Apache alternative

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Apache alternative

Posted by bonjurkes, 05-10-2009, 11:01 AM
Hello, I am looking for an alternative to apache on centos server with cpanel. I guess there is 2 options as litespeed and lighthttpd. It says that LiteSpeed supports cpanel, even tho i don't know how to install it. My friend says lighthttpd will be better solution as its free, but i don't know if it supports cpanel. Litespeed's free editon is free to use but not sure if it will have better performance than Apache as it has enterprise edition which is paid. So not sure if it's good idea to use free version of Litespeed. So what is your recommendation for Apache alternative that cpanel
Posted by HD Fanatic, 05-10-2009, 12:17 PM
Lighttpd isn't compatible with cpanel and not to mention htaccess. Litespeed free edition only allows 150 connections. If you can afford the price, the Enterprise version is the way to go.
Posted by fwaggle, 05-10-2009, 01:11 PM
If you're particular you can't just tune Apache to do the work (honestly it comes out of the box performing like a wet weak, yet with the ability to grind almost any machine into the ground if you put enough modules such as PHP in it), I'd go with litespeed. I like lighttpd and nginx for single purpose dedicated hosts because it's pretty trivial to get them performing great. The problem is that for shared hosting, it's an ugly hack to get nginx in front of cPanel (though the results are worth it) and maintain it... and as another poster said lighttpd doesn't support .htaccess in any way (discounting, again, ugly hacks to massage things from .htaccess into the site configuration for lighttpd - a terrible idea IMHO). That's a showstopper for me in terms of shared hosting. From what I hear, if you have litespeed on the same box as a MySQL server, you can get away with one or two core licenses on a quad core machine. The other cores will then be free for things like MySQL and the whole machine will run great. This is just something I heard, I have absolutely no experience with litespeed.
Posted by CiscoMike, 05-10-2009, 02:18 PM
I don't know about cPanel but I honestly don't see that big of a difference in speed between Apache 2.2 using the worker MPM vs LiteSpeed. There's so much work that goes into make lighttpd play nice with existing modules that IMO it's not worth it. ngix is good for caching but if you want anything outside of static http (i.e. mod_perl, php, etc) then again, it's a whole bunch of hacks. I'm more than happy with Apache 2.2.11. Granted not everything works so happy with worker.c (so I run one server with the prefork.c MPM and believe me, it's much improved over 1.3 and 2.0) but I've tried most major CMS platforms, forum software and some caching (w/ squid reverse proxy) stuff and my CPU, a Xeon 3220 quad, is only marginally higher in usage than it was with the LiteSpeed product.
Posted by fwaggle, 05-11-2009, 12:45 AM
I agree with pretty much everything in this post and our experiences mirror this 100%. Apache can be tuned to perform quite reasonably, and Apache 2.2 + worker MPM will do just about everything you want it to do without the ugly hacks.
Posted by txitcs, 05-11-2009, 06:19 AM
Just out of curiousity, what makes you want to use something other than Apache?
Posted by Jan Guti, 05-11-2009, 11:49 AM
Litespeed enterprise is very easy to install in cpanel (whm), they have a plugin for whm.. if you have a vps then litespeed vps edition is a good option. JG
Posted by eth00, 05-11-2009, 11:55 AM
If you want a drop in replacement litespeed is pretty much your only choice. As others have said there is a LOT you can to do apache to help its performance before going out and trying a commercial product like litespeed. The licenses are costly and you should also look at the cost/benefit of simply getting another server versus what you would (or hope to) gain from it.

Add to Favourites Print this Article