Best Bang for Buck: Improve Hosting Speed?

[Name Trader]

OK. What is the best bang for you buck to improve the speed of your vps/dedicated hosting?

Change CPU
Add more Cores
Add more RAM
Change to ECC RAM
Change HDD to SDD
Upgrade Port to 1GB
Anything else?

 

[DU]

Speed of what?

 

[N-A]

Very vague. Your sites seem to run fast. However, your Page Speed is 67/88, which can drastically be improved upon to meet the 95/95 sweet spot, which can be done free and without upgrades.

Other than that, don't know what you want to speed up.

 

[Name Trader]

@Grace Delete - Increase speed of delivery of content.

@David Walker - My sites are on my VPS. What do I need to change to reach the 95/95 sweet spot?

My question was really a bit more generic than that. Suppose I move from my VPS to a Dedicated Server? Firstly, will my content be automatically delivered any faster because it's on a dedicated server? Secondly, there are so many choices on the servers. CPU speed, no. of cores, add more RAM or change to ECC RAM, change HDD to SDD, change port speed from 100Mb/s to 1Gb/s. What should be my first priority to upgrade in order to increase the speed of delivery of content? Would a wordpress website have any different priorities.

 

[N-A]

Since you're on a VPS and I can only assume you have root access, installing mod_pagespeed would do it all for you (caching, converting, compressing and serving the right images to the right browser). However, if you have cPanel, it's very tricky to get around since cPanel hates 3rd party installations of anything not signed (or rather not signed or approved by them for use on your own server).

To increase the speed of delivering content leads me to believe you want to target users around the world. Using a content delivery network; or CloudFlare, would achieve this for you. You may also get bonus points for having https.

 

[Name Trader]

Yes I have cPanel on the VPS, but I'm not planning to use cPanel on the Dedicated Server. So I should be able to install mod_pagespeed on that.

So you don't have any thoughts on which hardware upgrade would give the best improvements for delivery of content? Or are you saying they would all be negligible compared to installing mod_pagespeed?

 

[DU]

@Grace Delete - Increase speed of delivery of content.

Still too vague really.

What is the type of content? Is it heavy video? Heavy graphics? Consider 3rd Party streaming.
Global access? Highly available? Consider a CDN that will locate your data closer to users.
Heavy database access ? Is your database optimized?
Content - is your static content cached locally ? is everything a url-rewrite?

More than likely the best method to speed up the delivery of content is to use a Content Delivery Network - look at Cloudflare.

I would doubt that hardware is really a problem unless your sites are huge (and if they aren't then a CDN is overkill too, I suppose).

Start with what David says.. then work on application level performance tweaks (DB optimizing, page caching, reducing url-rewrites, etc.)

Though of the ones you list - adequate memory is important.. and SSD will make a difference if you are using a lot of data access (but you get less space per $).

 

[N-A]

The only way to deliver content to a person the fastest way possible is having a low latency. You can achieve this by being in a ISO-XXXX certified center or whatnot. However, that only reaches so far. You're not going to get the same ping/latency in China as you would in California (assuming there was a direct line from California to Texas where your dedicated server was).

I can give you the best advice ever that I ignored for the longest time. Pay up front for AWS EC2 (~$600) if you plan on using the server 24/7/365. This will bring your monthly billing down to ~$50 per server and other negligible costs such as backups in S3 buckets. Do the math and this saves you 40-60% a year on a dedicated server.

You can also use their Anycast IP system (name doesn't come to mind) to route traffic to your VM quicker. I mentioned CloudFlare because they do have the "fastest" content delivery on their Anycast network and comes with SSL.

However, I prefer DNSMadeEasy as they are faster with a separate CDN. This is because they are honest about reporting that they are milliseconds behind CloudFlare, but admit why: they don't serve static content like a CDN would. The only factor that made me choose DNSMadeEasy over CloudFlare was the fact of vanity nameservers (ns1.yourdomain.com) and the CDN being optional and operated separately. I've seen problems with their CloudFlare going up and down as well. This is a reference to "don't put all your eggs in one basket".

 

[Name Trader]

OK. So you both are basically saying it makes diddly-squat difference the what hardware I run my websites on. And I should concentrate on software enhancements. Yes/No?

 

[DU]

OK. So you both are basically saying it makes diddly-squat difference the what hardware I run my websites on. And I should concentrate on software enhancements. Yes/No?

I think it will make *more* difference depending on what you are serving.

SSD over HDD is probably going to make a positive difference - but not as much as having appropriate memory available and the proper caching (making reading less required in the first place). It also won't make enough difference if your database setup is a mess and reading is blocked for some reason. Without knowing what you're doing it's hard to know what the benefits are (this is where VPS is more of a problem than managed hosting )

What kind of load are you under?
What kind of speeds are you seeing and what do you want them to be?
What's the software you are running?

I would say that enough RAM is critical (don't run Drupal with 256MB for example).. and SSD would be worthwhile (if you don't have high storage requirements). My guess would be that the hardware is not likely to be the biggest bottleneck.

 

[N-A]

No, both hardware and software have a play depending on who you are targeting or your main goal.

You're tip-toeing around what you ultimately want to do, which is why you cannot get a direct answer.

If you want to, PM me your plans and I'll see which would be the best: a new VPS, burstable cloud or a dedicated solution. (I say dedicated solution, because any dedicated server under $150/mo is most likely a VM now)

 

[DU]

@David Walker is being real nice and clearly is more helpful and knowledgeable than me so I will Grace Fullybowout.

Good luck

 

[N-A]

@David Walker is being real nice and clearly is more helpful and knowledgeable than me so I will Grace Fullybowout.

Good luck

No, you did provide good tips. I just think that the questions are so vague that we cannot provide clear and precise answers together.

It has to be something that he doesn't want to be posted publicly, which is why I invited him into a conversation. I would be happy with a 3 way as I'm not selling anything, rather providing input on what would be best for @stub .

Though, we both are basically giving him the same tip: hardware and software and he keeps returning the same question of which would be better. We're getting nowhere fast.

 

[4pm]

what kind of sites are you talking about? if you only mean domain portfolio sites with 1,000 - 100,000 domains in a database and no heavy computing on the srver side you definitely do not need dedicated server - cheap $10/mo vps running debian/ubuntu with 512mb ram is more than enough with almost any 1 core proc.
if your sites are slow the answer is a function of how many requests per second you got (caching + connection), geography of requests (serving Singapore users from the US), software optimization (do you use tons of wp plugins, unneeded social widgets, numerous js libs only to add outdated eye damaging button animations and all that funny bells and whistles stuff)

get rid of Apache, use lighttpd or nginx anyway
get rid of huge images, and no you dont have to serve videos on a portfolio site
dont use more than 2 google fonts on the site
move all js tags to the bottom of the body tag, compress js/css files
get rid of all social buttons/widgets - buyers are not going to follow you on twitter, who cares about your sales/acquisitions
get rid of jquery and rewrite all js in native javascript - unless you are developing complex web app with advanced browser interface everything including sliders should/can be made with plain js
use good light fast php/nodejs framework (yii, falcon, fatfree etc)
do not load more than 1 js/css file or better use inline js on simple sites
strip off unused css when using bootstrap or other generic css framework
use icon font (fontawesome+fontello) instead of multiple image icons
get good fast not oversold vps (digitalocean etc) with easy upgrade options + diverse locations

simple portfolio site on debian + lighttpd + mysql on $10 vps on 1gb/s link can easily serve tens of thousands of visitors a day even with defaul settings if your app is coded properly. even on wordpress (providing you dont have 1001 plugins running for every simple task that can be accomplished by a couple of php/js code strings instead)

remember that your sites need to be responsive nowadays whatever they are, and that does not put any additional load on your server if done properly

imo

 

[Name Trader]

So here is a third vote, 100%, for speeding up content delivery basically with software, rather than hardware. It would appear that it would be better to concentrate on that, than to believe all the BS of hosting providers are telling us about needing the latest hardware.

 

[4pm]

So here is a third vote, 100%, for speeding up content delivery basically with software, rather than hardware. It would appear that it would be better to concentrate on that, than to believe all the BS of hosting providers are telling us about needing the latest hardware.

exactly... for portfolio sites
even if you have 100,000 names in a database - thats next to nothing for any cheap 512 vps with mysql+webserver on board getting a couple requests per second (i dont think you got more on portfolio sites) - check you mysql SELECT execution times, no more than 3-5ms even with heavy JOINs used for tags/category/tld filtering... even less for php/webserver to do all its stuff (url rewriting, routing, working with data/vars, templating, sending response)

...while network latency will add at least 1s to deliver html+css+js+images to the browser

ask youself what will happen when you get super fast dedi now? ok, 1ms per request and still 1s (1000ms) to deliver...

 

[Name Trader]

This was a revelation to me. I had incorrectly assumed that to increase the delivery speed of web pages, I basically needed to upgrade my hardware. But it appears that I can get much more speed from the software.

 

[N-A]

Woah now.

If you're used to Apache, nginx is going to give you hell. A LEMP stack will outperform, but you're looking at dedicated managed support $$/hr if you can't configure a site.

Going from LAMP (Apache) to LEMP is what Disney would say, a whole new world.

 

[N-A]

move all js tags to the bottom of the body tag, compress js/css files

Mod pagespeed does this and more.

 

[4pm]

Mod pagespeed does this and more.

would not it better to write quality code once than run one or more apache modules on every page request to cure a crappy template during runtime... what a nice advice, congrats

 

[N-A]

would not it better to write quality code once than run one or more apache modules on every page request to cure a crappy template during runtime... what a nice advice, congrats

Well thank you, but I believe you haven't read what mod_pagespeed does. It turns your "quality code" (which you may not know is a horrendous pile of garbage created by a paid template company), into what Google considers quality code.

It does this once for every possible device (iOS, Android, IE, etc.). Having SSD's accompanied with varnish does the trick quite well. It will build the entire site and cache it into RAM with SSD's as a backup source to read from if there is too much traffic.

Once the main process builds all the files (compressed, static, etc.), which merely takes milliseconds, it is good until there is a page update. Having primarily minisites, there's rarely an issue there.

It will also throw you into the Page Speed of 99/99 when configured correctly, which is a tiny SERP bonus.

 

[4pm]

Well thank you, but I believe you haven't read what mod_pagespeed does. It turns your "quality code" (which you may not know is a horrendous pile of garbage created by a paid template company), into what Google considers quality.

im sorry but you probably misunderstood what i tried to say, which is my fault i admit..

i dont know how google can examine your php/whateverserversidecodeyouuse, what i meant to say was as simple as when your code is a quality one you dont need to install/configure/run/log/test dozens of apache/wp/js modules which only purpose is to correct your crap code... (code is not html sent to browser, its a program written in your server side programming language: php, java, js, python etc)

varnish/caching is as Disney would say a totally different world having nothing to do with putting js in the head vs bottom of the page, if you need to use one more apache module to accomplish that simple task that just says a lot about quality of your code

 

[N-A]

im sorry but you probably misunderstood what i tried to say, which is my fault i admit..

i dont know how google can examine your php/whateverserversidecodeyouuse, what i meant to say was as simple as when your code is a quality one you dont need to install/configure/run/log/test dozens of apache/wp/js modules which only purpose is to correct your crap code... (code is not html sent to browser, its a program written in your server side programming language: php, java, js, python etc)

varnish/caching is as Disney would say a totally different world having nothing to do with putting js in the head vs bottom of the page, if you need to use one more apache module to accomplish that simple task that just says a lot about quality of your code

I think this is a good learning opportunity for everyone to go over what mod_pagespeed accomplishes.

No, it does not fix your server side scripting such as your programming languages of PHP and Python. This can take forever to render the final output that an end user sees. Once the output is rendered, it is cached as a static file server side, never to be processed as multiple threads again as it once was.

However, it does minify your static JS files to be compliant with Page Speed and places them accordingly within the rendered code for both mobile and desktop systems.

The final output are static images in various formats for optimal speed (JPEG, PNG, WEBP, etc.), CSS, JavaScript and html files which are served instead of going through the 30 second loop you caused by having 20 active WordPress plugins and a poor theme. With that being mentioned, it will only happen once, unless the page is changed.

Varnish and caching have nothing to do with putting Javascript in the head or in noscript tags, unless it's deemed necessary to be there for functionality of above the fold content. Otherwise, all CSS and Javascript is automatically put into the footer to load on execution. This can be accomplished by a human using multiple tools such as an online minifier, etc., but will take much longer to implement it correctly to pass in order to get good cookie points with Google.

I could toss up an example page in 1 second and within 3 refreshes, the page will surpass what a human can do in 8 hours if you'd like (as it doesn't hog all resources to do it at once).

 

[techie474]

@David Walker care to tell which site you are using to check page speeds? What is 95/95 or 99/99? Thanks

 

[vivaldi]

gtmetrix.com/ and webpagetest.org/ will serve you well.