suPHP vs FCGI for Shared hosting?

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Posted by skywin, 05-30-2012, 10:07 PM
Hello, in my company we have always used suPHP for all shared hosting servers. But now, I'm seriously considering migrating to FCGI + XCache, the performance advantages especially in popular websites is important and the amount of memory used is secondary for me. Do you see any problems today to use FCGI to host hundreds of sites? Thanks.
Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 05-31-2012, 05:30 AM
Stick to suPHP with Nginx or LiteSpeed ...
Posted by sosys, 05-31-2012, 09:20 AM
i see that fcgi perform faster than suphp, but be careful with the memory.. u shud have plenty free memory before switching to fcgi
Posted by Server Management, 05-31-2012, 09:23 AM
FastCGI uses more memory but less CPU. So if you have plenty of Ram switching to FastCGI could make sense. Heres some more information on the topic: http://boomshadow.net/tech/php-handlers/ Litespeed has its own PHP handler which is better: Last edited by Server Management; 05-31-2012 at 09:28 AM.
Posted by barbus, 05-31-2012, 10:34 AM
If you use suPHP each sites script are being launched with its own account. And it's more secure way. I don't think it's good idea to create hundreds of PHP pools to handle hundreds of sites. So if you don't have any serious performance issues I'd suggest to keep the current scheme with suPHP even considering FastCGI is really faster.
Posted by kbeezie, 05-31-2012, 11:36 AM
How exactly do you do suPHP with nginx? Nginx only speaks fastcgi, as such would only be working with PHP-FPM unless you plan on putting httpd/apache + mod_php behind nginx. And you wouldn't want to use nginx with shared hosting, not feasible to set it up so that each each user stays out of each other's stuff. But for shared hosting, I would say stick to suPHP (i.e.: as the cpanel/whm or other control panel options) Generally speaking with "Shared hosting" you want to lean towards more security than trying to squeeze out as much performance as you can, where as if you're on a VPS of your own, and you're the only user FPM (if using say nginx for example) makes more sense.
Posted by kbeezie, 05-31-2012, 11:38 AM
On that note though, if you went with Litespeed go with the paid version, makes little sense to try to get by with the standard version with only a maximum of 150 concurrent connections allowed.
Posted by Steven, 05-31-2012, 12:13 PM
Except for 1 problem that could be an issue -- you can only host 5 virtual hosts with the standard version.
Posted by Server Management, 05-31-2012, 12:15 PM
Exactly, My toilet paper is likely worth more than the standard version...
Posted by NoSupportLinuxHostin, 05-31-2012, 01:42 PM
FCGI uses more memory but offers better performance because an instance of the PHP engine stays loaded in memory for each site. If you have a small number of sites and the individual sites are very busy, go with FCGI. suPHP uses less memory because it is not leaving a PHP instance in memory for each site all the time. If you have a lot of sites but the individual sites are not very busy, then use suPHP.
Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 05-31-2012, 06:34 PM
I know, that's what I meant. Use Nginxcp - job done.