At the end of 2003 we wanted to switch to new hardware and test alternatives to the current Apache based solution, which in our view is using too much system resources.

We started to benchmark several web server platforms such as Apache (v1, v2) and less visible servers like Boa or khttpd. After benchmarking 10 different web server platforms, LiteSpeed came out on top with the best performance.

LiteSpeed was performing up to 50% better than our Apache solution for dynamic requests, using PHP via FastCGI interface, while at the same time using comparatively much less CPU and RAM resources.

We had some initial reservations about using a closed-source solution. However, after our benchmarks we were no longer concerned and confidently deployed LiteSpeed across our system after several days of testing.

Before our switch to LiteSpeed we had the following server and performance specs:

• Single Dual Intel Xeon 2.4GHz with 2GB RAM
• 10GB traffic per day of dynamic content delivered by PHP
• 1,400,000 requests per day on average
• 3,000,000 requests peaks on some days

Under above specs, Apache consumed between 10 - 20% CPU time at peek times, and needed minimum of 10% CPU even during low peak hours.

LiteSpeed, Standard Edition, on the other hand, needed only 0.3% to 1.5% CPU at peak time with significantly less memory usage and better response times.

About 6 months of deployment with LiteSpeed Standard Edition, we were evaluating the purchase of the Professional Edition license and contacted LiteSpeed support staff for the first time.

We were pleasantly surprised at the fast response time and helpfulness of the overall support. We not only received the help we needed but also received tips on configuration, to further enhance the performance of LiteSpeed.

There have been several updates since we first started using LiteSpeed and with each revision performance has been improved, new features introduced, and even a few features we suggested to the development group, were realized.

The upgrade process of LiteSpeed is extremely fluid. All we had to do is answer some yes or no questions and initiate a graceful restart.

After 7 months, we decided to give LiteSpeed a chance on serving static content which was still been served by Boa and had been for more than 2 years. To this point, LiteSpeed had been deployed only for dynamic content.

Not yet confident of LiteSpeed's ability to serve static content, we replaced Boa with LiteSpeed for several days using Virtual-Host configuration under live traffic. Internally we wondered just how long it would be before the static traffic overwhelmed LiteSpeed. To our surprise, it never happened. LiteSpeed was able to hold its ground.

At that time we had an average of 3,500,000 requests per day, peaking to 4,000,000 in some days, but LiteSpeed took it and smiled at us by serving both the dynamic and the static content without a blink.

Nearly 8 months after switching over to LiteSpeed we have experienced growth with additional several thousand requests added to our daily traffic and LiteSpeed has been able to handle our increasing traffic with no change in performance.

• 2,000,000 dynamic content requests per day (average)
• 4,000,000 static content requests per day (average)
• LiteSpeed still consumes very little CPU, only needing 0.5% to 1.8% at peak

Request response time and everything else are still lightning fast, just like our observed benchmark performance in our initial evaluation of LiteSpeed.

LiteSpeed's excellent support has given us the confidence in its commitment and the raw performance has given us the satisfaction and assurance we desired. We welcome the future with LiteSpeed as our foundation and watching LiteSpeed grow with us.