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512MB RAM will be enough for a single website?
vps_learner
Member
in Help
Hi,
We run a single website (wordpress based) on a Xen VPS server with 1GB RAM. The website gets around 8k - 9k visitors per day and 30k+ page views.
The server is running on nginx, memcached, ngx_pagespeed.
We are thinking to downgrade to a 512MB OVZ or KVM VPS to minimize the cost. Avg. memory consumption stays like this always (check image below).
Your suggestion will be appreciated. Sorry for noob questions, I am new to VPS world
Comments
Don't touch it if it works.
Clearly OpenVZ won't work. I think KVM might do, but if on one day your site suddenly grows a lot of visitors, 512MB may fail. I would suggest you stay on 1024MB Xen ( I think it's Linode, and you are thinking of downgrading to Digital Ocean? )
Agree with @serverian.
Unless you substantially reduce the actual memory consumption (459 MB) then running on a 512MB VPS is asking for trouble. And reconfiguring to reduce memory usage will likely affect performance.
Thanks for your response. We may not downgrade but we are probably going to migrate to another provider (KVM) with 1GB RAM. No, it's not Linode and DO. Perhaps we will go with RamNode since they have a 35% promo going on.
Good choice I think. I have a few VPSs with Ramnode and they are an excellent provider. KVM with ample RAM for caching is also preferred -- IMO -- to OpenVz.
Have you tweaked mysql? could you post a screenshot from top
Some top processes;
It seems that memcached its the process that its eating most of your memory, but it also helps you keep your site fast.
The next step would be to optimize wordpress and handle static files outside of your php-fpm process (different subdomain, example: static.domain.com )
Forgot to ask, how much memory did you asign to memcached?
Currently memcached max memory set to 256MB
I'm all for tweaking
but trying to squeeze it into 512MB may well affect performance.
The Ramnode 1GB with discount is a sweet deal.
I'd suggest you move it first with exactly the same config. Let it run a week, to compare the Ramnode performance with your current provider.
Then tweak to make the best use of memory.
even a 128 mb ram would work
openvz would surely work
use kloxo on centos 5.x 32 bit
under services switch program to lighttpd+djbdns+bogofilter
tweak mysql
your 128 mb ram openvz vps will run 4-5 site having arround 10 visitors per day traffic.
and if you have a 1gb ram
you can start a web hosting business.
I'd love to see more discussion about caching methods, but yes memchached is not designed for low end boxes. However, with the right setup, 512mb (or less!) should be more than sufficient for those visitor numbers.
The Wordpress Plugin W3 Total Cache works really well for me with nginx. Disk based caching for pages and APC for object & database caching.
Getting nginx to process static & cache files without php-fpm is easy to do in the config, no subdomain needed.
There's a good config guide and discussion here
Transitioning to a more economical VPS, I'd want to get rid of memcached and set up W3 Total Cache with applicable nginx configs.
The next step would be to make sure that nginx, php-fpm, and mysql are all optimized, namely by how many processes they are allowed to spawn. Typically you'll have one nginx instance for every CPU core, and then as many php-fpm and mysql processes that will fit into your available memory. Based on this screenshot, you could be running many more php-fpm and mysql processes and still have memory left over.
is this spam?!
@stoke
thanks. i will try out W3TC soon. So far I was using wp-ffpc (http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-ffpc/) with memcached. But, I am gonna try W3TC to check out.
Mildly off-topic but what are you using to get a nice layout of your processes like that?
That is taken from NewRelic
Nah that's disappointing heh. Thanks for the quick reply!
yes people like you would always take things as spam
Have you consireded using APC cache instead of memcached.
Also if your going to use a static page cache with wordpress it will help a lot if you leave the comments to a third party (disqus).
Remember the static page will be served to anonymous users, logged user's load the page from php.
Totally Agree!
If you're switching to RamNode, seems like 512 MB OpenVZ would work well, since it comes with 512 MB vSwap too.
so, that's spam
Good advice IMHO. Ask yourself:
How much of your memory usage are you using so far?
Most ad funded sites have no say whatsoever in the selling price of their ad inventory. So they can't improve revenue but can cut down on costs. The temptation is always there to reduce costs by chasing the cheapest hosting deal. But there is usually some downtime when you do this especially when you are doing it for the first time. Downtime means lost ad revenue. So my advice is to not switch hosts.
i should have personally meet you
Would easily go on a 512MB OpenVZ as you do not lose memory due to the Kernel.
You can minimize cost by converting to one of the cheaper 1-2GB RAM OpenVZ plans. My sites (8 wordpress sites) consume an average of 500 MB RAM. However I am on a semi annual 2GB plan just to be safe.
Why not try it for a while then switch back if its affects the site?
I doubt the site will use 500mb, the webserver uses more ram the more ram you have in the system, so a lot of that apparently used ram might never be called. 512mb should be more than enough for a website like you described.