I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 43 points –
I abandoned OpenLiteSpeed and went back to good ol’ Nginx
arstechnica.com
  • The author switched from using OpenLiteSpeed to Nginx for hosting a weather forecasting website.
  • The website experiences spikes in traffic during severe weather events, requiring additional preparation.
  • OpenLiteSpeed was initially chosen for its integrated caching and speed, but the complexity and GUI configuration were challenges.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/Uf6wF

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I agree with the author: Only GUI config? WTF!

If a gui does make the configuration harder then it is a bad tool for the job. Your claim is partly, that OLS makes things easier. I think, the struggle with the gui config illustrates that it doesn't. If cannot debug a problem with that gui or do not know what an abstract gui setting does, then it actually pretty bad.

Btw. Nginx configuration can be separated into seperate files and through proxy_pass seperated onto seperate servers.

I agree with the author: Only GUI config? WTF!

First, this isn't even true: https://openlitespeed.org/kb/ols-configuration-examples/

Your claim is partly, that OLS makes things easier.

No. My claim is that OLS / the enterprise version makes things feasible for a specific use-case by providing the compatibility your users are expecting. Also performs very well above Apache.

Btw. Nginx configuration can be separated into seperate files and through proxy_pass seperated onto seperate servers.

I'm not sure if you never used anything before Docker and GitHub hooks, or you may be simply brainwashed by the Docker propaganda - the big cloud providers reconfigured the way development was done in order to justify selling a virtual machine for each website/application.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft never entered the shared hosting market. They took their time to watch and study it and realized that, even though they were able to complete, they wouldn't be profiting that much and the shared business model wasn't compatible with their "we don't provide support" approach to everything. Reconfiguring the development experience and tools by pushing very specific technologies such as Docker, build pipelines and NodeJS created the necessity for virtual machines and then there they were ready to sell their support free and highly profitable solutions.

As I said before, Nginx has a built in way to use wildcards in the include directive and have it pull configs from the website's root directory (like Apache does with .htaccess) however it isn't as performant as a single file.

On this context, why are suggesting splitting into multiple daemons and using proxy_pass that has like 1/10 of the performance of using a wildcard include directive? I'm stating that ONE instance + wildcard include is slower than a single include/file and you're suggesting multiple instances + proxy overhead? Wtf.

Granted, they have config files, but they suggest using the gui for beginners. I don't know. WTF!!

Using multiple nginx servers can increase robustness and ease deployments. I never wrote anywhere that I would use one server for one application. In fact, I do the opposite thanks to nginx. But there is a point when someone wants to split up different types of web applications, for instance some of them need node, the others need php or something entirely different that would conflict with the other two. This way configs can be changed during a deployment in production while others don't need to be touched and unaffected services are not interrupted not even for a very short time.

they have config files, but they suggest using the gui for beginners. I don’t know. WTF!!

They don't because OLS is an entry level product, kind of a technology demo. Their real thing the the LiteSpeed Enterprise that has way more features and is tightly integrated with other solutions such as CloudLinux and WHM/cPanel.

But there is a point when someone wants to split up different types of web applications, for instance some of them need node, the others need php or something entirely different that would conflict with the other two. This way configs can be changed during a deployment in production while others don’t need to be touched and unaffected services are not interrupted not even for a very short time.

Yes there is, but not in this context. I specifically said time and time again that LS was good for shared environments / shared hosting NOT the "singular developer" use case you're describing. The blogger also seems to miss this very important detail.

But well you both may be missing that detail because you never had to deal with shared hosting so you don't see how LS is really the only other solution whenever Apache isn't enough.