WordPress Cluster Package
The WordPress Cluster package offers a reliable structure with replication of all the components to provide high availability and fault tolerance. WordPress cluster helps to handle permanent high load and huge load spikes, ensures zero downtime, improves performance, and, as a result, offers an excellent experience even for the most demanding users. The package is aimed at hosting large-size production projects.
WordPress Cluster Specifics
The WordPress Cluster package offers the following features:
- LiteSpeed Web Server
- Web Application Firewall
- Edge Side Includes (ESI)
- MariaDB Galera Cluster
- Redis
- Clustered LiteSpeed Web ADC Load Balancing
- Shared Storage High Availability
- Premium CDN
- Let’s Encrypt SSL
- WordPress Plugins
LiteSpeed Web Server
LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) is a high-performance, low-memory consuming web server. It is built based on the best practices of PHP hosting, utilizing the benefits of both Apache and NGINX implementations and integrating its own optimizations.
The feature-rich structure of the LiteSpeed application server includes ESI caching, browser, and object cache along with the support of HTTP/3, CDN, WAF, Geo-DNS, reCAPTCHA, cutting-edge anti-DDoS protection. All these benefits make the application server one of the best options on the market for efficient WordPress hosting.
Web Application Firewall
The Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a built-in feature enabled by default for all the WordPress installations based on the LiteSpeed Web Server. It supports ModSecurity rules and comes by default with the Comodo ruleset. WAF provides Layer-7 Anti-DDoS Filtering, WordPress brute force protection, as well as IP level bandwidth and request rate throttling. LiteSpeed WAF manages rules for dynamic requests, which allows significantly optimized computing power.
Edge Side Includes (ESI)
ESI includes all functions of the SSI (Server Side Includes - a simple interpreted server-side scripting language) while providing more flexibility. When a page is requested, ESI will assemble the whole page before making any trips back to the browser. Avoiding extra trips back and forth shaves excess loading time.
With the ability to create fragments (aka “punch holes”) for private content, ESI enables most of a site’s pages to be considered publicly cacheable. A whole page no longer must be deemed non-cacheable due to a single non-cacheable section. By allowing that element to be cached privately (while the rest of the page remains in the public cache), you optimize space usage and speed.
When ESI is combined with LSCache plugins and the LiteSpeed Cache server module, it takes caching to a whole new level of usefulness.
MariaDB Galera Cluster
As storage for dynamic content, the MariaDB Galera Cluster is employed. The cluster is based on synchronous replication and the InnoDB engine. Due to proper multi-primary topology with automatic new node provisioning, Galera ensures direct read and write operations to any node, no data loss upon nodes crash, no slave lag, and no lost transactions.
Redis
Redis is a high-performance RAM-allocated data structure store running in the LiteSpeed Web Server container and used as a high-speed caching and non-relational Database Management System (DBMS) solution. Object caching stores already loaded database query results and serves the appropriate requests faster. Such an approach provides much higher performance compared to relational DBMSs.
Clustered LiteSpeed Web ADC Load Balancing
LiteSpeed Web ADC (Application Delivery Controller) is a new generation load balancer that supports the modern HTTP/3 protocol. It provides a flexible traffic distribution algorithm for optimal performance and an ESI dynamic cache that helps to serve dynamic content directly and reduce requests to web servers.
The load balancers serve as an entry point of the cluster topology. The layer handles incoming traffic and comprises two nodes with public IP by default. In order to distribute workload among the endpoints, two load balancing algorithms can be employed:
- DNS Round-Robin distribution
- DNS Load Balancing with health checks
The endpoints setup for the Round-Robin algorithm is similar to the one described in our HA with DNS Round Robin Load-Balancing tutorial. The DNS Load Balancing with health checks algorithm is an advanced version of Round-Robin, which takes the benefits of the first solution and extends it with additional options. For example, such a balancing can be implemented with the help of Cloudflare or any other similar service.
Shared Storage High Availability
Shared storage is a layer in the WordPress cluster where the web servers keep static assets. The package utilizes the platform-native Auto-Clustering functionality to automatically configure a reliable three-node GlusterFS-based cluster to ensure high availability.
GlusterFS is a distributed, parallel, resilient file system. Its essential advantages are fault-tolerant design, bidirectional synchronization, and capacity expansion/reduction with no downtime.
Premium CDN
CDN Add-On is integrated into the WordPress cluster to provide a superb experience for site visitors and achieve higher Google ranks. It leverages a highly interconnected global network, featuring massive bandwidth capacity, advanced caching, and acceleration strategies along with HTTP/3 support to provide lightning-fast WordPress static assets loading from the nearest PoP (point of presence). Platform customers get premium traffic for the same price across all continents and countries with no surprising bills based on geographic locations.
Let’s Encrypt SSL
Let’s Encrypt SSL Add-On does the routine yet important system administration tasks of issuing trusted SSL certificates, integrating them into the application server, and enabling fully automated certificate renewal to stay secure over time.
WordPress Plugins
List of WordPress plugins used by default:
- LiteSpeed Cache
WordPress Cluster Installation
1. Click the New Environment button at the top of the dashboard.
2. Within the opened wizard, select the required WordPress topology (Cluster in our case).
Here, the following configuration options are available before the installation:
- Advanced Features - tick the required options to include them
- WordPress Brute force Attack Protection - activates the WordPress Brute Force Attack Protection feature
- Web Application Firewall - enables Web Application Firewall (WAF), i.e. the use of free security rules from Comodo
- Install Let’s Encrypt SSL with Auto-Renewal - adds a Let’s Encrypt SSL add-on that allows you to issue and use a trusted, free certificate for a custom domain
- Install Lightning-Fast Premium CDN - integrates Verizon Edgecast CDN into WordPress application
- Install GlusterFS Cluster - deploys a GlusterFS storage cluster, an open-source distributed, parallel, fault-tolerant file system with bidirectional synchronization. If you untick the checkbox, the regular NFS shared storage will be installed
- Topology - allows you to view the current package topology scheme by hovering over the hint icon
- Environment - sets the environment name within the platform domain
- Display Name - provides a custom alias for the environment
- Region - selects the target region
Click Install to proceed.
3. In a few minutes, your WordPress instance will be created.
Check your email for additional information (e.g. admin panel credentials):
That’s all! You can start managing your WordPress cluster project right away.