Server benchmarking php performance - php

Question

I have several hosting accounts with different companies, and I'm trying to evaluate which one will run a stock Wordpress installation the fastest (without having to install wordpress on each of them first).
I found a php benchmarking script to try and determine which one would work best and I'm having strange results.
<?php
/*
##########################################################################
# PHP Benchmark Performance Script #
# © 2010 Code24 BV #
# #
# Author : Alessandro Torrisi #
# Company : Code24 BV, The Netherlands #
# Date : July 31, 2010 #
# version : 1.0 #
# License : Creative Commons CC-BY license #
# Website : http://www.php-benchmark-script.com #
# #
##########################################################################
*/
function test_Math($count = 140000) {
$time_start = microtime(true);
$mathFunctions = array("abs", "acos", "asin", "atan", "bindec", "floor", "exp", "sin", "tan", "pi", "is_finite", "is_nan", "sqrt");
foreach ($mathFunctions as $key => $function) {
if (!function_exists($function)) unset($mathFunctions[$key]);
}
for ($i=0; $i < $count; $i++) {
foreach ($mathFunctions as $function) {
$r = call_user_func_array($function, array($i));
}
}
return number_format(microtime(true) - $time_start, 3);
}
function test_StringManipulation($count = 130000) {
$time_start = microtime(true);
$stringFunctions = array("addslashes", "chunk_split", "metaphone", "strip_tags", "md5", "sha1", "strtoupper", "strtolower", "strrev", "strlen", "soundex", "ord");
foreach ($stringFunctions as $key => $function) {
if (!function_exists($function)) unset($stringFunctions[$key]);
}
$string = "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
for ($i=0; $i < $count; $i++) {
foreach ($stringFunctions as $function) {
$r = call_user_func_array($function, array($string));
}
}
return number_format(microtime(true) - $time_start, 3);
}
function test_Loops($count = 19000000) {
$time_start = microtime(true);
for($i = 0; $i < $count; ++$i);
$i = 0; while($i < $count) ++$i;
return number_format(microtime(true) - $time_start, 3);
}
function test_IfElse($count = 9000000) {
$time_start = microtime(true);
for ($i=0; $i < $count; $i++) {
if ($i == -1) {
} elseif ($i == -2) {
} else if ($i == -3) {
}
}
return number_format(microtime(true) - $time_start, 3);
}
$total = 0;
$functions = get_defined_functions();
$line = str_pad("-",38,"-");
echo "<pre>$line\n|".str_pad("PHP BENCHMARK SCRIPT",36," ",STR_PAD_BOTH)."|\n$line\nStart : ".date("Y-m-d H:i:s")."\nServer : {$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}#{$_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR']}\nPHP version : ".PHP_VERSION."\nPlatform : ".PHP_OS. "\n$line\n";
foreach ($functions['user'] as $user) {
if (preg_match('/^test_/', $user)) {
$total += $result = $user();
echo str_pad($user, 25) . " : " . $result ." sec.\n";
}
}
echo str_pad("-", 38, "-") . "\n" . str_pad("Total time:", 25) . " : " . $total ." sec.</pre>";
?>
Now on one server I'm getting an average of about 10, and on another 15 (so far so good), but on a third, the average is like 45 seconds. It's strange because that server has a working Wordpress install that runs pretty quickly (about 1.5 second page load times).
My question is, why might this server be showing me such high results, but seems to be working fine? And second, does this mean that this isn't a good method to determine which host would ultimately run Wordpress the fastest (all other things being equal)? And if this isn't a good method, do you have any suggestions?

Answer 1

You need to actually install wordpress to know for sure.
I would just edit the index.php file of each and require this file.
<?php
/**
* Front to the WordPress application. This file doesn't do anything, but loads
* wp-blog-header.php which does and tells WordPress to load the theme.
*
* #package WordPress
*/
require('benchmark.php');
/**
* Tells WordPress to load the WordPress theme and output it.
*
* #var bool
*/
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
I've done benchmarking for a while and this will give you good information about the current memory usage and processing speed of the server. You could even hit the server with httperf a few hundred times to get TRUE server ability.

Answer 2

You definitely have to install wordpress in order to analyze the performance in each one. In fact, you should have the complete wordpress environment installed in all three, with this I mean, all wordpress plugins should be installed, because they could have a big impact in performance. Also apache, mysql and php should be tuned the same in all three servers.
Once you do that, you can use jMeter (http://jmeter.apache.org/) to really test your server, and see how many requests can your server serve.