Trying LiteSpeed, some questions, issues

[dotpro]

Hi,

I decided to install and trial version on my server to see if it helps with performance. Here are server details and what I've done so far:

Server
CPU: Dual Processor Quad Core Xeon 5520 - 2.26GHz (Nehalem) - 2 x 8MB cache w/HT
Memory: 12GB ram
hard drive type/configuration: 4x 147GB SAS 15k in RAID-10, Adaptec 5405 Card
Linux: CentOS 5.4 64bit
Webserver: Apache/2.2.14 (now its LiteSpeed 4.1)
PHP version: PHP 5.2.9
MySQL version: 5.0.85-community

Applications in use
Wordpress, vBulletin and PhotoPost

Early last year, I started using CDN along with W3 Total Cache... all the compression and gzipped crap looks good when you see the sourcecode and on pagespeed but it didn't help. Maybe, it did help a little but over all, the wordpress home page still loads slow and under Google Webmaster > site performance > site still takes 5-7 seconds to load...

The vBulletin side wasn't really a concern before the move as it was running fine with xcache+vbSEO.

I installed LiteSpeed using the cpanel/whm plugin last week and disabled xCache since in php.ini file. vBulletin performance is extremely good, everything is fast for 4 or 5 vBulletin forums on same server. The wordpress performance is bit of a worry for me. The internal (wp) pages load okay but homepage/index page takes sometime (same as before). I do not see any improvement in that even with W3 Total Cache. I have the cache settings to Disk:enhanced as xCache was disabled.

I am not seeing any improvement either on google webmaster tools site load times and other tools around the net for homepage AFTER installing LiteSpeed... one site moved from 5-6 seconds to 18 seconds!!!!!

I also tried basic cache settings for LS and It doesn't seem to work (posted in that thread here).

I am not sure what I'm missing with the configuration?

Do I need to change settings in httpd.conf or php.ini for optimal performance?

Do I need to manually create virtual hosts in LS as I don't see them populated when looking under Virtual Hosts link in LS?

Should "out of the box" settings work, what can be changed safely without breaking stuff?

Is there a "template" for using LS with wordpress and/or Wordpress+cache plugins?

Hope to get some feedback and answers!

I am not linux admin type of guy by profession (microsoft/cisco/vmware is my area) but I can walk around it, do what I can learn and learn what I can do.

Thanks

[NiteWave]

if there are only a few virtual hosts on your server, you can run php as nobody for better performance. and you can still enable xcache.

"W3 Total Cache" should work, if not, try wp supercache. the page load should be quite fast. 18 seconds absolutely slow.

[dotpro]

Php is running as nobody.

I'm trying wp super cache now, it does improve performance a lot but I miss the Total Cache's minify settings. I guess I will have to work around that.

Another issue I noticed is that, LS restarts a lot, what is the cause for that? I see many threads on the issue but no real explanation as to why it does that.

[NiteWave]

restarting many times, usually happen on share-hosting environment, when add/remove a domain, log truncate etc may cause a restart, especially there may be thousands of virtual hosts on a physical server. it's not litespeed specific issue. in fact, litespeed may restart less comparing with apache in this case.

for a server only has a few virtual hosts, it's not rare no restart for a few days or a few weeks --- it mainly depends on the web apps running on these vhosts.

[dotpro]

I've had this particular server for over 2 years, before that I've switched servers which i used for same websites (not in hosting business) and never had an issue where apache would just restart on its own every 60-120 minutes.

I have only few websites hosted on this server and I not adding domains/subdomains all the time (in fact, haven't added one in past 30 days).

As far as vHosts, I do not see any in the Virtual Hosts section of the admin console. Does it matter?

I've setup cache but it doesn't appear to be working either. In addition to making changes in LS, are there other files that need to be changed?

[dotpro]

My server doesn't have the mod_cache module installed. Can I rebuild apache while LS is running?