Migration and Server requirements

[david.steadson]

Hi,

I'm looking at converting a large VB3.7 forum to XenForo. The the site get's around 10,000 visits a day, 3 million page vies a month and a little under a terabyte of traffic a month. The current mySQL db is 32Gb (including member images, though this isn't extensive)

Has anyone got experience with a similar size forum and can make recommendations on (a) appropriate hardware (b) migration

The site is non-commercial so funds are limited.

 

[Walter]

Xenforo is lighter on the server than vBulletin, so if you currently have no performance problems your old hardware should do well.

For a forum this size I recommend Xenforo Enhanced search as it takes load of the database.

 

[Claudio]

Non appropriate reply, I thought you were looking for import services.

 

[david.steadson]

Non appropriate reply, I thought you were looking for import services.

Probably will be

 

[david.steadson]

Xenforo is lighter on the server than vBulletin, so if you currently have no performance problems your old hardware should do well.

For a forum this size I recommend Xenforo Enhanced search as it takes load of the database.

The old hardware isn't doing well, but thinking it might be sensible to update the software at the same time as the hardware. Having said that the hardware should be coping but isn't, with intermittent lag being a significant problem. I suspect there's some misconfiguration issue. Unfortunately I don't have full access to the details at present (it's a site we're looking at taking over management of), just trying to get a handle on what we can expect as running costs.

 

[Slavik]

a) Can you get your current server specs (hardware), your budget (per month for the server) and what your average stats are (online users). If you don't want to post them publicly drop me a private conversation.

b) I've converted quite a few forums, as big as, and bigger than yours without issue, so that's not a problem. Whilst the standard web importer will work, it will probably take days so id highly recommend looking at http://xenforo.com/community/resources/vbulletin-big-board-importer-vbulletin-3-vbulletin-4.1981/

 

[david.steadson]

There's around 2000 active users. Normally 50 to 100 logged in, up to 700 guests, but it appears half of them may be chinese hackbots. Network Stats - In: Average 201.11 Kbps, Max 781.84Kbps
Out: Average 2.6 Mbps, max 25.2 Mbps. Current specs (installed 2009)

CentOS 2.6.18-92.e15
SuperMicro X7QCE Intel Xeon HexCore QuadProc Sata [4Proc]
4x2GB Generic RAM
4x2.13GHz Intel Xeon-Tigerton (7320-Quadcore)
Adaptec 3405 Drive Controller
Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM WD1500ADFD for Database
Seagate Cheetah ST373455SS [73GB] for system

I have worries about the drives (now out of warranty) and think we need to move the site to new hardware asap. Tending towards a VPS.

Budget - whatever gets acceptable performance and data integrity. Current advertising revenue (not optimised) is about $100/mth, but clearly that's not enough to cover the costs. I think we should be able to have a reasonable system with firewall and backup for under $500/mth, ideally less as the site costs need to be covered by advertising and donations.

 

[Slavik]

Right thats nice to work with. I'll drop you a conversation.

 

[david.steadson]

Thanks.

Related to this, what's people's experiences when dealing with members who are attached to VB3.7 - how similar can things be for the average member?