dedicated server needed?

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Acorn

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My forum has been having issues with overage of Apache connexions and occasional memory overuse. Each time I go to my host and they make a few tweaks and the site goes back up, but this happens a few times a week.

Forum's basic stats:

Usually 3,000 - 4,200 posts per day
240 - 270 members on daily, most users on at a time usually 80 to 90 daily

That's the basic stats. If this was your forum would you think it needed a dedicated server? We are on a good VPS right now. We are preparing for an upgrade and theme change to eliminate a lot of coding problems, but my programmer hasn't gotten back to me yet when I emailed him to let him know it's ready to upgrade.

Anyway, what I am wondering is do we also need a server upgrade as well. At what point does a forum just need its own dedicated server.
 
It really depends on what type of VPS the forum is being run on as well as the Physical RAM and Burstable Ram is. If you have the money for a dedicated server, by all means, it helps a lot. If you do not have at least $140 a month for a decent dedi, then do not do it. What's the specs of your current VPS server?
 
I'm not even sure, all I do know is we are running into constant Apache connexion overages. Seems to happen at rather random times but definitely more now than when we started 4 months ago.

I'm going to try and look it up and see. I'm pretty much a coding and server dummy.

Okay I found the stats here:

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg30 ... _stats.png
 
Those aren't very useful stats, Acorn. Tells us about your site rather than your server.

What hosting package are you using? Advanced VPS can be better than basic dedis.
 
A VPS option will be cheaper for you. I suggest x10vps.com or alienvps.com
 
Now that I have your traffic stats, I need to compare them with your limits on your vps. What is your RAM, your Burstable RAM, HD Space, etc.
 
This is what I was told when I inquired, from my host:

"You get 1 dedicated CPU core of processing power burstable up to 8 cores: http://www.igxhost.com/openvz-virtual-p ... hybrid.php

You have 1024MB + 128MB Dedicated RAM. We do not offer burstable RAM on our plans as that results in overselling.

You also have 60GB of dedicated disk space."

I hope this helps you guys!
 
To be honest your VPS SHOULD be able to run your site properly. Maybe go for another host.
 
Whether a site can run on a certain type of hosting is very varied. It depends on many factors such as the forum software used and version, what mods are used and how well they are coded, the amount of traffic and what actions they do. Searching is alot more resource intensive then editing your signature for example. Also the amount of traffic at once is important like in your case as it is down to too many connection at once. If you are lucky and have all the visits spread nicely over the day then you can last longer on a certain setup. If you have 90% of you traffic and hits during peak time then you will have to upgrade sooner.
 
Fowler said:
Whether a site can run on a certain type of hosting is very varied. It depends on many factors such as the forum software used and version, what mods are used and how well they are coded, the amount of traffic and what actions they do. Searching is alot more resource intensive then editing your signature for example. Also the amount of traffic at once is important like in your case as it is down to too many connection at once. If you are lucky and have all the visits spread nicely over the day then you can last longer on a certain setup. If you have 90% of you traffic and hits during peak time then you will have to upgrade sooner.
Click to expand...
Generally speaking, a stable version of SMF on a site with 100ish users on at one time max should be fine with the specs mentioned above. You're right though, if everyone crams on at one time and starts trying to search for things it might be time for a switch.

If you look on the SMF support forums you might find some ways to optimize your site to make it more server and resource friendly too.
 
One badly coded or very resource intensive mod or addon could easily cause massive problems and throw that concept out of the window. The software might be ok but it is what you do with it after installing it that can be sources of problems.
 
I've been thinking that the problem is our theme which has horrible errors. thankfully my programmer got back to me today about the upgrade, we hope the upgrade does the trick. The disk space only increases by 1 or 2 MB a day and at that rate should be fine to go for years on the space we have. That was never the problem, the connexions in Apache are.

Thank you everybody for weighing in!!
 
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