Hosting for a large forum

DiscoKandy

DiscoKandy

DiscoKandy

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Hi,
I'm looking to get a Vbulletin forum hosted, what kind of hosting would i need? It wouldn't be a hugely active forum but have potentially upto 2000 hits per day.

What kind of hardware bandwidth should I be looking for from a hosting company?


Mark
 
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How many members, posts and concurrent users? Those are the 3 main stats which determine the hardware you need :)

If your users are just viewing threads rather than all posting a lot, that'll reduce your requirements.

I'd suggest you're looking at a dedicated server with dual opterons (possibly dual dual core - not really that much extra cost, but fantastic performance), 2Gb - 4Gb RAM and hardware RAID 10 or RAID1 hard disks (SCSI if you can afford it - though RAID10 SCSI is a bit excessive :p)

On the software side, if you run Apache you'll be wasting an awful lot of RAM. lighttpd (lightweight webserver - it rocks) + fastcgi PHP + eaccelerator (PHP script caching - save wasting time re-compiling) + memcached (supremely fantastic MySQL caching - vB support this) will give you a completely kick-ass solution. I administrate a forum using this setup (minus memcached - no need) and it's fantastic. Survived a Slashdotting on far lesser hardware than what I described above :)

The most important hardware factor is RAM, followed by CPUs. You don't ever want to swap to disk (it kills performance), and it's better to have more cores because that means more concurrency is possible which is Good News when there's lots of users hanging around. You might even want to consider a load-balanced setup :)

As for bandwidth, that depends on the size of graphics, whether you allow hosted attachments, and how many pageviews you do. But I'd guess ~300Gb - 500Gb/mo?

Also, I think it goes without saying that you don't want to even go near shared or VDS hosting for this....we host some forums with ~100 concurrent users each on our shared hosting kit, but their databases are small (ie, not many users or posts) - I'd say about 200 concurrent users is the limit really.

If you mean 2000 unique users per day as opposed to 2000 concurrent users, then you might be able to get away with a more standard hosting setup - it depends on the factors I listed at the beginning :)
 
http://www.dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html

The level one is what I'm getting tonight.

$7.95/month for 2 years with no setup fees or 9.95/month with no contract and a 49.95 setup fee or 1year at 9.95 with no setup fee.

1TB of bandwidth
20gb of space
unlimited mysql databases

Also, if you want it can just automatically install PhpBB(not vbulletin I know, but it would be easier.)

I can't help with the hardware or if it's capable as Beansprout can, but that's got plent of space and bandwidth.
 
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Don't be deceived by the big numbers. Dreamhost and many others are selling usage-based hosting, not number-based.

In other words, they have hard CPU time usage limits - 90minutes/day iirc. So there's absolutely no chance of hosting a large forum on there :)
 
Thanks for your help guys, i've been looking at renting a dedicated server (Single Core Xeon 3.0Ghz) through www.register1.net

I'm not sure quite what you mean by concurrent or unique users, but it is designed to be a members only forum, were you must register first before viewing threads.

It is not a conventional forum as we know it, users cannot reply to threads only view them. They can however post their own threads. A discussion forum may however be created to allow free discussion, however this is not expected to be heavily used. So in short the forum is heavily focused on viewing threads rather than posting replies and threads. It would also be regualry pruned to remove out of date threads.

It is also necessary that attachments can be uploaded through the forum, though these will be limited to 50KB jpeg.

I want to build it at minimum cost to begin with, as it could turn out to be a complete flop, but also could potentially be quite successful, at which point I would have the funds to upgrade the hardware.

Would a entry level dedicated server be suitable?
 
Concurrent means "how many users online at any period of time", whereas unique just means how many people visited *during* a certain period of time.

So you could have 2,000 concurrent users, or 2,000 unique users spread across a day (so maybe only 83 users per hour (83*24 = 2,000), so you could roughly say 80 concurrent users at any given time, which isn't a lot :))

I'd say starting out with a cheap server is a good idea. I think if you're successful you'll quickly be limited by the RAM, unless you use lighttpd instead of Apache. I'm not sure if that server uses HyperThreading, either - it'd be very useful if it does.

Pruning the database is a good idea - it keeps the database size down. Notice how these forums haven't been pruned since the server got a whacking great upgrade :)
 
its more like to be 2000 unique users in that case, though they are likely to check the forum at regular intervals in the day.

Would it be feasible to start off with say a register1.net VDS to start with and then migrate to a dedicated server when demand required it ?

Thanks for you detailed replies by the way, much appreciated.
 
Beansprout said:
Don't be deceived by the big numbers. Dreamhost and many others are selling usage-based hosting, not number-based.

In other words, they have hard CPU time usage limits - 90minutes/day iirc. So there's absolutely no chance of hosting a large forum on there :)
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Not anymore they don't :)

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/

(Ignore the zany in-your-face HUMOUR)

How much CPU can I use?
We’re very flexible on this. Basically, as long as your site isn’t affecting the performance of the server, you’re fine!

Once your site starts to adversely affect the shared hosting server you’re on though, we may have to take action. If your site is just causing the load to creep up on your machine, we’ll try and contact you and give some suggestions on how to make your site less resource-intensive. If your site (or just a particular script) is causing the entire server to become unresponsive, we may have to take immediate action and temporarily disable whatever was bringing the machine down. Hopefully the problem was just a one-time thing that can be fixed! If it turns out to be an ongoing issue, we may need to move you to a different server eventually.
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Ah, cool. Always knew they were better than the lesser companies of their type :)

Point still stands though....you ain't gonna run a large forum on any form of shared hosting :)
 
Oh, certainly. Just pointing out that, whilst Dreamhost undoubtedly oversell, they're not a fly-by-night and provide a pretty damn good level of service, objectively as well as given the pricing.
 
how much then, roughly, for your own server to host a big forum?

I had a look at 2host but they don't give prices.

was just curious ........ :)

edit: just had a look at register1, so it's 59quid/month + 99 setup. that is lot of brass. how would one fund something like that? lots of ads and sponsors?
 
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There's some pricing here :)

You only really need a dedicated server when you're hosting a *large* forum and you should be able to cover the cost with CPM ads (where you're paid per impression). Adbrite for one seems to sell advertising for lots of forums, and the rates can be :eek:

Also, don't forget to count VAT on those prices if it's a personal endeavour.
 
robmiller said:
Oh, certainly. Just pointing out that, whilst Dreamhost undoubtedly oversell, they're not a fly-by-night and provide a pretty damn good level of service, objectively as well as given the pricing.
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this is totally off-topic ..but here we are on the global internet ... and you are 3 miles down the road. btw funny schooly carnival today.
 
Beansprout said:
There's some pricing here :)

You only really need a dedicated server when you're hosting a *large* forum and you should be able to cover the cost with CPM ads (where you're paid per impression). Adbrite for one seems to sell advertising for lots of forums, and the rates can be :eek:

Also, don't forget to count VAT on those prices if it's a personal endeavour.
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didn't see that. all's i can say is :eek: ........99+vat/month. good luck OP. stay small at first and then upgrade as you require, unless you got lots of cash that needs spending.
 
blade007 said:
didn't see that. all's i can say is :eek: ........99+vat/month. good luck OP. stay small at first and then upgrade as you require, unless you got lots of cash that needs spending.
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It is a lot of cash. Usually there is an upgrade path, reseller -> vps -> dedicated server.
 
blade007 said:
this is totally off-topic ..but here we are on the global internet ... and you are 3 miles down the road. btw funny schooly carnival today.
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Not that much of a coincidence since we're both close to OcUK but still pretty neat :cool: Where abouts are you?
 
Hi!

I post in this thread as I also have a similar (but not quite ) a question. I am thinking of building an website (ultimately commercial purpose). Basically it is topic-focused site, as such, there is news, articles and some kind of forum or article feedback.

I do not know much about Web technologies but reckon willing to learn and master them so I also think of using this project as a learning opportunity. I know there are software so that you can deploy forum in a very little time and effort but bacause of such rapid deployment, I suspect there are not many flexibility in customising it ( both with features and technologies).

The question is how should I start. Hard code can help my learning and ultimately preserve flexibility but it could be too much work that I will never end up with truly working version. If I should start with some pre-made components, what are they.

Sorry if there are some stupidities in my arguments.
 
So Beansprout.. dreamhost would be ok for me just for a kinda site front type thing and I'm thinking about an uploader like (Tru's? The twobeds.com one). It'd survive that I take it?
 
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