WP Moar Speed (WordPress on Bare-Metal)

Last Updated on November 28, 2024 EST by Jordan

WP Moar Speed Project Goals

The goal of this project is to take various bare metal servers of different configurations and test them using our testing methodologies. We also want to see what providers are using for hardware, specifically CPU, motherboards, memory and storage. So you’ll see a little bit of a deep dive into this.

Do CPU’s Matter to WordPress Workloads?

The CPU does matter to WordPress. When purchasing a server VPS or Baremetal, you could be receiving a CPU from 2015 or a CPU from 2021, both of which will perform differently. Vultr for instance has multiple instance types with different processors from different years.

Vultr Plans and Processors – Managing WP

managingwp.io

A bunch of people got together including myself and looked at bare metal processors. We did some testing and WP Moar Speed was born.

Intel vs AMD does it matter?

Does WordPress care if you’re using an Intel or AMD CPU? Does it matter when using a VPS or Baremetal instance?

It’s important to know what processor is backing your WordPress workload, whether it’s a VPS or Baremetal instance.

An Intel CPU vs an AMD CPU from the same year, aren’t created equal. Both companies produce different server processors to match different workloads. There are two workloads that stand out, a multithreaded workload that requires a high core count lower frequency CPU and a single threaded workload that requires a low core count higher frequency CPU.

WordPress and PHP falls into the single threaded workload category.

What does High Frequency Mean? Does it Matter to WordPress Workloads?

When discussing CPUs, the term ‘high frequency’ refers to the CPU’s clock speed, which is measured in gigahertz (GHz). The clock speed indicates the number of cycles a CPU can execute per second, directly impacting its processing speed. A higher clock speed, means a higher frequency and in-turn means more tasks can be completed. Even as I’m writing this High Frequency is a strange term, but is commonly used as a buzz word versus high clock speed.

You must also understand that a 2.9GHz processor from 2015 won’t perform the same as a 2.9GHz processor from 2022. While clock speed is an important factor, it doesn’t solely determine how quickly a CPU will perform a task. Advances in architecture, efficiency, and additional features like cache size, core count, and instruction set improvements over time mean that a newer processor can be significantly faster and more capable even at the same clock speed.

CPU Instruction Sets? What are those?

There are several critical instruction sets within a processor that software can leverage to enhance efficiency in completing tasks. For example, MySQL and PHP may rely on specific processor instructions to execute tasks more quickly. If a processor lacks a particular instruction set, it may have to use alternative instructions, potentially slowing down the process.

For instance, when performing encryption tasks, think SSL encryption. Modern CPUs often utilize instruction sets like AES-NI (Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions) to accelerate encryption and decryption processes. If a processor lacks the AES-NI instruction set, it may need to use a less optimized method, which can significantly slow down the encryption operation. There might be other requests behind the encryption request waiting to be executed, and those will have to wait in queue.

So overall, processors matter 😉

Contributors and Sponsors

Servers and Test Data

Here’s a Google Sheet of all the servers that we’ve tested.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tAP-mDUkdY_Pgm5A5RxS5VjhSY3goWagK7rNfL6lu1Q/

WP Moar Speed Airtables

The following Air Tables provide a bunch of data about the current processors that are available through the various bare-metal providers out there.

Here is an example.

The SC and MT Columns

There are two columns that are important for when choosing a bare-metal server. That’s the SC and MT columns, SC = Single Core and MT = Multithread, the scores are from the site PassMark Software – CPU Benchmark Charts

VPS CPU Performance by Provider (Outdated)

Unfortunately I haven’t kept the VPS Air Table updated 🙁

The following Airtable is a list of bare metal CPUs with some basic benchmark information as well as associated providers that offer said CPU.

Bare Metal CPU Performance by Provider

The following Airtable is a list of bare metal CPUs with some basic benchmark information as well as associated providers that offer said CPU.

Articles

Common Questions about Bare-Metal

1 – When using Hetzner, will the two drives be setup with RAID-1?

With Hetzner, you have to use their installimage cli command to install your operating system Here’s a quick video

Whatever OS you choose, for instance if you want Ubuntu 22, will setup your drives in a software RAID-1 automatically. You can also change this, and the partition scheme with the installimage clommand

2 – Will upgrading my RAM from 16GB to 64GB improve my website performance? Any tips on how to use the extra memory efficiently?

Your WordPress sites will require the amount of ram they require. You can’t force a WordPress site to use more. The memory is used as follows

• PHP + PHP Opcache
• MySQL Database Buffer(Keep the database in memory versus Disk)
• Redis Object Cache
• Redis Page Cache (If you use Redis, I suggest using FastCGI)

You’ll have plenty of memory per thread (threads are cores + hyperthreading cores). The math is 64GB / 12 Threads = 5.3GB per thread, so you’re in the area of 1 thread per 4GB of memory.

If you want to make better use of the server, you can use Proxmox to virtualize the hardware, and become your own VPS provider. The setup of this is more complicated, but once it’s set up, it’s pretty bulletproof. You can split up the servers resources as needed. Just know you need to keep at least 4GB for the Proxmox Hypervisor and other system tasks.

3 – If bare-metal cores are superior to shared cores on a VPS, does this mean a bare-metal server with a higher clock rate would also improve performance?

Yes, most VPS providers aren’t using the latest processors, AWS and GCP are really the only ones. There are smaller providers that do, like Mechanic Web.

I made a bunch of Air Tables of the processors that bare-metal providers have available, scroll up 🙂 You can see them at WP Moar Speed (WordPress on Bare-Metal) – Managing WP The score is based on PassMark Software – CPU Benchmark Charts

A Vultr instance can get anywhere from 1800-2200, where SC scores and the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 hovers around 3378. Just under double.

4 – Do I need to setup a firewall for my bare-metal server?

Not really, it would be the same as your current VPS instances. If you had a firewall before, do the same with bare-metal.

5 – What is Proxmox?

I give to you, the Proxmox Pizza. Enjoy

What else should I be aware of with Bare-Metal

You should be concerned about the following.

Setup a cheap VPS as a failover sync, so GridPane copies the data over every 6 hours.

• Disk Failures
  • Monitoring the failures.
  • Monitor the software raid.
• Hardware Replacement
  • If there is a hardware failure, your server might go down.
  • You might be able to schedule a time to replace your disks, which might be a couple of hours.
  • If hardware fails and your server is down, it might that up to 12 hours for Hetzner to replace the hardware.
• Backups
  • There are no snapshots like at Vultr.
  • You would need to restore site by site, or figure out how to do a full system snapshot.
  • Veam might work for you.
  • Setup a cheap VPS as a failover sync, so GridPane copies the data over every 6 hours.
  • With Proxmox you can take snapshots and ship them to the Hetzner box storage you get for free.