Moving from Dedicated server to VPS

[JK2447]

Hi All, just wanted to speak my thoughts out loud so that you good people could shoot me down or back up my thinking.

I bought a forum from a friend that is hosted on a dedicated server in Germany which is rather costly. I pay the hosting charges for another month or two but I plan to migrate my Xenforo forum to a vps with SSDnodes (4 vCPU, 16GB RAM 80GB SSD). Is this easy to do? I currently have CentOS 7 installed on my VPS.

Is there a way to host a Wordpress blog on the same VPS would you know? I'm an IT blogger so if my VPS can take it, I might as well look to host another site or two

Any help is very much appreciated as I'm new to web/forum-mastery
Jim

 

[WSWD]

The migration itself is relatively easy and can definitely be done. The potential issue is if the forum requires those dedicated resources, putting it on a VPS is not going to be a pleasant experience. Just depends on how large and resource-intensive the forum is.

You can definitely host multiple websites on the same server, again, depending on the resources.

 

[JK2447]

The migration itself is relatively easy and can definitely be done. The potential issue is if the forum requires those dedicated resources, putting it on a VPS is not going to be a pleasant experience. Just depends on how large and resource-intensive the forum is.

You can definitely host multiple websites on the same server, again, depending on the resources.

Thank you wswd. I guess I'll just have to migrate and see how I get on. I'm new to this so not really sure if my site could be considered busy or not. About ten posts a day but not sure how many lurkers

 

[usAdultAds]

Thank you wswd. I guess I'll just have to migrate and see how I get on. I'm new to this so not really sure if my site could be considered busy or not. About ten posts a day but not sure how many lurkers

If you are only getting 10 posts a day, then I suspect shared hosting would do just fine. my forum is on shared hosting, and I have a couple of pretty intensive scripts running, and the forum has a few visitors per day, and around 30-50 posts per day, and if my shared hosting can handle what I have, then a VPS would be able to handle 100s of users, and a vps would have more resources than that of a shared hosting environment.

 

[WSWD]

Thank you wswd. I guess I'll just have to migrate and see how I get on. I'm new to this so not really sure if my site could be considered busy or not. About ten posts a day but not sure how many lurkers

10 posts a day is next to nothing. The VPS should be more than enough for the two sites, without any problem at all.

 

[Brad Padgett]

Yeah a VPS would do you just fine. Shared wouldn't hurt either but if you can get a VPS for a good cost I say go for it. 4 cores and 16 gb ram is quite a lot. You'd be fine with maybe 4-8 gb ram and 4 cores. I'm on 12 gb ram myself and 4 cores.

 

[duderuud]

Remember to not underestimate the security part. Are you familiar with setting up your own server?
If not, maybe you should find someone who can help you with that like @Brent W

 

[JK2447]

Thanks for mulling this over with me, I appreciate it. Server hardening was a worry for me actually. I have read a few articles online but I'm worried about it

 

[TPerry]

CentOS with CentMin Mod is a pretty good solution. There is no panel and you have to use an outside mail provider unless you want to either install and configure your own mail stack or get another VPS and use something like MailCow, Mail in a Box or iRedmail.

 

[JK2447]

Hi. thanks for this. On that point, slightly off topic, my site has Horde for mail but do I actually need this? can't I just redirect to my gmail account? I don't understand the bounce mail feature to be honest

 

[ibnesayeed]

I don't think much can be said about how much resources do you need by just knowing the number of new posts created per day. Other stats like number of active users (including guests and bots) at any given time, number of TCP connections, number of threads and posts etc. might give a better picture.

Another approach would be to install a good system monitoring tool to keep an eye on resource usage over a period of time to not only see the instantaneous needs, but also any peak hours and times when cron jobs or backups are running. I would like to note here that just by upgrading from PHP5 to PHP7 might cut the memory requirements down significantly.

 

[JK2447]

Thank you, I'd heard the improvements from PHP5 to 7 were significant. I'm sort of backed into a corner as I am not earning enough these days for a dedicated server so unless it runs like a dog, I'm stuck with this move I think purely to cut my costs

 

[ibnesayeed]

Thank you, I'd heard the improvements from PHP5 to 7 were significant. I'm sort of backed into a corner as I am not earning enough these days for a dedicated server so unless it runs like a dog, I'm stuck with this move I think purely to cut my costs

If you have just a few hundred users on your site at any given time then your site might survive just fine on a 1 or 2 GB memory instance with a single core CPU. Something like this would cost you 5-10 USDs a month on DigitalOcean (referral link) or Linode (referral link), which you can scale up to a bigger plan as more resources are needed.

 

[TPerry]

Hi. thanks for this. On that point, slightly off topic, my site has Horde for mail but do I actually need this? can't I just redirect to my gmail account? I don't understand the bounce mail feature to be honest

You can... but realize they have a daily send limit. For $5-$10 a month you can get a good VPS from a reputable dealer and set up something like MailCow on it and you don't have send limitations. There may be some initial mail delivery issues (mainly Hotmail/Live/Outlook) but those are easy to overcome.
On the bounce feature - simply set up an email account (I used bounced_mail) and then configure your ACP settings to log into that via SMTP in the bounced mail section of the ACP setup.
I have my main sites with RamNode on a VPS and then use Digital Ocean for the mail server.

 

[JK2447]

You can... but realize they have a daily send limit. For $5-$10 a month you can get a good VPS from a reputable dealer and set up something like MailCow on it and you don't have send limitations. There may be some initial mail delivery issues (mainly Hotmail/Live/Outlook) but those are easy to overcome.
On the bounce feature - simply set up an email account (I used bounced_mail) and then configure your ACP settings to log into that via SMTP in the bounced mail section of the ACP setup.
I have my main sites with RamNode on a VPS and then use Digital Ocean for the mail server.

Thanks guys, appreciate your help. Terry does that not get very costly? I don't send anyone any emails, bit scared to now anyway with GDPR, so do I definintely need my own mail server for a Xenforo forum?

 

[TPerry]

Thanks guys, appreciate your help. Terry does that not get very costly? I don't send anyone any emails, bit scared to now anyway with GDPR, so do I definintely need my own mail server for a Xenforo forum?

It depends... as for GDPR, you are really just using it as a relay - the logs that it keeps are replaced regularly so there is no real PII kept outside of what is needed for a short time that it is needed - unless you configure it differently.
And with running the script, unless you have custom code done, it sends emails automatically if the user(s) configure their accounts to receive email alerts on certain actions.

And actually by relaying through Google, you add another GDPR layer of complexity in - you have to depend that their policies are GDPR compliant (pretty sure Facebook & Google both are currently being sued over the allegation that they are not compliant). By doing your own mail server, you know who the data is shared with (normally nobody) and that it isn't mined at your point of dealing with it for extraneous information to use for marketing/sell.

To me, $10 a month (for the mail server, $20 total for both) is not expensive. I just cut back on a couple of coffee's that I might normally have. For others, that $10 could be expensive - but honestly, if that's a stretch then running a forum is going to strain them also unless they have other financial backing coming in - and if they have that then the $10 shouldn't be a strain.

If you are on a shared host - or a VPS that has a control panel (cPanel, Plesk, Webmin/VirtualMin) then you can set up a mail server on it also. But cPanel & Plesk cost about what a small VPS would a month (Webmin/VirtualMin is free) and all panels will rob you of some resources that could be used for the sites. In addition, by running your mail server on your actual site server you "rob" yourself of some processing power and storage space (depending on how much incoming mail you keep).