LiquidWeb Dedicated 1month Review

I help a not-so-much-tech-savy friend running a busy wordpress website (50-70.000visitors each day) and a bit busy vbulletin forum (100 to 350 users online, 957 record), which is hosted at LiquidWeb since a month.

I got the server with a WHT special, is a AMD X2 5000+ , 4gb ram, dual sata raid1 hardware + third backup disk, cpanel fully managed.

I am not usually in the market for fully managed dedicated servers, because I am quite expert in running unix boxes, but as my free time begins to decrease I had no longer the time to help my friend every day, even for a simple httpd.conf vhost configuration change, so I thought to switch to a control panel fully managed server, so when I am not available he could write to support to have issues solved, without him waiting for me.

I decided to choose LiquidWeb for this project for several reason:

1) Sales person (M.Leven) replied to my pre-sales question very fast, and in a convincing way.
2) Network speed test was good
3) Price was very affordable. I used to pay 260$/mo for a dual core, 2gb ram, 2x160gb sata disks (raid software), unmanaged, no control panel, hosted in the UK.
For 1$ less than the previous price at LiquidWeb I got:
- Slightly slower cpu
+ Double Ram
+ Control Panel license
+ Hardware Raid and an addictional backup disk (3disk total)
+ Fully management.
And the network differences with europe DC are not so big like I thought before.
4) It's a big solid company, they own all their equipment. While this is not a factor by itself (look at some horrible big companies like godad and 1und1), it's a plus if you're already sure of the quality, compared to a smaller/personal company.


So, order process went smoothly, I have got my server in maybe 8 hours after a phone call which welcomed my friend to liquidweb (and verified the identity).
We have been happy to not need to provide a ID scan (as most previous hosters who lost my business did), because we are afraid of identity thefts and I won't ever send my IDs overseas. A phone call is enough (landline phone number is on the white pages anyway so it would easy to match with a name and more secure than requesting a easily-fakeable ID digital copy).

After I got the server I have begun setting everything up, and moving the data using rsync. I enjoyed the PIMS user area where you have a complete breakdown of your server load, bandwidth graphs, reverse ip control and else, with stats updated every minute.

The day after (once the rsync was done) I tried to setup the websites, and this is where I encountered my first (and unique at the moment) problem with LiquidWeb.

Their server "custom engineering" was not so good as I expekted.

Mysql was very slow to run, even at importing files, because was using default settings (very conservative on a 4gb ram server!) so I created a custom my.cnf file and everything went smoothly (I hope they're able to do this on request for customers, since they're a full managed provider).
After I switched DNS, I realized SuPHP/PHP-cgi was causing extremely high loads, from 7.00 to 15.00 ... So I compiled Apache 2.2.8 (now updated to 2.2.9) and PHP5.2.6 dso (mod_php) with my custom options, and cpanel built-in eaccelerator support, now my average load is 0.60-0.70

I understand that if you want a more secure php environment you need to bear a performance tradeoff, but this was too much (10-20x)!

I think that the only liquidweb fault is not stating clearly that if you choose their sever-secure package with su-php / php-cgi, and you run an intensive PHP application, then your performance would be severely degraded.

I hope this is not a way to upsell better hardware to customers, but I am confident it's not the case as most people won't buy a load balancer and a couple of addictional servers for sure, they will simply go away, so it's not in their best interest to provide slow servers.

I think they should provide a choice or at least a complete information if you want an hardened server:
1) Slightly hardened (apf+rkhunter+someotherstuff), but with mod_php and without those very restrictive mod_security rules: best for performances and compatibility.
2) Highly hardened, with php-cgi, strict mod_security, with a warning for the user of the possible performance problem if they run really busy php websites.

Anyway, once I optimized my apache and my websites, I had not any further problem, and my website is running smoothly. So that's the only negative thing i can warn any users about Liquidweb.

Support: Always very responsive, fast and competent answers. Unlike most provider claiming "fully managed" this is really proactive. Once I was upgrading apache and forgot to turn 80port monitoring off. They proactively contacted me in less than 5 minutes to ask what was going on, and to request my (changed) root password if I wanted them to check.
When I reboot my server or shutdown apache for a while I often see their ssh login from a .liquidweb.com box.

Network : Well, the surprising thing is I am really happy with the network. It's surprising because I live in southern europe and I am never happy with most USA locations (why not host in Europe? Because is too expensive indeed, dollar is so cheap nowadays). Liquidweb facility is amongst the fewer ones I have been happy with in several years (the other ones being Ashburn, VA; NAC, NJ and Fortress ITX, NJ), so I hope they keep a premium network this way. I push 3.5mbit/s on average, with 12-20mbit spikes.

So in the end I would raccomend LiquidWeb for the overall price/quality ratio, if you are in the market for a fully managed dedicated server with a control panel.

I hope our experience will keep being good as it is. If this will not happen you will be the first to know ;-) I have almost never been sweet with hosting providers in the past on this forum, but at the moment really I have nothing to complain about LW service, so let's hope it all keeps that way.