I love Linode and use it for all my test servers and for hosting some other scientific computing type apps I run. These are all low to moderate traffic sites.

I'm working on a high traffic site now with a client now who has a dedicated server that's starting to struggle a little. We run WordPress to power the content and they have a forum running as well. We're considering a move to Linode.

The current server is pretty competitively priced. For about 300 a month we have 12gb of memory, dual Intel 2.26 GHz X5520 cpus. Pretty solid, put together in 2009. I'm not convinced we need to move away-- I'm more thinking maybe we just do some optimization: run nginx instead of apache, for example, improving caching, and so on.

However, we also really like what Linode offers. For the 320 plan, we can get 16gb of memory (over 12), larger storage (768 over 500), cheaper daily backups (real cost savings here), etc. The backups are a lot cheaper than we can get, plus we have the option of adding more memory in a pinch, and -- if really necessary -- upgrading to the 640 plan. Also we can spin up extra servers, put the forum on one slice, the wordpress on another, etc. It's just a lot more flexible.

But I'm not sure the VPS will really perform better. What do you think? Is a big linode up to the task? I want to be convinced, but I'm not convinced. So convince me/give me tips.

FWIW, we run all of Linode on Linodes themselves, where possible. In my mind, what you're proposing is not even in question - a Linode, and definitely multiple Linodes, can do quite a bit. This is 2013, almost 2014 - hardware is dead! :)

-Chris

@caker You run the linode hosts on linodes? omg, linodeception!

Moving on, a linode should certainly improve performance, plus your client won't have to worry about hardware issues... and you get very good support

I think that switching from a single dedicated server to a single Linode might not be the answer; I don't think you'll see that big of an improvement there. Where you're more likely to see an improvement, I think, would be with multiple smaller Linodes. Splitting the database and application server is normally the low hanging fruit there, and it sounds like you've also got a busy forum that might deserve its own linode. From that point, you'd normally do a clustered solution of some kind.

Guspaz, saw your post after we made these decisions, but that is exactly what we did. We ended up doing three linodes, 8gb for the mysql server, 4 for WordPress, and 4 for the forums.

Easy transfer. Pretty smooth sailing. Everything is fast, load is low, very happy so far.

I agree with Caker here. Moving from nginx to Apache is probably a good idea in any case. You may be able to run with an 8 GB Linode instead of the 16 GB. Linode also offers way more flexibility to your operations as compared to a dedicated server. You can resize, add a node, take snapshot backups, rebuild, and so on. The management features alone are worth quite a bit. Linode is not just a server - it's an entire platform. And a very well done platform, I may say.

Most people try to improve performance by moving from Apache to nginx, not the other way around...