Benchmarking LSCache for Drupal

We’re back with more benchmarks! This time, we’ve put our new LSCache module for Drupal 8 to the test. We compared LiteSpeed Web Server with LSCache, Apache with Varnish (Cachewall), and Apache with System Cache.

Our testing consisted of burst tests and load testing, both of which are explained in more detail below.

The Results

Benchmark

The following chart shows how many requests per second each server + cache solution combination processed during our burst tests. The larger the number, the better.

As you can see, LiteSpeed Web Server + LSCache outperforms both Apache + Varnish and Apache + System Cache.

Load Testing

The following graphs show the CPU and Memory usage during testing for each server + cache solution combination tested. For these measurements, a smaller number is better.

LiteSpeed Web Server + LSCache consumed less memory and CPU than both Apache tests.

Try it Yourself

You can see the specs of our configuration and test environment below. Feel free to run the same benchmarks yourself and verify our results.

These are the commands we used in all tests (Replace example.com/path with the location of your test subjects):

Benchmark

ab -n 10000 -k -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate" -c 100 example.com/path

Load Testing
LSWS+LSCache and Apache+Varnish:

siege -c 100 -r 20 -d 6 example.com/path

Apache+System:

siege -c 100 -r 20 -b example.com/path

NOTE: We used -d 6 instead of -b in two cases because we wanted to ensure that each server+cache was processing roughly the same number of transactions per second. The -d parameter allows you to specify a delay.

Each test was run five times, and the average result was used for our graphs.

Web Server Configuration

Common settings for LSWS and Apache:

• Keep-Alive ON
• PHP 7.1.15
• Zend OPCache ON
• Max Connections 20
• PHP Child 5

Test Environment

Software

Web Server version:

• LSWS: v5.2.5
• Apache: v2.4.6

Control Panel: cPanel: v68.0.36
Operating System: CloudLinux 7.4, all accounts set to unlimited
Server API version:

• LSWS: LSAPI v6.11
• Apache: FPM/FastCGI

Cache version:

• LSWS: LSCache for Drupal v1.0
• Apache: System Cache (Built-in)
• Apache: Varnish v4.1.4 (Cachewall)

Drupal version: 8.5

Hardware

• Web-Server: 1-CPU + 2G Memory
• ab-Server: 4-CPU + 4G Memory
• Network: 4.5G Bandwidth

Conclusion

We hope these results encourage you to give LSCache for Drupal 8 a try!

If you run into any trouble or would like to share some feedback, drop by our forum. We’re here to help!

And don’t forget, our Slack community is a great place to connect other LiteSpeed users. Check out the #drupal-cache channel while you’re there.