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dmwilliams
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:24 am 
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db3l wrote:
dmwilliams wrote:
Ubuntu server won't even run on 256mb of ram in my experience. maybe it could run LAMP.

I'm not quite sure how you could run LAMP without also running Ubuntu server (assuming Ubuntu for the "L")?

Regardless of the question about smaller offerings (which I don't personally think is worth it), of course you can run a server in that space - unless you're talking about setting it up with a desktop of some sort, or an application server that is memory intensive. Certainly there should be room above the core system for a variety of purposes.

My Ubuntu 8.04 Linode used for an internal business application by multiple locations includes postfix, sshd, nginx, my Python-based application server, a PostgreSQL server and a few other non-standard daemons like openvpn and bacula, and only needs around 100MB of resident memory. It also runs a jetty-based servlet (in a minimally configured jvm) for JasperReport-based report generation that needs almost as much (!) by itself as everything else - about 80MB. And that's steady state operational size for a production system. So a 256MB Linode would still have room for ~75MB filesystem/buffer caching with the java servlet or ~150MB without. Certainly doable in 256MB if I needed to, though I'm certainly glad to have the additional space in a Linode 512 for additional buffering.

Then there's my corporate web server (also Ubuntu 8.04) - largely a static (ngnix) site with a few dynamic (apache, though not PHP) pages. Runs in about 50MB.

-- David

Thanks for the reply. I found this really interesting.
Everything I do on the VPS tends to be really demanding.
I had 512Mb and a 256Mb swap and I was maxing out the ram and the swap on a regular basis.
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dmwilliams
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 12:34 am 
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sweh wrote:
dmwilliams wrote:
256mb might be enough ram for my mom, but not for me.
Ubuntu server won't even run on 256mb of ram in my experience. maybe it could run LAMP.

You may not be able to do a normal Ubuntu install in 256Mb of RAM, but you don't do that with linode. I'd be VERY surprised if it didn't run in 256Mb, though. I'm running CentOS with lighttpd, postfix, DNS, ssh, uucp, and a few other things and using...
Code:
% free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           512        435         76          0         36        339
-/+ buffers/cache:         59        452
Swap:          127          3        123


Huh, my usage must have gone up; it's now 59Mb. This used to comfortably live on a linode64 :-)

Isn't 435mb the amount of used ram?
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db3l
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 3:32 am 
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dmwilliams wrote:
Isn't 435mb the amount of used ram?

In a literal sense it is, in that the kernel is using that much for one reason or another. But the vast majority is just being used as a filesystem cache, so it's not really part of the working set (or minimum requirements) of the system. Linux (and most operating systems) will make use of otherwise unused - by applications - memory this way to improve performance and help reduce and/or improve the efficiency of disk I/O.

But the processes on that system only require 59MB of real memory for themselves. Overall system performance might suffer without the cache (but might not - depends on usage patterns) but it could run without swapping.

-- David
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db3l
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 3:40 am 
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dmwilliams wrote:
Thanks for the reply. I found this really interesting.
Everything I do on the VPS tends to be really demanding.
I had 512Mb and a 256Mb swap and I was maxing out the ram and the swap on a regular basis.

There are certainly activities or heavy loads that will require far more resources than an entry level VPS. Then again, there are also some simple (mis)configurations that can appear to need more resource than they might.

For example, start with a default Apache installation with a PHP-based web application, put even a modest load on the system and you might thrash horribly on a Linode 512. That's because most distributions have default Apache configurations that permit far too many processes to run simultaneously for a VPS of that size. It can be counter-intuitive, but in such cases trimming back the configuration can actually both use less resource and still handle a heavier load on the same size VPS.

But just as there are heavy loads that necessary require large resources, there's an awful lot that can still be done nowadays with very modest resources.

-- David
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hwilliams
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 3:58 pm 
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Some of you may consider this off subject but as far as TESTING goes, VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ which is totally free and a very simple download/installation works GREAT on my personal Vista 64 box.

I keep a very basic (700MB) version of Centos (my preferred OS) as a templete. It takes me about 5 minutes to clone the template and then download any apps I want to experiment with. It's extreamly easy to upper or lower the compulter resources allocated to the virtual OS, such as RAM, network setups, etc. Sometimes, when I really screw things up, I erase the virtual OS and start over. When I'm completely done experimenting, I normally erase it to conserve disk space. If you're using the same OS on linode, it's very easy to upload the exact virtual Vbox image to linode and boot it up!

I know this is not EXACTLY the same thing as using a linode but at the very least, it's a great way for proof in concept before screwing around with an existing linode or purchasing a new one.

So far, every OS I've tried on Vbox works great including at least ten distributions of Linux, as well as a perminant, always running, XP Pro installation.

I used to have six computers in my office. I'm now down to two, one Windows box and one Linux box.


Hal Williams
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bkerensa
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 12:55 am 
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I could use a 256 Linode to run a CDN.....
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Guspaz
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 10:07 am 
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VirtualBox is nice in that it's mostly opensource (although it's now an Oracle product, so unless somebody forks it, keep that in mind), but it's not nearly as fast/effective as VMWare.

VMWare Player is free, and nowadays has most of the features that VMWare Workstation has. I believe the only major thing missing is multiple snapshots (vmware player will only do one snapshot, IIRC).
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Velvet Elvis
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 12:07 am 
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Try prgmr.com, but be aware of the fact that you get what you pay for. Support isn't really in their vocabulary.


Sorry if mentioning other providers is forbidden. I've not posted here much.
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Deckert
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 4:48 pm 
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Guspaz wrote:
VirtualBox [...] it's not nearly as fast/effective as VMWare.


I tend to disagree here ... I've found that the two match each other very closely in terms of performance. Here's a short review done at the end of 2009 comparing performance of the two:

http://marsbox.com/blog/reviews/vmware- ... ox-part-2/

--deckert
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obs
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 7:48 pm 
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Regarding vmware vs virtualbox, for mac users vmware isn't free (although an academic licence is pretty cheap if you can get one) however in my experience vmware is considerably faster especially on disk intensive operations.
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Guspaz
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 10:04 am 
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A lot of my experience in comparing performance was sitting down and using Windows XP or Ubuntu through the virtualizer, not in disk or CPU benchmarks. So my measure of performance is really responsiveness.

I also found virtualbox to be pretty buggy when I used it, although that was probably a year or so ago. Of course, since then, Sun Virtualbox became Oracle Virtualbox, and I object to Oracle on principle due to their efforts to destroy opensource.
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obs
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:51 pm 
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My comment on the disk io is from experience, I ran a local copy of ubuntu for testing using vb since version 2. Now on version 3 it's still no where near as fast as vmware fusion when running database queries or even just booting up.
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ruchirablog
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 7:45 am 
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dmwilliams wrote:
Ubuntu server won't even run on 256mb of ram in my experience. maybe it could run LAMP.


How sad! I run ubuntu 10.10 + nginx+ mysql + phpmyadmin + php-fpm + wordpress blog on 64MB XEN Box! :roll:
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