Need feedback regarding a dedicated host

[Grassy]

I have a client that is coming in that has a board similar to vBulletin (linear view) and he has accumulated around 260,000 posts since early November of last year and currently does about 2,000 posts a day. He also has a large number of views to go along with the posts as you can imagine.

I am in the process of trying to determine what specs I need to get started. His current software is proprietary and they are not giving me many details as far as bandwidth used, etc. I plan to go to VO based on Eva's feedback. I just want to get a budget set as close as possible for him.

I have looked at both Eva's and Martin's boards which do very good volume. I'm not sure of their daily post amounts but they seem to be similar in size as to my client.

So if we choose vBulletin as the board software, based on the above information can you give me any rough idea as to what server specs would be required and what approximate bandwidth we'd be looking at? I have read a lot about the new version 2.0 using many more resources than previously but if there is a way to maybe scale down features that are turned on I'd love to try it out. I currently use WWWThreads and am not familiar with vBulletin but for a pure linear view it seems far superior to anything else out there.

Thanks for any help!

[Freddie Bingham]

Eva and Martin would best be able to give you this information but I can say this...

They currently have much more server power than is needed by their forums. They just like to have a nice fat cushion for future expandability. I would say having 512 megs of ram is a good start but as far as processors they have dual 833 (or 866 as eva has a slightly faster setup).

I can't speak for their bandwidth numbers though (possibly 30-40 gigs per month?)

[Grassy]

That is better than expected. I guess I was thinking at least a hundred or more gigs but I know that depends on a lot of factors. I will see if either of them reply to this or possibly send them a private message asking their advice.

One thing that I may not have made clear in the original post, this message board client would be the only activity on the entire server.

Thanks for the help.

[eva2000]

Jumps in :)

Yup my vB forum seems to be very close in stats to your clients... Martin's forum gets alot more activity than mine...

My stats:
- 30,000 - 38,000 pageviews/day
- just under 209,000 posts
- up to 130 new threads/day
- up to 1,900 new posts/day
- 30 - 730 concurrent users ~ average around 50 - 120
- bandwidth used
= with vBulletin gzip compression enabled it's around 25 - 35 GB/month
= without gzip compression it's around 40 - 60GB/month

i have 15 sites on the server including my vB forum and my site http://infilmbox.com (15,000 - 18,000 visitors/day) has a forum as well using ikonboard.com's perl board with 30 - 215 concurrent users as well

As freddie said, our servers are way more powerful than i need since my load is around 0.05 - 0.55 (divide by 2 dual cpus)

my server

Dual p3 866
768mb ram
18gb scsi hdd

[Freddie Bingham]

Ok according to our control panel Martin did 21.9 gigs last month (I did only 4.2). Martin avg's 2300-2500 posts per day.

Remember that vbulletin's usage of gzip on the server side to compress pages reduces the amount of bandwidth you will consume and generally speeds up your server since it has much shorter pages to send out.

[eva2000]

As to a recommendation i'm slighty spoiled and biased to dual cpu servers now hehe - i LOVE THEM!!

Really depends on your client's anticipated growth..

i mean you can start of with a

P3 933
512mb ram
18gb scsi hdd

and that would last you for while... then as you growth you'd probably need more memory, maybe 768 or 1gb ram.. next would normally be faster hard drives but in the case of VO's 18gb 10,000 rpm scsi drives i think they are fast enough :) so after that would be the cpu

now VO turnaround time is slower than the large hosts for hardware but alot cheaper = setup fee only.

Right now p3 866 cpus are the sweat spot so

a dual p3 866
512mb ram
18gb scsi

would last your client for some time

[b]Note[b] my server's mysql is fine tuned for better performance - out of the box mysql defaults aren't recommended

hope that helps :)

[Grassy]

I just spoke to Daniel at VO and he was very helpful in giving me some information on both your and Martin's servers. He recommends Package 4 and thinks Package 3 would do with a little more ram.

Your post regarding MySQL is interesting. I would definitely like it tweaked for performance. Is that something that VO knows and can get done before we start or would it be my responsibility? Did you do it yourself or did they do it for you?

Thanks for the input!

[Freddie Bingham]

Eva could supply you with his my.cnf and you would be on your way. Just make sure to let VO know to put your mysql database into a partition that is not going to run out of space quickly like the default of /var/mysql does.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Grassy
I just spoke to Daniel at VO and he was very helpful in giving me some information on both your and Martin's servers. He recommends Package 4 and thinks Package 3 would do with a little more ram.

Your post regarding MySQL is interesting. I would definitely like it tweaked for performance. Is that something that VO knows and can get done before we start or would it be my responsibility? Did you do it yourself or did they do it for you?

Thanks for the input! yup Daniel is very helpful so are the rest of the VO team :D

mysql tweaking is basically your responsibilty but when you get the server setup and running for a while, pop into the mysql forum here http://vbulletin.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=18 for help

[eva2000]

Originally posted by freddie
Eva could supply you with his my.cnf and you would be on your way. Just make sure to let VO know to put your mysql database into a partition that is not going to run out of space quickly like the default of /var/mysql does. ah yes that is important.. when i ordered my dedicated server i requested the 18gb scsi hdd to be repartitioned again to allocate 4gb of space to /var/mysql rather than the default 250mb space it is partitioned for

/var/mysql is where your mysql databases are stored and vB does group kinda big - i have 8 mysql databases occupying 450mb of space already

[Grassy]

I'll refer to this post when ordering. Thanks again for the feedback today.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by freddie
Eva could supply you with his my.cnf and you would be on your way. Just make sure to let VO know to put your mysql database into a partition that is not going to run out of space quickly like the default of /var/mysql does.

well your server with come with a /etc/my.cnf file with only

set-variable = max_connections=500

you need to change that depending on your mysql extended status output (how mysql is performing)

i have this in my config kinda over kill but i have 768mb ram you can lower these from what i have - i suggest you run using the defaults first for the first week and see how it performs


[mysqld]
set-variable = max_connections=200
set-variable = key_buffer=32M
set-variable = join_buffer=6M
set-variable = record_buffer=7M
set-variable = sort_buffer=9M
set-variable = table_cache=256
set-variable = myisam_sort_buffer_size=32M