Performance: Webserver Selection (LiteSpeed vs NGIX)

Working on a project for a site that will have routine periods of heavy access (10K+ users during peak hours). Plan is to use a CDN for static files and cache everywhere possible. I still need to ensure high performance and I wanted to gather feedback from anyone who has experience with LiteSpeed or NGIX. I have seen some mention of NGIX elsewhere in older posts though nothing more recent.

Since NGIX is an add-on handler I do not suspect there would be any challenges. LiteSpeed being a replacement for Apache I guess there could be some modification necessary such as PHP directives and .htacess.

Can anyone with experience (positive or negative) weight in and share what they are using and how it is working for them?

I can't really help you with a comparison as I haven't worked with litespeed, but I do want to give a +1 to nginx as it's pretty awesome.

Quote from: jisaac at Nov 12, 2014, 09:16 PM

LiteSpeed being a replacement for Apache I guess there could be some modification necessary such as PHP directives and .htacess.

Howdy,

Don't mean to impose, but this thread came up in my Google alert. Just wanted to clarify: LiteSpeed Web Server is a drop-in replacement for Apache. This means there shouldn't need to be any changes in your PHP directives or .htaccess files. LSWS will read and run off of your existing config files as they are.

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about LSWS, or you can email us at info[at]litespeedtech[dot]com.

Cheers,

Michael

Michael,

Thanks for chiming-in and clarifying.

It would be great and helpful to the community to see MODX running on LiteSpeed proving no modifications are needed. Further it would extend benefit to see the performance comparison vs NGIX.

Howdy,

We'd be happy to help you get this up and running so that you can show people it works. It should not take much time at all. Are you using a control panel?

As for a performance comparison with NGINX, I don't think we'll have time to make one ourselves. You might want to check out this case study, though: http://www.litespeedtech.com/solutions/case-studies/foromtb-case-study It shows a XenForo installation switching from NGINX as a reverse proxy to LSWS (and cutting load and increasing speed).

Cheers,

Michael [ed. note: lsmichael last edited this post 11 years, 10 months ago.]

Thanks Michael.

I do run cPanel/WHM. Yes, I know there is a performance hit with a panel.

Interesting article/case study. What can you tell me about open vs the standard license? Also, can we run Litespeed on AWS?

Howdy,

If you use WHM, installing LSWS is even easier. Just follow the steps here to get install the WHM Plugin with an LSWS trial license: http://www.litespeedtech.com/support/wiki/doku.php?id=litespeed_wiki:cpanel:auto-installer

You can run LSWS on AWS.

Both OpenLiteSpeed and LSWS Standard are free. LSWS Standard can use Apache config files, but only for up to 5 Apache virtual hosts. It is not supported for use with WHM, but some people have configured them to work together (because it does read Apache configs). It also has a concurrent connection limit of 150 concurrent connections.

OpenLiteSpeed has no limits, but it does not read Apache configs (and is thus not compatible with cPanel, etc.). OpenLiteSpeed is for sysadmins who are comfortable setting up their own sites. It is a high-powered web server (basically the same performance as LSWS) with an easy GUI interface. It also understands Apache rewrite syntax (though the rules have to be put in OpenLiteSpeed configuration files).

Cheers,

Michael