Understanding Your GoZen Hosting Stack
What CloudLinux, LiteSpeed, malware scanning (Imunify360 or cPGuard), and NVMe storage do for your site, and how they work together.
4 min read
GoZen Host shared and WordPress hosting accounts run on CloudLinux, the LiteSpeed web server, a security suite (Imunify360 or cPGuard, depending on the server) and NVMe storage. The sections below cover what each component does.
The Stack at a Glance
| Component | What It Replaces | Why GoZen Uses It |
|---|---|---|
| CloudLinux | Standard CentOS/AlmaLinux | Isolates every account so one bad neighbor can’t crash your site |
| LiteSpeed | Apache | Serves pages faster, uses less memory, and has built-in caching |
| Imunify360 or cPGuard | No equivalent (add-on) | Malware scanning, a web application firewall, and brute force protection, included at no extra cost |
| NVMe SSD | SATA SSD / HDD | Several times faster disk I/O than SATA SSDs |
CloudLinux
Standard shared hosting puts every account on the same OS. If one site gets a traffic spike or runs a runaway PHP script, everyone on that server feels it. CloudLinux prevents this by isolating each account.
How It Works
CloudLinux creates a Lightweight Virtualized Environment (LVE) around each hosting account. Every account gets its own resource allocation:
- CPU - percentage of CPU cores available to your account
- Memory - physical RAM limit
- I/O - disk read/write speed limit
- Entry Processes - number of concurrent PHP processes
- Inodes - maximum number of files
What This Means For You
- Your site’s performance doesn’t depend on what other accounts on the server are doing
- If you hit a resource limit, only your account is affected, not the whole server
- You can see exactly how much of each resource you’re using
Checking Your Resource Usage
In cPanel, go to Metrics → Resource Usage. You’ll see:
- Current and historical usage for CPU, memory, I/O, and processes
- Whether you’ve hit any limits (shown as “faults”)
- Usage trends over the past 24 hours
If you see frequent faults, you’re outgrowing your current plan. Either optimize your site or upgrade to a higher plan.
LiteSpeed Web Server
Apache is the default on most cPanel hosts. GoZen runs LiteSpeed instead.
Why LiteSpeed
- Faster static file serving - serves HTML, CSS, JS, and images with less overhead than Apache
- HTTP/3 support - the latest protocol, faster connection setup, especially on mobile networks
- Built-in page caching - LiteSpeed Cache (LSCache) can cache entire pages at the server level, bypassing PHP entirely
- Lower memory footprint - handles more concurrent users with the same hardware
- .htaccess compatible - your existing Apache rewrite rules work without changes
LiteSpeed Cache (LSCache)
LSCache has the largest effect on speed. Instead of running PHP on every page load, LiteSpeed serves a cached HTML copy directly. This cuts server response time from hundreds of milliseconds to a few milliseconds, so your Time to First Byte (TTFB) is mostly network latency.
For WordPress users: Install the LiteSpeed Cache plugin to control caching from your WordPress dashboard. See LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress for the full configuration guide.
For other applications: LSCache can be controlled via .htaccess rules or the LiteSpeed API. Check the LiteSpeed documentation for your specific framework.
Security Suite (Imunify360 or cPGuard)
Every GoZen Host shared and WordPress plan includes malware scanning and a web application firewall at no extra cost: Imunify360 or cPGuard, depending on the server. It runs in the background on the server.
What It Does
| Feature | What It Protects Against |
|---|---|
| Malware scanning | Detects and quarantines infected files |
| Web Application Firewall (WAF) | Blocks SQL injection, XSS, and other common web attacks |
| Brute force protection | Limits repeated failed login attempts |
If your server runs cPGuard, see Using cPGuard for its dashboard and configuration.
NVMe Storage
All GoZen Host shared, WordPress and VPS plans use NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) SSDs instead of traditional SATA SSDs.
The Difference
| Metric | SATA SSD | NVMe SSD |
|---|---|---|
| Sequential read | ~550 MB/s | ~3,500 MB/s |
| Sequential write | ~520 MB/s | ~3,000 MB/s |
| Random I/O (IOPS) | ~90,000 | ~500,000+ |
| Latency | ~100 μs | ~20 μs |
In practice, database queries and file operations finish sooner, which matters most when many visitors arrive at once. The difference is most noticeable on database-heavy applications like WordPress with WooCommerce, where every page load triggers dozens of queries.
How They Work Together
When a visitor loads your page:
- The web application firewall inspects the request and blocks anything malicious before it reaches your application.
- LiteSpeed checks LSCache. If the page is cached, it serves the cached copy in a few milliseconds and PHP never runs.
- If not cached, LiteSpeed passes the request to PHP. CloudLinux keeps your PHP processes within your resource allocation.
- PHP queries your database, which reads from NVMe storage.
- LiteSpeed caches the generated page for the next visitor.
What to Do Next
- LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress - configure caching for the best performance
- Using cPGuard - check your security dashboard and scan results
- PHP Configuration - tune PHP settings for your application
- Free Migration - moving from another host to the GoZen stack? Migration is included on every plan
Last updated 21 Oct 2026, 00:00 +0300.