Issue Dear Plesk team, please speed up Plesk

[Tomek]

Hi Plesk team,

I know that speed is not a feature that people often ask.

But remember please, that poor performance has already killed many amazing applications.

It also would be nice to see a blog post on how to improve Plesk speed.

Best wishes,
Tomasz

PS
@IgorG, @Sergey L please come here.

 

[IgorG]

blog post on how to improve Plesk speed.

Plesk speed or hosted websites speed?
As far as I remember there were many posts on Plesk blog about improvements for WordPress speed, for example.

 

[Tomek]

Plesk speed or hosted websites speed?
As far as I remember there were many posts on Plesk blog about improvements for WordPress speed, for example.

Plesk speed

 

[IgorG]

Well, what the problem with Plesk UI speed? Could you please provide more details? Sorry, but common request like "Please, Improve speed!" is really not enough. Let's talk more professionally

 

[Tomek]

Hi Igor,
You are absolutely right. I'm really sorry for that.

Here, more details with context.

I'm a content marketer, a millennial and I like things here and now

I now tests Plesk in the following environment:
Ovh Cloud VPS (Centos 7)
Web admin version 17.5.3
I'm using the default configuration but without BIND, Webmail services, IMAP / POP3 servers.

When I do things on Plesk (I log in and do something in Websites & Domains, Apache & nginx Settings, App manager, File Manager, etc.), I have the feeling that not everything works fast.

The exception is the WordPress Toolkit, which works fast. And I like it very much. But for now I do not have too much wordpress installation in this test environment.

But I can be wrong here and maybe the Plesk is working very fast. Maybe it's just my feelings that do not reflect reality. Or maybe it's something with my configuration. If Yes, I'm sorry for the confusion.

In future I will make more accurate tests and compare Plesk with other panels. Then I can give you more specific feedback.

I would like to ask one more question. Is "Speed" is a part of Plesk core development strategy?

 

[virtubox]

Hi Igor,
You are absolutely right. I'm really sorry for that.

Here, more details with context.

I'm a content marketer, a millennial and I like things here and now

I now tests Plesk in the following environment:
Ovh Cloud VPS
Web admin version
I'm using the default configuration but without BIND, Webmail services, IMAP / POP3 servers.

When I do things on Plesk (I log in and do something in Websites & Domains, Apache & nginx Settings, App manager, File Manager, etc.), I have the feeling that not everything works fast.

The exception is the WordPress Toolkit, which works fast. And I like it very much. But for now I do not have too much wordpress installation in this test environment.

But I can be wrong here and maybe the Plesk is working very fast. Maybe it's just my feelings that do not reflect reality. Or maybe it's something with my configuration. If Yes, I'm sorry for the confusion.

In future I will make more accurate tests and compare Plesk with other panels. Then I can give you more specific feedback.

I would like to ask one more question. Is "Speed" is a part of Plesk core development strategy?

Hello @Tomek ,
at first if you want to use OVH VPS, choose a VPS SSD because VPS Cloud are known to be slow due to their storage (Ceph storage based on SAS disk + NVMe SSD cache).
Then make sure to perform a clean install of Plesk on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or Centos 7. OVH templates are really outdated.

 

[Tomek]

Hello @Tomek ,
at first if you want to use OVH VPS, choose a VPS SSD because VPS Cloud are known to be slow due to their storage (Ceph storage based on SAS disk + NVMe SSD cache).
Then make sure to perform a clean install of Plesk on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or Centos 7. OVH templates are really outdated.

Hello virtubox,

thank you for the tips

Yes, OVH templates are definitely outdated. At this moment I use Plesk on a clean installation of Centos 7.

Does OVH Public Cloud also has a problem with slow storage?

 

[virtubox]

Hello virtubox,

thank you for the tips

Yes, OVH templates are definitely outdated. At this moment I use Plesk on a clean installation of Centos 7.

Does OVH Public Cloud also has a problem with slow storage?

No, OVH Public cloud use SSD local storage at the moment, like the VPS SSD. There were too many issues in the past with the Ceph storage, and OVH will probably remove it in all offers definitively soon.

 

[trialotto]

Hello virtubox,

thank you for the tips

Yes, OVH templates are definitely outdated. At this moment I use Plesk on a clean installation of Centos 7.

Does OVH Public Cloud also has a problem with slow storage?

@Tomek,

OVH issues are often not related to the hardware infrastructure in place, in most cases there is some "odd" reason or root cause of the problem.

In this case, "odd" means: unexpected, beyond all belief.

For instance, a long time ago, OVH networks (for servers and cloud) went down or worked very slowly as a result of a DDoS, even though they claimed to have protection.

Another example, the OVH cloud (and most root servers too) are based upon OpenStack, with OpenStack being the "problem child" in the class of all virtualization technologies and a "very slow learning child": a lot of systematic vulnerabilities and/or required changes are not patched, even though some problems exist for many years.

In essence, I am not convinced by OVH offers: you never know what you will get.

I would strongly recommend to forget about OVH and simply start looking at the more mature solutions, like Amazon or Azure cloud.

Personally, I would recommend that you use Azure cloud.

Hope the above helps a bit.

Regards.......

 

[Tomek]

I do not think that OVH is a problem here (Wordpress applications on this test environment works very fast).

But in the future - when the new Plesk come out- I will do more accurate tests on OVH Public Cloud and on Google Cloud for sure. I will also check how Plesk is doing, compared to other panels.

(As I mentioned, I can be wrong and Plesk maybe is very fast).

For now it would be nice to know if "Speed" is part of the Plesk core development strategy?

PS
I think the topic of OpenStack vs Azure, AWS, Google Cloud is a topic for a separate thread

 

[danami]

@Tomek you are correct that OVH isn't the issue. With Plesk 17.8 the PHP version that Plesk uses has been upgraded from PHP 5.6 to PHP Version 7.1.8 so the Plesk panel performs much better now

 

[virtubox]

@Tomek you are correct that OVH isn't the issue. With Plesk 17.8 the PHP version that Plesk uses has been upgraded from PHP 5.6 to PHP Version 7.1.8 so the Plesk panel performs much better now

@Tomek,

OVH issues are often not related to the hardware infrastructure in place, in most cases there is some "odd" reason or root cause of the problem.

In this case, "odd" means: unexpected, beyond all belief.

For instance, a long time ago, OVH networks (for servers and cloud) went down or worked very slowly as a result of a DDoS, even though they claimed to have protection.

Another example, the OVH cloud (and most root servers too) are based upon OpenStack, with OpenStack being the "problem child" in the class of all virtualization technologies and a "very slow learning child": a lot of systematic vulnerabilities and/or required changes are not patched, even though some problems exist for many years.

In essence, I am not convinced by OVH offers: you never know what you will get.

I would strongly recommend to forget about OVH and simply start looking at the more mature solutions, like Amazon or Azure cloud.

Personally, I would recommend that you use Azure cloud.

Hope the above helps a bit.

Regards.......

Even if there was a big network issues two weeks ago with OVH, I haven't noticed any network issues during the last 5 years with them.

OVH is working very hard on their Cloud hosting offers when they do a better job with their dedicated servers.

I understand Cloud hosting is very popular nowadays, but there is a huge difference between public cloud instances and dedicated servers performances . The cheapest public cloud instance from OVH cost around $25/mo, when you can get a dedicated servers with SSD for $50/mo on soyoustart and you can host several VPS on it with an hypervisor like Proxmox VE or VMware ESXI.

I have tried almost all public cloud providers (AWS, Google Compute Engine, OVH) and their offers are just too expensive compare to dedicated servers prices.
Especially for Plesk , because I do not think there are a lot of company which deploy hundred of Plesk servers daily . Public cloud is a useful solutions for any infrastructure which require to be scaled on demand to handle high-traffic or for a short time period. When you install Plesk to host your websites or customers, you are not going to delete it soon, and there is no way to use load-balancing solution easily with Plesk at the moment.

 

[trialotto]

@Tomek you are correct that OVH isn't the issue. With Plesk 17.8 the PHP version that Plesk uses has been upgraded from PHP 5.6 to PHP Version 7.1.8 so the Plesk panel performs much better now

In addition to the PHP version upgrade, many other improvements were introduced.

In general, "the new performance" has more to do with those other improvements in later Plesk (Onyx) versions: it is not limited to Plesk 17.8 alone.

 

[trialotto]

I do not think that OVH is a problem here (Wordpress applications on this test environment works very fast).

But in the future - when the new Plesk come out- I will do more accurate tests on OVH Public Cloud and on Google Cloud for sure. I will also check how Plesk is doing, compared to other panels.

(As I mentioned, I can be wrong and Plesk maybe is very fast).

For now it would be nice to know if "Speed" is part of the Plesk core development strategy?

PS
I think the topic of OpenStack vs Azure, AWS, Google Cloud is a topic for a separate thread

@Tomek,

In essence, this is becoming a particularly interesting topic thread.

However, the entire context is a little bit skewed and odd: one can not "simply talk about Plesk speed" or just "simply test Plesk speed".

You have to be aware of one fact: Plesk is fast.

But the relevant question is: how fast?!??

And there a problem occurs:

a) one cannot compare "Plesk speed" with other hosting panels as a benchmark: each hosting panel has it's own advantages and configuration, causing specific performance in specific areas, with those areas often not being comparable between hosting panels, (and)

b) one cannot compare "Plesk speed" with exactly identical Plesk instances on exactly identical cloud servers as a benchmark: all clouds are inherently different and offer different performance, causing Plesk to perform differently across various clouds, (and)

c) one cannot compare "Plesk speed" with exactly identical Plesk instances on different OSes as a benchmark: all OSes behave differently, causing Plesk to perform differently across various OSes,

and so on.

What I am saying is simply this: only the infrastructure, on which the Plesk instance runs, determines the actual performance of Plesk.

Sure, you can test and compare a lot, but the only thing you are ending up with is a preference for a specific infrastructure (network, OS, size of resources etc.).


In my humble opinion, one should not worry about Plesk's performance: it is good, even though some caveats still exist after many years (only visible for insiders).

The major advantage of Plesk is the ease of use AND especially the design infrastructure: it is intended as a "big wrapper" of most common and standard OS tools.


Regards.....

PS A small note: if you really want to test Plesk's performance, just create an Azure account, install Plesk on an Azure VM and switch between VM sizes and types (each of those switches only takes a couple of minutes at most): you will see that it actually does not matter, Plesk performance is steady across platforms (Linux/Windows), OS (like Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS), the amount of resources assigned (RAM, SSD or other disks), at least steady to a very large degree.

PS2 A small tip: if you really want to think about Plesk's performance, think about "everything relevant" AND forget about "all that people say". Consider for example the common recommendation to use SSD disks on a VPS with a 1 Gbit network backbone. Well, you are paying for the SSD disks (while most of the Plesk related data does not really require or benefit by SSD disks) and you are paying for a huge backbone (while most common cloud based servers are throttled to a limit far less than 1Gbit). Another example is the fact that cloud based AND hosting provider based servers are not unlimited in the amount of throughput: buying a specific server with a limited throughput will also limit the performance of your Plesk instance and the domains hosted with Plesk (and most people forget about this and simply buy the latest and best, even though the excess of resources can or will never be used).

PS3 A small recommendation: if you really want to improve Plesk's performance, just reconsider parts of the design infrastructure of Plesk. For instance, the smallest Azure VM with HDD drives still contains a SSD based ephemeral disk for the OS and temporary files, implying that one can link multiple small VMs (which cost € 13 appr. per month) to a file share (which is SSD based) that contains all the domain data, hence considerably improving the overall performance of Plesk. This is only an illustration, the performance can become even better when using internal networks, separate database clusters, Redis clusters and so on and so on. Quit complex, but this is the method of improving the actual performance of Plesk: just removing common bottlenecks by simplying redesigning the infrastructure setup.

 

[trialotto]

@virtubox

In the light of this very interesting topic thread, I wanted to respond to your latest post.

You stated

I understand Cloud hosting is very popular nowadays, but there is a huge difference between public cloud instances and dedicated servers performances . The cheapest public cloud instance from OVH cost around $25/mo, when you can get a dedicated servers with SSD for $50/mo on soyoustart and you can host several VPS on it with an hypervisor like Proxmox VE or VMware ESXI.

and my response is: why re-invent the wheel by creating your own "cloud" without all benefits of externally maintained cloud infrastructure AND creating a SPOF in the form of a host system that runs multiple small "VPSes" (read: if the host goes down, even in the case of maintenance, all VPS go down)???

I do agree that there is a price to pay for any cloud service, but you are paying for something comfortable: the cloud service provider does a lot for you.

Furthermore, you stated

I have tried almost all public cloud providers (AWS, Google Compute Engine, OVH) and their offers are just too expensive compare to dedicated servers prices.
Especially for Plesk , because I do not think there are a lot of company which deploy hundred of Plesk servers daily . Public cloud is a useful solutions for any infrastructure which require to be scaled on demand to handle high-traffic or for a short time period. When you install Plesk to host your websites or customers, you are not going to delete it soon, and there is no way to use load-balancing solution easily with Plesk at the moment.

and I can say the following.

Most of the cloud services are not expensive at all, they only become expensive when using an expensive setup of the hosting infrastructure.

Any dedicated server is deliverd at a fixed price, irregardless whether you use the "resources" or not.

Any cloud based Plesk service can be split up in a "always required" and "static" components, with the ability to host "static" components in a pay-as-you-go environment.

For example, one can reduce cloud expenses by simply migrating a whole lof of data to cloud storage and put an Nginx instance in front of it: all costs are on the basis of pay-as-you-go (and some traffic costs), with the exception of the Nginx instance (which can run on the smallest VM/VPS imaginable or even a cheap local VPS!).

And yes, there are companies who deploy a lot of Plesk servers.

The thing is that those companies will minimize the number of Plesk instances by setting up a mature and complex hosting and network infrastructure.

And no, public cloud is not useful for Plesk based sites that require to be scaled.

In fact, there are two proper solutions for "burst traffic" on sites: (on the one hand) do not use Plesk at all (the most common solution) and (on the other hand) use mirrored Plesk instance that serve the domain behind a separate load-balancer.

Regards........

 

[Tomek]

@Tomek you are correct that OVH isn't the issue. With Plesk 17.8 the PHP version that Plesk uses has been upgraded from PHP 5.6 to PHP Version 7.1.8 so the Plesk panel performs much better now

Oh yes, I was thinking about which php is used. It's good to know that the new Plesk is using the new version of PHP. Thanks You very much danami!

For now it would be nice to know if "Speed" is part of the Plesk core development strategy?

Hi @IgorG,

is there any chance to see the answer to this question?

I know that I may not like the answer.

But if I see that Plesk staff answers on difficult questions, then I do not feel ignored.

Then I feel that we are all in one team and we play together to win

 

[IgorG]

For now it would be nice to know if "Speed" is part of the Plesk core development strategy?

Yes, it is really part of Plesk Core development team responsibility.
Regarding Plesk interface speed I would like to recommend you to compare speed on 17.5 and 17.8 where php7 is used instead of php5, for example
In addition, measuring the speed of the interface is one of the regular metrics of this Core Team.

 

[Tomek]

I love this answer. Thanks Igor

 

[trialotto]

I love this answer. Thanks Igor

@Tomek,

With all due respect, all kinds of questions have been answered and you still have no concrete answer.

A better and faster PHP version in the next version, which is not a stable release yet, that is not a concrete answer.

A number of other types of answers that can ascertain that Plesk is sufficiently fast enough, they all have been provided........ but still you have questions about "speed".

There is one simple answer to your question about speed: if you think Plesk is not fast enough, ask yourself whether you are the one asking the right questions.

@IgorG is stating the obvious: Plesk has been improved for many years now and Plesk is the best in the business.

The real fact here is that most people are not able to distinguish facts from alleged facts.

For instance, if some domains are slow, people blame Plesk or Plesk Team, even though Apache is the root cause of the problem.

Again, with all due respect, if you think Plesk is fast enough.........just use it, otherwise do not.

And always remember that hosting providers cannot allow themselves to think-out-of-the-box: optimal hosting solutions are very hard work and not just mindlessly implementing some hosting panel, some trick or script found online, some advice from god knows who......

............you should simply think: let's buy the right toolbox (PLESK!) and build the best solution for your specific goals and objectives.

I might sound a bit annoyed ......... and actually I am.

I have never seen a topic thread like this, which topic thread essentially is discussing something barely relevant: it is not the toolbox, but the carpenter that makes things.

A whole discussion about "speed of Plesk" while forgetting to think about who uses Plesk and the ability of that person?

Well, that is an accident going to happen...........

Regards........

 

[IgorG]

Related topic on well-known pro-cPanel forum - Plesk vs Cpanel Speed | Web Hosting Talk