Thread

My webhost recently started offering vps hosting, because I like the freedom of being able to mess around with apache/mysql config and it comes with more webspace than my current reseller account and only costs a bit more it seems interesting. However the vps only has 128mb of ram, I dont run any crazy resource hogging sites most dont even have much traffic but I was wondering under what circumstances 128mb “wont cut it”.

The other reason it’s cheap is because it comes with directadmin as control panel, anyone got experience with that? Because of the ssh access a lesser control panel seems less of an issue to me.

How many sites do you plan to host on it?  If you get a decent amount of traffic then chances are you’ll start running out of swap space…

I’d go for at least 256 unless you have say 10 or more sites, then go with at least 512.

I see VPS’ with 256m and 1 site collpse on a regular basis where I work.

Avoid a VPS unless you’re going to have a low-memory usage, extremely trim apache process running and low traffic.

Ok thanks I’ll pass on this then 😊

You can monitor the load on your VPS. Of course, nothing scales to tasks it is not dimensioned for. 256 MB of RAM and 1 site is not very meaningful when measuring and determining the parameters of a server collapse. A couple of terminal shortcuts: free -m and top. This will give you a rundown of memory usage and running processes. Match that to stats for the sites on the VPS and you should be able to see how you are doing and guesstimate the load it can handle. But the bottom line, repeated from awpti above, is that even a VPS of 256 MB needs to be trimmed down to get the most of the limited resources. Preferably no mailserver if you intend to max out on the web serving. Imo, you are always better off with a shared host than a VPS with only 128 MB of RAM. Same goes for a VPS with 256 MB of RAM trying to echo all the features of a loaded shared host (a common desire).

128 simply won’t cut it - you might be able to severely cripple Apache in it’s config and get it to work but it’ll be hard. Don’t even think about email, won’t happen.

I had a rough time getting Apache and a CI site to stay within Slicehost’s 256MB package - I ended up ditching Apache and using Lighttpd.

For future reference what would be considered the minimum for running a small vps that doesn’t suck then, 1gb? 512mb?

Well, a 256MB works fine for me.

All you have to do is optimise it enough, perhaps not use apache, and use lighttp instead?