Large VBulletin Site -- What Should I Look For In A Server Setup
Apr 17, 2009
I run a large adult vBulletin community with 70,000 members, 1/2 million posts, 186,000 attachments (a lot video), and closing in on 100 million downloads since our start some odd years ago. I've been battling keeping the site up for quite some time, and I am starting to wonder whether we shot too low on the server setup. I figure I would ask the pros here at WHT for some advice.
This is our current setup:
Site server:
Quote:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz
4 Gig ram
250 Gig sata harddrive
Unix FreeBSD 6.2
Apache
MySQL server:
Quote:
CPU: Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron (2666.62-MHz 686-class CPU)
Cores per package: 4
4 Gig ram
750 Gig SATA harddrive
Unix FreeBSD 6.4
Apache
Do you think the site would perform better under one server and maybe a more powerful processor? What should I be looking at exactly as far as hardware goes for this type of site. I should note we push about 2.5TB of bandwidth monthly.
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Oct 12, 2007
I just added a database server in private network and moved the database for Vbulletin Forum to this server.
But some how, the Forum is loading extremely slow compare to before ( when it was on the localhost). Also, Compare to another website on server (using local database) it is much slower.
One thing good is the load is lower
2 servers are connected via 10mbs private link, both servers are at Softlayer.
webserver: Opteron 170, 2GB RAM, 73GB SCSI 15K
database: Quad Xeon 3220, 2GB RAM, 73GB SCSI 15K.
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Dec 6, 2008
I've been with the same host for 4 years with great support (I'll write a full review next week), but my site has outgrown the current dedicated plans they offer at my budget.
Basically I need two servers to run one large (and growing) vbulletin forum: Primary Server: a modern processor (Core2Duo, Xeon, etc.) and 2-3GB RAM to serve the php pages, run MySQL, handle mail, etc. Secondary Server: old Celeron with 512 RAM to host avatars/images on a subdomainBudget: $150-$170
This is all for one website, so I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to pay for two control panels, a fancy secondary server, etc. Is this a realistic price range?
Here's where I'm weary. A lot of hosts with deals on modern and old servers seem to be unmanaged. I can do my own back-ups, rebuild php, run basic ssh commands, etc., but I do need help trouble-shooting random issues, about 6-8 times a year. For example, in October my server was hit by this iframe javascript attack. It required some knowledgeable techs working to fix it. I rarely need such active support, but when I need it, I can't accept a "this is a software issue, you're on your own!" or "we'll escalate this ticket to our level 54 tech and get back to you right after your billing cycle."
In searching reputable companies in my price range, I've narrowed down my search to:
HostDime (managed support, but the most expensive)
DMEHosting (least expensive, but seemingly the most problematic)
Hivelocity (good deals, good sales presence on WHT)
ServerBeach (popular, experienced, doesn't seem to be known for good support)
TailorMadeServers (good deals, owner posts here often, but seems understandably busy)
All of these companies seem reasonable for various reasons, so I figured I would make a thread about my specific needs in hopes of getting more informed opinions.
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Mar 31, 2009
My company is going to launch four online retail site and in need for a dedicated server service provider that can provide us with room to grow from minimal traffic to possibly 2-5k traffic an hour.
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Apr 5, 2009
For a Vbulletin forum with up to 200 users online (only) but growing nicely and I want to be set for quite a while:
I am going to use Nginx, XCache, PHP-FPM, FreeBSD, Gzip
Currently using ~55 GB transfer with mod_deflate, all with dynamic traffic, little bits and pieces, no bigger files.
I want to be able to push 500 GB transfer or so this way, or ~ 1000 users online, many searches from non-registered users, too
I am looking at
Q9550, 8GB, 4x73 SAS 10k Raid-10, $200 Webnx
or
i7 920, 12GB, 4x73 SAS 15k Raid-10, $250 Webnx
or
X3220, 8GB, X25-E SSD Intel, $300 Softlayer
Am I too concerned about disk I/O? Should I save some money and settle for a 2xSATA Raid-1.
Databases are < 2GB and would fit into the RAM
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Apr 16, 2008
I am about to purchase a vbulletin license in a few days and start a site. I will start the forums first and get the talking going and build the main site afterwards. Of course the site will suck at first as far as visitors. But what is a good hosting plan to support me for a good little while? I project we'll get up to 150 active users at a time within the first 6 or 7 months with about 50 browsing the main site....(nothing wrong with wishful thinking )
So, what hosting plan is best to hold me for a while? Not which company, but what specs of the plan are best to hold 100 active users at a time? I dont want to continue to upgrade my hosting plan alot. I'd rather just buy a nice shared hosting plan now to hold me for at least a year or so....until I have to upgrade.
For those who have dedicated servers, at one point is it time to upgrade to a dedicated server?
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Apr 9, 2008
I'm interested in purchasing the Vbulletin license and expect to have around 100 members within the first couple months and with a bit of advertising, I expect to have a 2-5 thousand within the end of the first year.
I don't know anything about the technical side of creating sites but does anyone have any advise about servers, maintaining the site, resolving issues etc?
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Jul 29, 2008
I plan on purchasing a dedicated server to run a few proxy sites. However, i don't have a lot of Linux skills to administrate my own server. But i've always been able to figure stuff out so i feel pretty confident that i can get it going on my own. Anyways, My original idea was to use cPanel to run the web server for the proxy sites however i feel that using cpanel is not a great idea since i also wanted to maximize my servers performance and i hear cPanel can take heavy resources. So anyways, I just wanted to know what some other people here might think and if possible any recommended guides on setting up a linux webserver would also be appreciated as well.
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Dec 3, 2008
I've taken the scalable approach when it comes to servers for my various sites. With shared servers, I never really worried about backup or even hard drives going down. Same goes for VPS. For some reason, when I moved to dedicated servers, I outfitted them with 74GB SATA drives in a RAID setup. My understanding is that it protects me if one drive happens to fail. I've been lucky and haven't had that problem.
I'm at the point now where I'm looking to upgrade from a VPS paying around $75 per month to a dedicated server. I can stand to be down a day if a hard drive goes, if it means $75 a month in savings. My biggest concern would be suggestions on the best way to protect myself in the event of a catastrophe.
Contacted SoftLayer about possibly adding a second server for me and honoring the price I'm paying on my old server.
Finally, both the old and new site are seeing roughly 3,000 visits per day. The server I'm considering is a Clovertown 5320 1.86 dual quadcore, 4GB RAM, RAID, 2 74GB Cheetah drives,100mbps, 2000GB bandwidth. Is this overkill or the right server for the job?
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Jun 25, 2009
The data centre which I use, is moving all collacated servers to a brand new data centre next week, which will mean a two hour downtime for each of my servers and customer websites.
At the moment my servers utilise two nameservers on seperate servers and when the move happens all websites will be offline with an ugly error message to any visitors.
Does anyone know a good way to setup a page which would be displayed if the web server was down? I am using MS DNS.
My thoughts so far is
1. Setup a 3rd nameserver which is off site from the data centre.
2. Purcahse web hosting / vps for a month on a seperate hosting company
3. Set it up so that it accepts * to a specific IP address in IIS or apache
4. I create an index.php script which gets the host header value sent i.e. [url]and the page then displays a nice maintenace i.e
"We are sorry joeblogs.com is currently down for maintenace, we will be back online shortly".
I think my main question is do I need to setup a 2nd www record in DNS for each site and how do I ensure the 2nd dns (backup record) only gets used when the first website / server is down.
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Aug 21, 2007
on good hosting setups for getting large amounts of disk space.
I would like to be able to offer up to 2Gb storage space for 100s, maybe up to a few 1000 users - any solution should scale well. The files would be static files that might be up to 400Mb in size.
It would be nice to be able to give users FTP access to their disk space, although it's not a core requirement.
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May 23, 2007
to move a site to another server at another datacentre that have approx 100 GB of media files.
Typically for small sites i am able to use server to server ftp to move files.
However, when moving large site like this, ftp might be disconnected and lost track of which files are not transferred.
How can i transfer/move the files (server to server) and resume if disconnected?
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Apr 10, 2009
on the optimal setup for a new clients project. We currently host with eUKhost and have been very happy with them in terms of support. They offer a range of hi-end dedi servers but as with everything in life, cost is an issue.
The 3 servers I am looking at are:
Quad Core Intel Xeon X3360, 2GB Ram, 250Gb Sata, 100Mbit - £170 pm
Quad Core Intel Xeon X3353, 8GB Ram, 2x500Gb Sata, 100Mbit - £260 pm
Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon X5420, 12GB Ram, 2x500Gb Sata, 100Mbit - £419 pm
I know that obviously if money was not an issue, the last server would be the best, but I wonder if this is absolutely necessary for the website. Here are the anticipated site specs....
Portal site with anticipated traffic of around 5,000 visitors online at any one time, searching around 1,000,000 business listings and around 500,000 classifieds ads. Most listings or ads would have multiple pictures on their pages and there will be a reasonable amount of advertising on each page.
My question is whether the system will function adequately with a lesser processor and more Ram, or whether its the processor that gets the database searching speedily.
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Oct 27, 2007
I'm currently building a large guitar lesson website that will launch around the end of the year or so. Basically there will be multiple instructors on the site who submit video files from 10mb to 20mb in size each. There will eventually be a couple thousand videos on the site, so around 30gb of disk space right there give or take. So I need plenty of disk space.
I'm on a shared hosting account right now with iPowerweb, and that of course won't do me much good once the site's up and running. Plus they have a 12mb upload limit, but the instructors need to upload videos larger than that. And I'm aware that with a VPS I'd be able to set my own upload file size limit.
Anyway, this server stuff gives me a headache and I feel totally clueless. I've always loved the basic shared account because I don't have to do anything to keep the server in tact. But from what I've read, a VPS or dedicated server would take a lot of work on my part. So for that reason, I'm guessing I would need a managed VPS or managed dedicated server. I don't totally know what "managed" means, but hopefully to where I wouldn't have to do any upkeep. I need to focus my time on a bazillion other things besides the server, so it'd be nice to find a plan where I wouldn't have to worry about server security updates, software updates, and any other server maintenance etc.
I need tons of bandwidth. It's going to be a membership site with hundreds and eventually thousands of members who all watch the lesson videos. So that's a ton of bandwidth. I'll be the only one on my server though, I'm not going to also host clients or anything.
I'll of course need super reliability. With eventually having thousands of members, my site needs to be totally professional with near flawless uptime.
So I'm thinking I'd want to start off with AT LEAST 40gb of disk space, but 60gb might be better. At least 1000gb transfer, but again, maybe more? And I guess a lot of ram, although I admit I hardly know what ram is haha, does that have to do with the speed of the site? And what's burstable ram? But yes, I'd need to have a server that can handle all the many files and users, with great uptime and great speed.
Budget-wise, I'd like to keep it under $70 or $80 a month if possible. If absolutely necessary, maybe a little more.
Anyway, if you guys were in my shoes, what would you do. Assuming you're clueless about VPS, and have the needs mentioned above. Any host recommendations or advice?
Price-wise and size-wise, Start Logic looks pretty good, but I think their VPSs are all unmanaged. Ive looked at a lot of other companies, but it's hard to find the right plan.
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Jul 7, 2009
How do I setup a site to use two servers? One as a mysql server and the other as a web server.
At the moment I have the site on one server. When I get the second server what steps do I need to take to make this possible?
How do I secure the mysql server to only allow the web server to connect to it?
Do I need a control panel (i.e. cPanel) software on the mysql server?
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Mar 28, 2008
Calling on all hosting and server experts here. (If you're not an expert, still feel free to take an educated stab at this. But please leave out total made up answers or foolish answers like "Have LittleJoeShmoe Hosting services do it all for $9.99/month".)
Scenario:
If you knew or were planning on developing a site that you knew would generate millions to tens of millions of page views a day, how would you go about supporting a site of such traffic? The site would not serve up videos, but the average page size would contain up to 75-100kB. It would incorporate databases (user logins, accounts, user submitted content, server side scripting, CMS, etc.)
Don't assume anything. Don't assume you have too little or too much money. Just, what would you plan out to accomodate such a scenario?
What hosting companies would you use? Would you do it in-house and build your own datacenter? Farm out the server management? How much would it cost to implement your plan? What platform would you recommend for a site to handle this much traffic?
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Sep 16, 2007
I am currently moving from my current dedicated servers because they simply cannot handle the load. I have a site which frequently makes it onto radio, digg and other similar sites.
I need a dedicated server that can take a beating from Digg and offline Media. For most of the month the server load is really low, the site hardly uses up anything. However, when it hits those sites, it suffers.
I am OK with using Shell, just basic tars/logs/sqldumping/httpd.conf editing/rebooting etc.. anything beyond that like installing and configuring software I cant really do.
I guess I am looking at a dedicated option (linux based) with a host that'll setup software/modules modules for me when I ask, but doesn't really need to hold my hand all the time.
How are ThePlanet.com's servers? Do they manage the servers?
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Jul 12, 2008
i find a site hacked all the sites are vbulletin and has no protection .. i think it hacked by Fourm home
i mad a search for SSH and i didnt find any thing
can you advice me how to stop this way of hacking plz?
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Nov 13, 2008
I'm on a dedicated server and the httpd service of the server keeps going down which results in downtime for the number of hours until i dont realise that the site is down.
So when I realise the site is down, I ask the hosting support to look into the issue, they tell me the server loads are high and ask me to upgrade even when I just upgraded the server last month.
Generally the forum has around (250 - 300 members) + guests visitors online and is in the alexa top 20k sites.
The first thing I would want to do is hire a person who specializes in server optimization but then I have heard a lot of bad things like the server admin stealing databases and selling it in open market.
The second thing I wanted to do is contact vbulletin for server optimization but they need me to give them server specs and I dont know how to obtain them.
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Jan 10, 2008
What is the best way to setup a server for a vbulletin forum with 500-600 concurrent users.
I am torn between going with 1 large box, or a webserver,database server split.
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Sep 24, 2007
I am trying to transfer my Vb database to another server but I am getting error.
Here's what I did.
1. I exported my old database to my old server to my PC.
2. I imported my database to my new server (different domain)
Now I cannot continue because different errors occur. Please tell me the correct process to do this.
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Mar 30, 2008
i get this error after installation my vb in my site
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Jun 18, 2008
I've problem with my system (Dell vostro200) I've Mcafee security center and it will block some scripts running in the system during the browsing. I can't use any of vBulletin forums ( registration and posting ) I can't do even Mcafee online registratation also. I'm not an expert in os configurations.
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Jan 11, 2007
Recently I changed server providers, so now I'm looking for a way to transfer all the data to my new server. I have a total of 420GBs of files in my secondary HDD that need to be transferred.
The old server is at a 10Mbps line, the new one is at a 100Mbps one. From old server, less than half the pipe is being actively used. So theoretically, I should be able to transfer it all in about a week.
I tried
1) SCP. That was waaay too unreliable. And I couldn't get it to restart from the point left on whenever the transfer stopped (like when the servers were restarted).
2) Transfer using a web script. Way too slow, got to about 35GBs, total would take like 2 months.
Is there any other, reliable way of transferring data from server to server?
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Jan 31, 2007
to transfer a MySQL database with way over 1 million rows to a different server.
What is the best way to do this without losing any data? I've tried using the export feature in phpMyAdmin but it doesn't seem to handle it very well.
There has to be a feature in WHM or cPanel,
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Oct 23, 2009
In reference to my previous post, i want to tranfer accross 7GB of data, approximatly 80,000 files i believe it is (due to a gallery script).
It's currently on another host (on a webhosting account) which uses their own control panel which has no options but to manage databases, the only way i can see to do this is via FTP but it'll take me days. I've tried using compressing and backup scripts, but the damn execution time on the hosts server is too low to allow the files to be zipped. Are there any ways? Can i login to my VPS via SSH and anyhow pull off the files from the other hosts server?
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Jan 12, 2009
I'am looking for a dedicated server located in USA and Canada (one in US and one in Canada) with unlimited or large (5-10TB) bandwidth on 100mbit port ....
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Jun 7, 2009
server for send large number of emails per day?
What would be the best solution for that?
VPS ? Dedicated ? and Do I need to have Cpanel too?
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Mar 8, 2008
I have found SL can offer you 12*1 TB drive based systems, after RAID-5 and Win 2003 install you get just over 10 TB of storage. The monthly price works out to $1000/Month.
I know some time ago LeaseWeb offered these type of storages....any one else know of any others ?
Amazon S3 works out to about $1500 for 10 TB
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Oct 12, 2007
for months my server has been running fine, since about a week ago the server crashed and was up and down
the fault was found to be faulty ram which has been replaced.
now I have had every tom, dick & harry take a look at the server to get it stable again but im still having issues.
The server seems to run fine but crashes when I try and repair or backup my database.
the database is large like 30gig but the server used to do this fine before but it wont now, it get so far then hangs.
Server:
Dual Core Xeon
4GB Ram
2x 250GB HDD
Raid 1
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