers in USA? 3. If I go back to outsourced, anything I should look for to make sure I'm not stuck with something that will get slow, etc? I don't need the fastest servers out there. Just something that can start bringing up a simple site in about 3-5 seconds and I have a feeling that anything with Litespeed is going to be pretty fast even on slower hardware. Thanks guys for any feedback you can provide. I'm not sure if I mentioned it above, but I'm ore of a computer support guy for IT for small/micro businesses and I just host websites as a small extra for my clients that need it since it's easier to maintain things myself rather than having everything on different servers/accounts. 0 -
When it gets into the actual hosting side of things, you might get better responses at a place like Web Hosting Talk - The largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet where that is all they focus on. That entire forum is very active with discussions about hosting plans, hardware, and providers, while we tend to stay more focused on the cPanel software. 0 -
Thanks @cPRex I understand. 0
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