Hi,
new on Linode - got a Linode 1024... my first one.
I have Ubuntu with LAMP installed using Zpanel too, postfix, dovecot, spamassassin, amavisd,... also an openerp server.
I have frequent reboots and swap is constantly full - i guess its cause out of memory.
Would like to host a few Joomla websites, a Magento store, the OpenERP server and the mail server.

My question is - to an expert, does this sound like i need to upgrade my linode? Am i by far underpowered?

Also i was wondering - would it be smarter to upgrade this linode or add another linode as an upgrade? - like one for web+mail and one for openerp - or one for web only and one for mail and openerp...something like that.

thanks in advance for any help!

Figure this out first. Use htop or something, or longview - see what's using so much RAM (and yes, you are running quite a lot for a 1GB node), see if you can tune it and then try again.

Yes i checked with Longview already... trying to optimize...

- Mail virus and spam checker take a lot but it seems that is necessary. Clamd 195MB, Spamd child 88mb, spamd 25mb

- Mysql - i tried to optimize settings but have to leave innodb on. 230mb

- apache: upgraded php to 5.5.4 tried to switch to mpm-worker but can't get zpanel to run with it - it seems to not like a lot of settings in vhosts files then.
apache was taking 400mb, now i reduced max clients to 10 and have nginx as reverse proxy so it is around 200-250mb

- openerp isn't even filled with data yet...worried that if i have all the DB filled and work on it that it will take some good amount too...

Yes.

Personally, I'd lose zpanel, does nothing but eat up resources and bastardizes whatever OS you install such that's it's unrecognizable (and unmanageable) except via zpanel.

Depending on your email traffic and number of users, a decent email server will full antispam, antivirus can eat up a Gig all by itself.

Mixing Openerp with anything else is dicey, especially if you're trying to use zpanel.

And websites, especially those with frameworks can eat a Gig without really trying (once again depends on how many and how much traffic).

You might shoehorn everything in a single Gig VPS to play, but for production you'd probably be way better off (performance and security wise) with three separate VPS systems. Then you can tailor (and grow) the config of each specifically for it's purpose, instead of a mashup for the three-way combo.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Content scanning is always going to eat CPU and memory. Try to reject as much spam as possible before it gets to that stage. There are a number of Postfix settings that are computationally cheap and block spam (note that the specific configuration on that wiki page may be outdated, based on the version of Postfix you're using, but the principles are sound). If you can tolerate the delay it will introduce for new senders, greylisting cuts down on a huge chunk of spam.

thanks for that info - i will try to optimize postfix settings.
meanwhile i upgraded to linode 1536 and swap is not full anymore and no system reboots so far.

But i will continue to work on optimizing that.

However, when growing - when my openerp DB is imported and i am working with it, will it be smarter to get a seperate new linode, OR to upgrade the current linode if i hit any limits?
Cause i saw by upgrading the linode size it will also give me more cpu power and so on, right?
any suggestion on that?

thanks!

Hi again,

Still - my basic question
With growing demand for more resources - is it smarter to get seperate linodes for example for mailserver/webserver/openerpserver, or upgrade one Linode?

Cause i saw by upgrading the linode size it will also give me more cpu power and so on, right?

What's the best practise with that?

thanks!

Hi,

How about the following setup?
1. Cheap shared web hosting for maintaining domains, DNS records, mails, etc...
- cost: ~ $30-$50 / year
2. Linode
- clean install, LAMP, joomla, erp

that sounds interesting, but somehow maybe it is a disadvantage to be emailing from a shared host? - isn't it more likely to be wrongly identified as a spammer in case someone "ever" abused that shared server? and spam filters as well as antivirus might cost extra anyway for email on a shared host?

Also - still my question remains the same - not relating directly to my setup, but commonly, for performance, is it better to upgrade ONE Linode and have all services on it, or to have multiple smaller Linodes for different services?

This is vertical scaling vs horizontal scaling. It's an often-asked question with no one correct answer

Vertical scaling (a larger server) has the benefit of no increase in administrative work.

Horizontal scaling has the benefit of redundancy (you don't have all your eggs in one basket), but at the cost of more administrative work (two servers to maintain).

In both cases you get an increase in CPU capacity.

If you're happy with how everything is setup and running, but just need more RAM, then upgrading to a larger server is the simple solution. If you have issues other than RAM then you might think about how a two server configuration could benefit you.

In my experience, mailserver administration can be a bigger workload than webserver admin (that is, if you're providing mail service for multiple clients, not just personal accounts).

You might consider outsourcing mail entirely -- to a professional, third-party provider. It would significantly reduce the load and memory usage on your server (no need for spam/virus scanning) and make for less work for you -- at a cost of course. I certainly would not farm it out to a shared hosting service.

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sleddog