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Small/medium forum: 512MB VPS, or 256MB VPS w/offloaded MySQL?
Hey all,
I'm planning on moving a small (I guess maybe it'd be considered medium) forum from shared hosting to a VPS, and I'm wondering what people think would be the better option: a 256MB VPS running nginx and PHP-FPM but with offloaded MySQL, or a 512MB VPS with everything local.
The former would probably be a bit cheaper, but I'm not overly concerned with the price difference -- I'm more wondering which people think would be a better choice overall and which would be likely to better handle any traffic spikes.
Thanks!
Comments
Well if you get 2-3 hits/second during peak times even a 128mb LEB will do
All depends my man, the biggest question!!!!!
What forum software?
If you got the typical LEB style setup like you have, you'll have no problem, the only issue might arise is your concurrent connections, but how many do u estimate?
@gsrdgrdghd
That's true, but considering how inexpensive LEBs are I'd rather just go with something more capable of handling spikes and future traffic growth from the start.
You should be able to easily upgrade plans from the provider self served and the downtime would be minimal.
It depends on the MySQL RAM and disk usage and how much hitting the database you are doing.
I'd say start locally all in one VPS. Have a plan to grow in the future though. Either a bigger VPS with more IOPs or an offloaded MySQL or just a second VPS on the same server or LAN.
I vote for 256mb vps + offloaded MySql, because somebody else will manage the database for you, which saves your time. And time is money.
**Dodges my question
@Nexus
Not the lightest software; SMF. Concurrent connections... maybe 15-20, sometimes a bit higher, on average peak times.
There isn't much to "managing" a database at these sizes usually. It's setting up MySQL which comes out of the box sufficient for most folks. To make it fit in limited RAM search on here for docs about that.
Other than that, backups you should be doing. PHP based tools or commandline to do that. Cronjob to automate the pain.
Let the provider hold your data and who knows what could happen. Only saves that initial setup time which is about 5 minutes. Probably 30 minutes of research. 35 minutes saved.
15-20 Concurrent on smf?
Sht... I don't know to be honest, that is quite a bit really. Start with a 256 for sure.
Just simply upgrade when needed, you should be making enough for a dedicated if you got 15-20 concurrent and ad's :P
SMF has a bunch of crazy MySQL activity - or so I've seen people falling down from such.
Since it's out of the box, pre made software doubt you'll be optimizing it and caching might be problem too, in such limited RAM.
Offload the MySQL.
@pubcrawler
That's good to know, thanks. I did notice MySQL's memory usage seemed a bit oddly high, even switched to MyISAM, when I played around with SMF on a 256MB sandbox.
128mb + offload mysql
Don't browse the source of SMF, be prepared to kill yourself after. (Or the page source, once u got it installed )
hehehe
I'm not a big fan of SMF anymore and wouldn't choose it again, but the site's been running for years and it'd be a big hassle to switch software now because of how modded it is. Someday, though...
I remember someone posting here months back about a crazy server issue and the culprit was SMF. Something like 10Mbps of activity sustained to the database.
what is your budget and we can recommend what to get.
I run esoTalk and it runs pretty good on my 512mb forum.
I intend on having more people sign up so that's why I went with 512mb RAM.
SSD VPS, local MySQL, BOOM, you're done.
@Nick_A loves him some SSD
Problem with SSD VPS is finding one that has enough disk to be useful. In my opinion, the closest that might do would be a 10GB space plan which with RamNode is $7.50 monthly.
10GB isn't much. Hate to pack OS, database, site files, etc. in there and still contemplate about data dumps and backups.
Depends on size of data set though.
From the VPS running FreeVPS.us (Traffic stats):
20.0 KiB + 364.0 KiB = 384.0 KiB mysqld_safe
How in the world? Can't say I believe MySQL will fit in 384k.
Your numbers are very interesting.
Should consider doing a write up about you minified your installation.
@pubcrawler i think their mysql use 7MB RAM
@pubcrawler, I was also intending to imply SSD-cached systems.
I think you should keep them separate.
This has many advantages.
Get a provider who provides you VM on two different physical nodes one with SSD and other can be normal.
@arieonline, correct thanks. tired eyes here.
A 7MB MySQL runtime still is downright impressive.
Interested in hearing more about this trimmed install.
Interested in hearing more about this trimmed install.
InnoDB disabled and less cached queries/tables make a lot of difference in ram usage
I use a 512 MB / 1GB burst OpenVZ VPS for a SMF forum with up to 400 online (closer to 150 average) at a time, and it does just fine. No offloaded MySQL or anything like that.