I'm planning on starting a forum using vbulletin and hosting it on my linode, which is presently a 512.

Right now it has exactly one user: me

But of course I hope it will grow.

Unfortunately, vbulletin requires apache and does not support nginx.

I'm assuming that with a few users, a 512 is enough. But does anyone have any info on what to expect for future growth?

i.e.,

a forum with X concurrent users on a linode of size X...
a forum with Y concurrent users on a linode of size Y...

I'd be curious to hear people's experiences.

I don't use vbulletin but I doubt it "requires" apache. I imagine it has rewrite rules that can be translated to nginx.

If you do use apache set your maxclients to around 10, use the mysql small my.cnf, if you're using some form of fcgi php handler set the max children to around 4.

You'll be able to handle a lot of "concurrent" users with that.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

Anybody know where these files are stored on a Ubuntu 10.04 box?

/usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.1/examples/my-small.cnf

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

And it's perfectly safe to replace the contents of my.cnf with what's inside my-small.cnf?

BTW, it depends on what OS you're using. In debian-land, it's more normal to drop whataver .cnf you want to use into /etc/mysql/conf.d

They state they require apache. Which leaves you in the classic situation of "I have a problem" - "well, we won't help you because you're not running a supported config".

I'm also looking at IP.Boards



Thanks, that's very useful.

Forums are ebil!

Anyway if you're destined to use apache, one thing to consider is using fcgi for php and switching to mpm_worker, it'll save you ram.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

I run phpBB3 using Apache. I used mpm_prefork for a while just fine. You should be able to handle in the 25 range for MaxClients. I switched to mpm_worker/fcgi last year and that's worked great. I've had as many as 300 logged in users according to it (think that means activity in last 5 mins).

How big is the current board or is this something new?

Brand new.

I know how to run Apache. I have run nginx successfully. I haven't run litespeed, though it seems to have a very good reputation. I haven't looked at lighttp.

Currently running vBulletin 3.x on Litespeed. I have a 4GB node for database, 1GB for web app server.

~2000 concurrent users during the day.
~3.5 million posts.

It works quite nicely... for now using Apache would be no problem for you, but unless you have mountains of RAM to use, I find Apache just doesn't scale as well as some other options (Litespeed included).

The difficulty with vB, I think, is that it just keeps growing and growing... it was in December that I upped the DB from 2GB to 4GB after tweaking things to the max.

Thanks very much for this info! That is very helpful. I haven't decided vb vs IP.Boards yet but that's very helpful for sizing.

If you don't mind me asking, how much bandwidth a month do you serve with that?

Around one terabyte. Note that I am also very close to the breaking point of needing to have more than one web app server, but I've been trying to avoid that as long as possible.

Here are some samples of 60 second graphs (this is from around the peak daily load).

PHP processing requests (these are litespeed fcgi):



Traffic output:



Total requests into the server:



The first and last one, if you compare, give you an idea of the Requests per Second that require PHP processing vs the ones that don't. So this is why in my experience, vBulletin with Apache where every handler is running PHP is a huge use of resources and likely unnecessary.

I run a vBulletin 3.7.x forum with about 300+ simultaneous users.

It's currently on a Linode 2048.

I'd been having some trouble recently, but, I was a retard:

a) didn't have mod_expires running (I thought it was, but, no....)
b) I let some vBulletin threads (discussions) get out of hand, if you have a thread with over 2000+ posts, it can hurt the server.

I run prefork (not sure if vBulletin plays well with the mpm-worker implementation of PHP).

We're going to migrate to 4.1 soon, after I do that, I'm going to investigate either using nginx for everything, or (for sure) at least for the front end to serve up the static content.