The “new” basement server hosting dalescott.net has been rock solid now for a couple days, so it was time for some load testing.
The server is an HP M7690Y media center with Intel Core2 2.40GHz CPU, 3G of RAM, and connected to the internet through a residential “internet-over-cable” service. I’m using the Apache pre-fork MPM with default configuration (no need to tune for reduced RAM with 3GB).
LoadImpact
I ran LoadImpact’s free account-required 50 user / 12 minute test, and monitored server resources while the test was running.
CPU utilization spiked to maximum, but never ran out of RAM, let alone getting into the cache. Increased CPU performance means that http requests aren’t getting queued, resulting in less demand on RAM compared to a single-core CPU with 512MB RAM.
Here is the test summary. The number of VUs, or virtual users, is on the left Y-axis, the VU Page Load Time is on the right Y-axis, and time is on the X-axis.
WebPageTest
Next, I checked to see if WebPageTest liked the new server any better than the old one.
Compared to previous testing on the 1 CPU 512MB vps, the First Byte Time has gone from an F to a D. However, it’s not clear why Compress Images has gone from a B to a D, the servers should have identical WordPress, Apache and PHP configurations.
ISP Speed Test
Finally, I ran my ISP’s Speed Test.
I ran the test from my laptop on the LAN side of a Hitron DOCSIS (“internet over cable”) interface adapter, but the results should apply equally to the server. The server is also connected to the Hitron, but configured on a pass-through to get its own external IP address via DHCP from my ISP.
Conclusion
Performance from the new server far exceeds that of the previous minimal vps droplet, but that is to be expected given the hardware performance. However, it seems performance on a residential ISP service is much more variable than the vps was. I ran the LoadImpact test several times from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, with worst-case VU load times in tens of seconds occurring after lunch with 40+ VUs. Obviously there will need to be changes again when the site starts drawing significant traffic.