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Centos 7 vs Centos 8 - What is your experience as a hoster?
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Centos 7 vs Centos 8 - What is your experience as a hoster?

Hi,

Can anyone share some experience about performance or ressource usage from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8 ?
I am asking because i was using CL7 before and now switched to CL8 (providing WP hosting solutions - "shared hosting server") - All settings are same regarding mariadb, kernel tuning etc - But somehow the CL8 is taking more ressources than CL7 - The performance is also degraded due to higer load/ressource usage (esspecially CPU) - Now i am aware that 2 setups arent 100% same and you cannot blame the main version for it and circumstances must also be 100% same (which is not that easy when things are in production), but i still have my doughts on the CL8/CentOS8

I am digging into it for time being, but could be nice if there are other people who can either confirm or reject my theory based on some real experience.

FYI - my stack:

Bare-metal Dell server
CL8
DirectAdmin
Litespeed

(it is though not a question about configuration)

Thanks!

Comments

  • MechanicWebMechanicWeb Member, Patron Provider

    It is only natural that later versions of a software will require more resources. They are needed to facilitate new features.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    It requires more horsepower because it’s “enterprise”.

    Thanked by 1webcraft
  • JamesFJamesF Member, Host Rep

    So is 7 better for now??

  • PineappleBoxPineappleBox Member
    edited June 2020

    @experttechit said: So is 7 better for now??

    Not quite. If all you need is low resource consumption, 7 will obviously be better. However, CentOS 8 will provide more recent updates, security patches, and software. on CentOS 8, you'll also get more support for recent software. They're both perfectly good OS's, but it really depends on your use-case for the OS.

  • It also depends on if your going to use a control panel. Currently cpanel does not support Centos 8. DirectAdmin supports Centos 8

    Thanked by 1RedSox
  • JamesFJamesF Member, Host Rep

    CentOS-7 won't reach End of Life until June 2024 = a few years yet....

  • I will setup a identical dedi server with CentOS 7/CL7 and do some benchmarks.
    I can't see or feel any performance advantage with CentOS8/CL8 - it is opposite in my case.

  • MechanicWebMechanicWeb Member, Patron Provider

    I am yet to use CentOS 8 in a production environment. All the software need to be more polished/bug free on CentOS 8.

    Thanked by 1lowprofile
  • vivithemagevivithemage Member, Host Rep

    I do wish CentOS8 kept the minimal install that 6 and 7 had. Then we can add what we like. If I recall a minimal CentOS8 is liek 2GB installed or so?

  • JustVPSJustVPS Member, Host Rep

    CentOS 8 can be installed on servers with 1GB of RAM, and now supports 4GB of memory. The system is more stable, but some aspects of configuration and settings differ from the 7th version.

  • rcxbrcxb Member

    CentOS8 does install quite a bit more junk by default. The "tuned" stuff always running, and "cockpit" annoyances come to mind. In the case of a web site, I suppose it could be the stronger crypto defaults requiring more CPU time per visitor. Using CentOS8 for a few things, but nothing that was right on the edge of tipping over, where I'd notice minor performance differences. No substitute for looking around on the server, profiling performance and tracking things down.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @JustVPS said:
    CentOS 8 can be installed on servers with 1GB of RAM, and now supports 4GB of memory. The system is more stable, but some aspects of configuration and settings differ from the 7th version.

    CentOS supported way more than 4GB of memory many versions sgo.

    Thanked by 1imok
  • Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

  • @raindog308 said:

    @JustVPS said:
    CentOS 8 can be installed on servers with 1GB of RAM, and now supports 4GB of memory. The system is more stable, but some aspects of configuration and settings differ from the 7th version.

    CentOS supported way more than 4GB of memory many versions sgo.

    Think he meant "recommends", not "supports".

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    I git clone a directory full of setup scripts, cd to it, and type ./setup

    Thanked by 2TimboJones plumberg
  • @raindog308 said:

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    I git clone a directory full of setup scripts, cd to it, and type ./setup

    Good idea. Does the execute bit get stored in git for the setup script? Another command would be a deal breaker. In fact, the whole changing directory is redundant work and I'll do away with that. ;)

    Thanked by 1raindog308
  • aj_potcaj_potc Member
    edited June 2020

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    It may be more than you need, but you should look into config management software such as Ansible, which can do this and more.

    After spending a little time learning it, I now have some nice playbooks that handle the setup and configuration of packages on new systems.

    Thanked by 2raindog308 imok
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran
    edited June 2020

    Ansible is prem!

  • JustVPSJustVPS Member, Host Rep

    @TimboJones said: Think he meant "recommends", not "supports".

    Exactly) In general, more memory is needed, especially for Linux systems. For a small project, 2GB is enough for CentOS 8, but with a stretch.

  • @aj_potc said:

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    It may be more than you need, but you should look into config management software such as Ansible, which can do this and more.

    After spending a little time learning it, I now have some nice playbooks that handle the setup and configuration of packages on new systems.

    I did years ago when Cloud at Cost had a working API that I could use to reboot them when their storage went awol. After they killed the API, it wasn't worth the effort for the few times I'd need it.

  • EHRAEHRA Member

    I'm not a webhost, but when I switched from Centos 7 to Centos 8 I also noticed a higher load on the server. I currently use Debian 10.

  • @raindog308 said:

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    I git clone a directory full of setup scripts, cd to it, and type ./setup

    Would you mind sharing the git repo?

  • LittleCreekLittleCreek Member, Patron Provider

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    I do. Just copy and paste and wait until it's done. Then install DirectAdmin.

    I looked at CentOS 8 once and I believe you can still install Minimal even though you have to download the full version or you can use the boot iso. You can create your own private repository on your own network to speed things up.

  • vivithemagevivithemage Member, Host Rep

    @LittleCreek said:

    @TimboJones said:
    Doesn't everyone just keep a bunch of apt/yum/dnf commands in a text file of all the apps to remove and install on a fresh server anyway?

    I do. Just copy and paste and wait until it's done. Then install DirectAdmin.

    I looked at CentOS 8 once and I believe you can still install Minimal even though you have to download the full version or you can use the boot iso. You can create your own private repository on your own network to speed things up.

    Yeah, you do. But you can always get the netinstall, and do a minimal, but requires internet of course.

  • whlwhl Member

    How are those using Centos 7 dealing with the lack of TLS 1.3 in apache? I want to stay with 7 but it seems there is no way to get TLS 1.3 which all clients need now due to web browsers complaining if not offered.

  • eva2000eva2000 Veteran

    @whl said: How are those using Centos 7 dealing with the lack of TLS 1.3 in apache? I want to stay with 7 but it seems there is no way to get TLS 1.3 which all clients need now due to web browsers complaining if not offered.

    Simple don't use CentOS 7 native Apache YUM package and roll your own Apache RPMs against OpenSSL 1.1.1 or own Nginx against OpenSSL 1.1.1. I build my own Apache OpenSSL 1.1.1 TLSv1.3 supported RPMs in the past. But mainly, I've been using Nginx with TLSv1.3 since it came out as my Nginx builds support both OpenSSL 1.1.1 and Google BoringSSL offered TLSv1.3 :) Already been playing with Cloudflare's Nginx HTTP/3 Quiche patch and soon official Nginx's preview HTTP/3 branch to prepare for Nginx HTTP/3 :)

    Just checked and I've been using Nginx with TLSv1.3 support since March 2017 so more than 3+ yrs on CentOS 7 ^_^

    @lowprofile said: Can anyone share some experience about performance or ressource usage from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8 ?

    I'm still working through my Centmin Mod's CentOS 8 dev/compatibility work https://community.centminmod.com/threads/centmin-mod-centos-8-compatibility-worklog.18372/ but the very nature of CentOS 8 and Redhat 8's min/recommended system requirements are telling in that they doubled the min/recommended memory requirements in 8.x versus 7.x but if you dig deeper into documentation, they are being a bit more cautious in their recommendations as it's dependent on how you use and configure CentOS 8.

  • whlwhl Member

    @eva2000 - that's what i've done in the past with centos 3 to 6 (for both httpd and php - various reasons on each) but I had hoped that, finally, I could just use the stock rpms. Using stock rpms with centos 8 I've been ok (though i do use custom php binaries at times).

    My more broad interest was how your more average user handles this. I suppose I'm really surprised that RedHat didn't go ahead and backport TLS 1.3 into their current versions. It is such a major requirement now for websites.

    I'd love to move to nginx (and do run nginx ssl proxies for some sites) but too many legacy needs keep my projects tied to apache.

  • LittleCreekLittleCreek Member, Patron Provider

    @vivithemage said:
    Yeah, you do. But you can always get the netinstall, and do a minimal, but requires internet of course.

    The boot iso I mentioned is the old netinstall.

  • vivithemagevivithemage Member, Host Rep

    OOOOooo, CentOS 8 released an official minimal install.

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