Cloud Hosting Does Not Automatically Provide Better Performance
Many people think that they will have a faster site once they switch to Cloud Hosting. This is not entirely true, as Cloud Hosting is built for flexibility and scalability—not immediately faster performance. It is important to understand the differences between the two before making any adjustments to improve Site Speed.
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Performance Expectations for Cloud Hosting Compared to Traditional Hosting
When you use a traditional hosting solution (Shared or Basic VPS), your Hosting Provider has set up a pre-optimized environment for you, which includes caching and optimal server location and resource limits for common uses (such as blogs, small business websites, and CMS Platforms).
Cloud Hosting operates differently. Rather than providing a pre-existing performance setup, Cloud Hosting provides you with the raw resources you need to set up your own Cloud Infrastructure (i.e. Virtual Servers, Storage, and Networking). So as your traffic grows, you have the ability to scale. However, in this case:
- There are typically fewer default performance optimizations applied to Cloud vs. Traditional Hosting
- It is your responsibility to configure the Cloud environment to meet your performance needs
- How your Cloud Environment is configured heavily affects the amount of Performance you can expect from your website after you switch from Traditional Hosting
Because of all of these factors, if you simply move a website to the Cloud without tuning it, the actual performance could be noticeably lower than when it was hosted with Traditional Hosting.
What “Scalability” Means in Cloud Computing
Scalability means that your infrastructure is capable of expanding to accommodate new workloads. It does NOT mean that your infrastructure is always optimized for speed, because it will be busy handling growth.
For example:
- Cloud providers specialize in providing the ability to support sudden surges of traffic without crashing.
- When there is an increase in demand for a service, the cloud provider can automatically create a new instance of the server.
- Dynamic load balancing can allow for better management of traffic, which will require additional overhead on the network.
- These processes keep your website or application online, but they can introduce latency due to “Cold Start” times and resource delays if your website or application experiences a large volume of traffic in comparison to its resource capacity.
- Shared Hosting = Easy-to-Use
- Cloud Hosting = Scalable
- Cloud Hosting Can Be Fast, Provided Your Configuration Is Correct.
Common Causes of Slow Cloud Websites
After moving to cloud hosting, most performance issues are caused by incorrect configurations instead of the cloud itself. Below are the most common culprits and a simple, practical explanation of why they’re causing problems with your website.
Incorrect Server Location and Latency
When you set up your account with a cloud provider, they allow you to choose the location of your servers. If your servers are too far from your target audience, every request from your users must travel a long distance.
Example: Your users are located in the United States and the United Kingdom and your cloud server is located in Asia.
As such, each page request must travel additional milliseconds through the network and build up over time for the total number of page loads across your images, scripts, and API calls. This one reason could cause the cloud-hosted website to seem slower than a nearby shared server.
Poor Resource Allocation of CPU, RAM, and IOPS
Most cloud servers are initially allocated low resource levels to keep costs down, so you have to make sure you allocate enough computing, memory, and input/output resources to meet your requirements. If you do not allocate enough resources, the website will have to wait longer for pages to generate, database queries will slow down, and your background processing will be competing for these allocated resources.
The difference between a shared hosting plan and a cloud platform is that shared hosting plans automatically increase resource allocation based on usage, while cloud platforms require you to configure your account in order to scale up resources, and when you do scale, you need to allocate resources properly or create bottleneck issues.
Not Using a Good Caching Strategy
Most shared hosting plans come with a built-in caching system, but in cloud hosting, caching needs to be implemented separately. Instead of relying on a web host for assistance in determining if caching was a successful outcome, you need to determine for yourself what your caching options are and implement those to the best of your ability.
When users access pages on websites that do not use caching, every request is directed to their backend, and databases must process every single query for every repeated visit of a page. This means that CMS-based websites will have a slower response time than other sites because CMS websites generate dynamic pages each time someone visits a CMS page.
Similarly, there are no CDN or poorly configured CDNs with cloud hosting services as part of their features. As such, when users access static content (images, videos) on a site hosted by a cloud provider without a CDN, the static assets will be retrieved from a single server location. Therefore, users who are located outside the US will have much slower load times for that same content than users located within the US. Poorly configured CDNs can create an additional delay when assets are not cached adequately or if caching rules are set too strictly.
After a cloud provider’s traffic increases, database performance becomes the first bottleneck. If traffic increases dramatically, slow queries will increase. Additionally, connection limits to databases will be reached much quicker after traffic increases. With some managed hosting services masking these issues, cloud providers will make these problems apparent much more clearly because they do not cost-effectively hide them as a managed hosting provider would do for the same issues.
Performance Issues Encountered During Cloud Migration
The Performance of Many Web Pages Has Been Affected by Cloud Migration, Not Because of Cloud Hosting But How the Cloud Migration Took Place. When Moving a Webpage to the Cloud, It Often Becomes Sluggish Due to Additional Prepositional Issues, Rather Than Cloud Hosting.
Lift and Shift, No Optimization
Lift and Shift, the Most Common Cloud Migration Method, is Where The Website Has Been Migrated in Its Current Condition. Although this might feel like a safe bet, it can often lead to problems. The Following Are Common Problems Associated with Lift-and-Shift Migration Methods: Outdated Server Configurations May Not Work in the Cloud, So They Will Not Be Configured Properly. Unoptimized Code and Queries Were Not Corrected. Caching and Compression Settings Are Not Reconfigured, And They Should Be. Cloud Infrastructure Expects Applications That Are Aware of the Cloud.
Delay in Traffic Between The Our Cloud Job And Cloud Hosting-Internal Traffic Delay Within The Cloud And Across The World
Web servers, Databases, Storage Systems, and Load Balancers Are Separated by The Cloud Platform. The Issues That May Result From These Components Being Poorly Connected or, in The Event Of Moving, Being Physically Located Across Regions: The Internal Communication Between Each Component Will Be Delayed. Multiple Network Hops Will Occur During Each Page Load. Latency Will Increase When Making Simple Requests. The Overhead Associated with Moving Within The Cloud Does Not Exist on Basic Hosting Setups.
As businesses expand into the Cloud to accommodate their growth in traffic, there is room for sudden spikes in that traffic to result in slower website performances if the scaling behavior for those sites is not appropriately planned for.
However, it should be noted that Auto-Scaling has inherent delays. The first step during a traffic increase is the environmental detection of the increased load, followed by resource requests for new server instances, which then takes time to initialize. During this period, existing servers will naturally handle greater amounts of traffic than they would be able to efficiently handle prior to the completion of the auto-scaling process.
Newly spun up cloud instances will typically start out in a “cold” state, meaning that all of their application code has not been cached, all required dependencies have not been loaded, and all of their CPU and RAM caches are empty; as a result, their performance will suffer temporarily until their code is cached. This performance degradation will be particularly pronounced for dynamic websites and application programming interfaces (API).
Many sites depend on session based data, such as login credentials, shopping carts, and user preferences; therefore, when auto-scaling generates new servers that do not contain any previously stored session based user data, the resulting redirection or delay of users to those servers will have a negative impact on user experience through an inefficient load balancing system.
When the session data is not organized in a central repository, traffic spikes can exacerbate poor performance rather than potentially smooth it out.
How to Identify Cloud Performance Problems
Before addressing performance concerns, it is critical to determine where the delay occurs. There is no need to have advanced DevOps tools to gain insights at this point.
Essential Metrics to Monitor (Without Advanced Tools)
There are a handful of key metrics that will provide the most information on most performance problems in the cloud:
- The server response time is the time it takes for the server’s back end to respond.
- The amount of CPU and memory being used indicates how much of the resources are saturated.
- The database response time reflects how long it takes for a query and a connection to be completed.
- Network latency indicates delays in routing and geographical distance.
- Most cloud Hosting dashboards and basic monitoring tools present all of these metrics.
Basic Tests to Help Identify a Bottleneck
To help narrow down the problem, you can conduct simple tests:
- Attempt to load your website from multiple places around the world.
- Compare the time it takes to load your site for the first time vs subsequent visits.
- Turn off heavy plugins/features for testing.
- Test static pages separately from dynamic pages.
- If your static pages are loading quickly, but your dynamic pages are still loading slowly, the issue is likely related to either backend logic or database performance.
How To Fix Slow Cloud Hosting (Beginner)
Fixing Cloud Hosting Performance is Much Easier Once You Identify Where the Bottleneck Is. This Guide Provides Practical Solutions Instead of Requiring Complex Infrastructure Changes.
Selecting a Cloud Instance Type
A Great Number of Cloud Performance Problems are Related to Selecting the Cheapest or Smallest Available Instance Type.
Beginner Suggestions
Do not use Minimum CPU and RAM Number of Configurations on a Live Website
You Should Always Choose the Cloud Instance with the Best Consistent Performance vs Lowest Priced Instance.
You Should Be Upgrading Resource Levels Gradually and Measuring Performance Results.
You’d Be Surprised, A Slightly Larger Sized Instance Will Provide More Than Just Slight Speed Increase and Has Very Little Financial Impact.
Cache and Static Assets Optimization
Using Caching, You Should Reduce the Need to Retrieve and Process Information From the Database Multiple Times
An Easy Way to Use Caching is to:
- Enable Page Caching for Non-Dynamic Content
- Use Query Caching on Database Queries Whenever Possible
- Compress All Your Images and Static Files
- Simply Using Caching Alone, Can Dramatically Reduce Your Server Load, as Well as Improve Your Page Loadtime.
Correctly Using CDNs
A CDN Should Serve Your Static Files, Closest to the Users.
You Should:
Ensure Images, CSS, and Javascript are cached at CDNs Edge Locations. Avoid Directly Linking to Your Files on Your Server Instead of CDN For Commonly Used Assets. Use Reasonable Cache Expiration Rules. Using a CDN Correctly will Provide You with Lower Latency as Well as Reduce The Server’s Load.
Basic Database & Backend Optimizations:
For the Most Part, Databases Are Your Number One Performance Bottleneck When Scaling.
You will Need to Make Simple Improvements…
Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting: Sometimes Shared can be Faster
It may seem counter-intuitive, but in some situations shared hosting can actually feel faster than cloud hosting for small or low-traffic sites. This doesn’t mean that shared hosting is a better option – it just means that it has different types of optimizations.
Why Smaller Sites May Have Better Performance on Shared Hosting
Shared hosting environments usually are pre-configured for common CMS platforms have been tuned for common traffic patterns have caching and compression built in to optimise load time. This means that for a blog or small business site with predictable traffic, shared hosting can provide fast load times with very little time or expert knowledge required to set up the account.
Cloud hosting on the other hand has manual performance tuning required is focused on flexibility and scalability Unchecked issues that could be obscured by shared hosting. If a website does not have the advanced need for scalability yet, then cloud hosting may complicate things without any increase in speed at this point in time.
To summarize, while cloud hosting provides significant flexibility, scalability, speed-to-market and potential for growth over time, it does not automatically increase web site speed after moving a site to the cloud. When web sites that have been moved to the cloud are experiencing slow performance, in nearly all cases, this issue arises from misconfiguration, incorrect expectations or being forced into an expedited migration process. These issues are not caused by the cloud infrastructure.
Web site speed on the cloud is related directly to the following factors:
- Proper placement of servers and the right amount of resources assigned to those servers.
- Use of caching and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) in the right manner.
- Optimized database and Backend logic.
- Traffics spikes/surfing patterns and scale.
Conclusion
To summarize, while cloud hosting provides significant flexibility, scalability, speed-to-market and potential for growth over time, it does not automatically increase web site speed after moving a site to the cloud. When web sites that have been moved to the cloud are experiencing slow performance, in nearly all cases, this issue arises from misconfiguration, incorrect expectations or being forced into an expedited migration process. These issues are not caused by the cloud infrastructure. Web site speed on the cloud is related directly to the following factors: Proper placement of servers and the right amount of resources assigned to those servers. Use of caching and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) in the right manner. Optimized database and Backend logic. Traffics spikes/surfing patterns and scale. When considering using Cloud Hosting as a service, small and expanding organisations should think of Cloud Hosting as a journey of optimisation, rather than an instant one-click option. Provided the correct setup and continuous enhancements are conducted, cloud hosting can provide both speed and stability without decreasing performance, even as your organisation grows.
