Benchmark: LiteSpeed vs Apache (PHP and Plain HTML)
So I had a play with LiteSpeed just recently. Let’s have a look at what the benchmark says.
Tool used: ApacheBench, Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.146 $> apache-2.0
Benchmark object: My Wordpress blog (homepage), of course I made an exact copy of the current blog you’re seeing to my VPS box (which has both Apache and LiteSpeed installed).
Both Apache and LiteSpeed use default configuration parameters. Since the benchmark was done on the same server, hardware is the same, however there are some software differences.
Server hardware information: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz, 256MB RAM (remember it’s a VPS, not a dedicated server).
Server software information: Apache 2.2.3 + PHP 5.2.1 (mod_php), LiteSpeed 3.3.5 + PHP 5.2.5 (LSAPI 4.5) + XCache 1.2.1 + Suhosin 0.9.23
Yes the comparison isn’t totally fair since the LiteSpeed installation has all the bells and whistles (XCache in particular), but it gives you an idea of how the two web servers perform.
Firstly, let’s take a look at dynamic content.
Benchmark command: ab -n50 http://url/to/my/vps/wordpress
Apache
Server Software: Apache/2.2.3
Server Hostname: Not tellin' ya! :P
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /wordpress/
Document Length: 69626 bytes
Concurrency Level: 1
Time taken for tests: 46.295309 seconds
Complete requests: 50
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 3495800 bytes
HTML transferred: 3481300 bytes
Requests per second: 1.08 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 925.906 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 925.906 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 73.72 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0
Processing: 794 925 163.7 875 1474
Waiting: 765 910 160.9 869 1447
Total: 794 925 163.7 875 1474
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 875
66% 901
75% 919
80% 945
90% 1029
95% 1430
98% 1474
99% 1474
100% 1474 (longest request)
LiteSpeed
Server Software: LiteSpeed
Server Hostname: Not tellin' ya! :P
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /wordpress/
Document Length: 69626 bytes
Concurrency Level: 1
Time taken for tests: 46.565238 seconds
Complete requests: 50
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 3495500 bytes
HTML transferred: 3481300 bytes
Requests per second: 1.07 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 931.305 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 931.305 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 73.30 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0
Processing: 701 930 171.0 882 1598
Waiting: 407 639 120.7 597 1153
Total: 701 930 171.0 882 1598
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 882
66% 917
75% 962
80% 1052
90% 1158
95% 1264
98% 1598
99% 1598
100% 1598 (longest request)
Interestingly enough, the performances are on par! I am a little surprised actually, since LiteSpeed has XCache applied. It perhaps has something to do with the VPS (it’s a little slow), and of course the Standard version of LiteSpeed does not perform as well as the Enterprise version.
Take a look at the result of one of my other shared hosting accounts (just for reference):
Server hardware information: 8-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5320 @ 1.86GHz, 12GB RAM
Server software information: Apache 2.2.6 + PHP 5.2.5 (mod_php) + eAccelerator 0.9.5.2 + Suhosin 0.9.23 + Zend Optimizer 3.3.3
Apache only (don’t have LiteSpeed on this server)
Server Software: Apache/2.2.6
Server Hostname: Not tellin' ya! :P
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /wordpress/
Document Length: 60370 bytes
Concurrency Level: 1
Time taken for tests: 10.540660 seconds
Complete requests: 50
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 3038000 bytes
HTML transferred: 3018500 bytes
Requests per second: 4.74 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 210.813 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 210.813 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 281.39 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0
Processing: 191 210 46.4 203 514
Waiting: 124 140 6.7 141 160
Total: 191 210 46.4 203 514
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 203
66% 204
75% 205
80% 206
90% 215
95% 219
98% 514
99% 514
100% 514 (longest request)
Now let’s take a look at how static content compete. The target object is still my blog homepage, but this time with WP Super Cache enabled!
Benchmark command: ab -n10000 -c50 http://url/to/my/vps/wordpress
Apache
Server Software: Apache/2.2.3
Server Hostname: Not tellin' ya! :P
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /wordpress/
Document Length: 69700 bytes
Concurrency Level: 50
Time taken for tests: 37.19618 seconds
Complete requests: 10000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 700449648 bytes
HTML transferred: 697766700 bytes
Requests per second: 270.13 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 185.098 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 3.702 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 18477.55 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 0 4.0 0 101
Processing: 0 183 197.9 145 2693
Waiting: 0 134 90.7 128 1086
Total: 0 183 197.8 146 2693
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 146
66% 156
75% 164
80% 170
90% 215
95% 485
98% 852
99% 1159
100% 2693 (longest request)
LiteSpeed
Server Software: LiteSpeed
Server Hostname: Not tellin' ya! :P
Server Port: 80
Document Path: /wordpress/
Document Length: 69700 bytes
Concurrency Level: 50
Time taken for tests: 12.495997 seconds
Complete requests: 10000
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 700889164 bytes
HTML transferred: 698324300 bytes
Requests per second: 800.26 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 62.480 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 1.250 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 54774.50 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 2 6.2 1 55
Processing: 2 59 27.4 59 401
Waiting: 1 55 27.1 56 399
Total: 2 61 27.0 60 401
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 60
66% 61
75% 62
80% 64
90% 76
95% 86
98% 94
99% 97
100% 401 (longest request)
Now that’s better! :) LiteSpeed is three times faster than Apache at serving static pages! Not bad huh?
In general, LiteSpeed is much better at serving static content than Apache. Dynamic content however, I don’t see much performance difference. Although it will be interesting to see benchmarks done on the Enterprise version on higher end hardware.
Some Lighttpd users let Apache to serve PHP content because it’s more stable and has better application compatibility. LiteSpeed on the other hand, is very Apache-compatible and very stable. I would recommend it to any high profile website owners. :)
测一下nginx吧
nginx配置起来有些麻烦，最近肯定是没时间了…… :(
nginx 很容易配置，我感觉比apache还容易配置。。
同上 nginx真的很简单的 速度又快
Dear Fred,
think its a rather useless comparison.
1. you should test against
ab -n50 http://url/to/my/vps/wordpress/
not against
ab -n50 http://url/to/my/vps/wordpress
2. test against really static content .html, if caching opens php process, its of course very differnt.
3. ahmm, sorry -xcache enabled as you already said…
have you tried
pecl install apc
for apache, or eaccelerator? I got different mixupped results on different machines - very interestig stuff.
Hope you will do more of it, e.g. let us know both benchs with / wothout opcode caching on bot servers…
greetings from the other end of da world,
chris
BTW - “Requests per second: 1.08 [#/sec] (mean)”
think that says one thing: for fast PHP, you need much CPU Power.
Chris,
Thanks for your comments. Would you please clarify the URL difference in your first suggestion? AFAIK it makes no difference with or without the trailing slash.
The benchmark, as I have mentioned in the post, was not done scientifically in the sense of using equal software environment. I hope in the future I am able to conduct a more thorough benchmark. As of right now I am busy with some other stuff…
Thanks again for your comments I will definitely take them into account for the next benchmark (whenever that will be).
Cheers,
Fred