Posted by nimi on November 21, 2010 at 2:17pm
Hi everyone,
I'm thinking of purchasing a VPS package and I have a few different hardware configurations I can choose from.
I'm going to host around 20 small sites with low traffic.
This is what I can afford:
- One dedicated CPU core
- 1024 Ram
- 10GB Storage
- 10Mbit/sec Unmeted bandwith
- Control Panel: cPanel/DirecAdmin
- Centos, Debian, Ubuntu... Which is best?
Will this work well? Would you add or cut somewhere?
Thanks,
Nimrod
Comments
Knowing only what you have
Knowing only what you have said, what you list should work fine.
We are a CentOS/command line shop. If you aren't comfortable on the command line, and you can get cPanel for free, then go for it. I can't comment on other distros, other than to say that you should pick one and stick with it.
I don't know what kind of content your sites have, so I can't say whether 10 GB of disk is a good fit, but I would prefer more RAM (we give our VPSs 4 GB/per core which is probably overkill) and you are probably paying for a lot more bandwidth than you will use, but once again, I don't know what you will be hosting.
Static
One other thing to think about - the CDN module could help you maximize your setup. If you roll that in for your sites and then use something like Amazon Cloudfront+Origin Pull, you can have the CDN serve up all of your static content. That will reduce the load on your VPS quite a bit and (at least with Amazon) the bandwidth costs are the same if you serve it out of your VPS or the CDN.
You can also consider Drupal
You can also consider Drupal Gardens, or, if you are more adventurous, a micro instance of AWS EC2.
---
Tomáš J. Fülöpp
http://twitter.com/vacilandois
Thank you for all your
Thank you for all your comments everyone.
I would like to keep things simple as much as possible so AWS EX2 or an Amazon Cloud is a bit too complicated at this point.
Highermath, you said you would go for more RAM, is 1024MB considered small for a server hosting 20 "smallish" sites?
One more thing, I plan to use cPanel just because I don't really have the time to start learning the whole Linux jargon (although I would really like to sometime...)
About the OS, they all mean the same to me, and since I"m using cPanel I won't even notice. However, regarding performance, are there any benefits of one over the other?
Thanks!
N
Depends on what you mean by smallish?
1024 Mb is probably enough. RAM is generally the cheapest route to performance, but that might only apply when you own the hardware.
I don't think that you are going to find tremendous performance differences between distros. How your system is installed and configured makes a huge difference. An OOTB installation will almost always install a lot more services than you need or want.
Again, if the sites are small and aren't serving up media, you can probably get by with a much smaller pipe.
At my previous company, we
At my previous company, we were hosting about forty mostly-smallish sites on a VPS with 512MB of RAM. So it's certainly possible, particularly if you keep it as just a web server and don't try to install mail daemons and other such things on it. I also suggest considering nginx or Lighttpd instead of Apache, and, once Drupal 7 rolls around, developing sites using SQLite instead of MySQL or PostGres; with SQLite, there's no need to run a SQL server daemon.
If you have the command line chops to be able to live without something like CPanel, all the better!
The Boise Drupal Guy!
I prefer CentOS for hosting.
I prefer CentOS for hosting. I never noticed much of a difference between the major distros as far as performance, but have always had less problems out of CentOS.
Instead of cPanel, you could go with Webmin. That gives a lot of the same features as cPanel, but not with the overhead, plus Webmin is open source, so you don't have to worry about paying for it. The other nice thing about Webmin is that it gives a good intermediary step between cPanel and doing everything from the command line, so it's great to learn more about how the system works and configurations are set up.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
intoxination, I don't have an
intoxination, I don't have an option for Webmin. There is DirectAdmin, Cpanel, and an option to go without any Control Panel (which would be cheapest but then I'd have to deal with a lot of congis when adding a new site). Looks like CentOS is most recommended here so I'll go for that.
highermath, you mentioned I could get by with a "smaller pipe", do you mean less RAM? If I chose 512MB I save an extra 10 bucks! :) I just don't want to run into errors...
They usually don't put Webmin
They usually don't put Webmin as an option. You have to install it yourself, which is actually pretty easy. Logged in as root:
yum -y install perl-Net-SSLeay
wget http://sourceforge.net/settings/mirror_choices?projectname=webadmin&file...
rpm -i webmin-1.520-1.noarch.rpm
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
Smaller pipe means less
Smaller pipe means less bandwidth. Uncapped 10 Mb/s is generally expensive, although your provider might give it away because they know that your server can't come close to filling it.
You could start with less RAM if there is no change fee for upgrading if it doesn't work.
You might consider paying a good Drupal-centric system administrator a buck or two to help you specify and configure your system. It will be money well spent.
If there are just small
If there are just small websites and you don't need to install custom program.
I think many shared hosts are enough.
Remember to install the module "boost" at least.
Use pressflow instead of the official drupal.
Kolier.Li