I was having some trouble the last couple days with my server on 1and1, so I thought this would be a good time to check out my dreamhost account. I usually don't have any trouble with 1and1, and I have used them for over 2 years now. However, with Codexplorer in beta I wanted to see how it performed on anther server - so this was a great chance to do that!
I pointed my domain to the Dreamhost servers and then compared the performance from 1and1, dreamhost, and a WAMP install on my PC. After doing some benchmarks I found that using CodeXplorer, it takes a lot longer for PHP5 pages to be generated on Dreamhost than it should. Is PHP run as a CGI over there? What is causing this huge slow-down?
The following are times for accessing the index of my site:
- 1and1 58ms-100ms
- WAMP 120ms-250ms
- DreamHost 600ms-1500ms
58ms vs 600ms?! Some access times on DreamHost were even toping 20,000ms! Now this could be explained in the way of "well dreamhost has more sites on the server". but I checked and my server "tyche" has only 18 sites on it while my 1and1 server has 274 on it. (obviously my wamp install has only 1).
Well maybe the Dreamhost server is cheaper/worse hardware...
- 1and1 server
- RAM: 4GB 98% used at all times
- CPU: (4) Dual Core Xeon 1.6Ghz chips
- My PC
- RAM: 1GB PC800
- CPU: athlon 64 X2 3600 (45w)
- Dreamhost
- RAM: 4GB 98% used
- CPU: (2) Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 1218 HE (2.6Ghz)
- Load: up 5 days, 7 users, load average: 49.07, 120.73, 108.54
As you can see, 1and1 and Dreamhost are about the same as far as speed. Sure 4 CPU's are better, but the overall clock rate is about equal. Plus, the 1and1 server has 15x more sites on it! So what is the deal? Why my PC kicking a full blown server so bad?
Feedback and Comments
Maby you're PC's just kicking it? :-P
My index-file has a rendering-time of 0.05sec-0.8sec on that server, on my pc it's about normally below 0.07. That's just about the same then... My PC's kicking it too! :-P