Moving from vB to xen // VM sever setup

[John Stone]

I'm going to be purchasing xenForo this week, and I'd like to get my dedicated server setup in advance. I have a few questions about optimal server setup for xenForo.

Server Specs: Dell PowerEdge 2950 // 8 x Xeon E5420 @ 2.50 Ghz // 16 GB // 270 GB, 15k, Hardware RAID 5

O/S & software: Debian "jessie" AMD64 // Apache, MySQLi

Forum data: 30,333 members // 905,961 posts // 3.1 GB database

I'm also running a Wordpress site on the same server: 200MB database // About 2-3k unique visitors per day average, but sometimes 10+ times that amount //A couple dozen low traffic web sites.


Questions:

1) I'm running VM, and can create multiple virtual machines. Should I split the DB & web server into separate VMs?
2) If so, what are the recommended/optimum RAM and CPU setting for each VM? Or should I create one VM with all resources?
3) Pre-fork or MPM?
4) Any other thoughts/suggestions along these lines?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Slavik]

1) I'm running VM, and can create multiple virtual machines. Should I split the DB & web server into separate VMs?
2) If so, what are the recommended/optimum RAM and CPU setting for each VM? Or should I create one VM with all resources?
3) Pre-fork or MPM?
4) Any other thoughts/suggestions along these lines?

Are you self managing?

1) Overheads are overheads, why add additional VM's for the sake of it.
2) As above, any reason for wanting to set it up as a VM over a baremetal?
3) I would say forget apache and go for nginx or litespeed. If apache is a must, prefork.

 

[John Stone]

Are you self managing?

1) Overheads are overheads, why add additional VM's for the sake of it.
2) As above, any reason for wanting to set it up as a VM over a baremetal?
3) I would say forget apache and go for nginx or litespeed. If apache is a must, prefork.

Yes, self-managing.

1) I'm fairly new to VM. I thought that the split database/web server performance improvements might offset any VM overhead.
2) Mostly administrative. I also like being able to set up test/development servers on the same physical box.
3) Apache is what I know, but I'll research nginx and Lightspeed if you feel one of those would be superior for my needs.

Thank you!

 

[TPerry]

Simplest solution.. install CentOS 7 on the bare metal server and then stick @eva2000 CentMin Mod on it.
I played with the same setup you are talking about. I had a dual processor with 96GB RAM, 8 1TB SATA in RAID 10. Ran several VM's on it - one for each forum. Ended up going with just one server. Less maintenance involved. You can always get a low end VPS for cheap to play with.

 

[John Stone]

Thanks, Tracy. That's an intriguing idea, and CentMin looks awesome. My well-established existing WP site, my other web sites and my forums are all running on Debian with iptables, apache and mysql. I'm concerned that I'm going to have to spend a ton of time manually migrating everything over to a completely different distro that uses different software for web, DB and firewall (plus more). Realistically, how difficult do you think this would be?

 

[TPerry]

Not hard at all. In fact, it can pretty much be outlined in about a 20 line post... and you will find plenty of folks that are willing to guide you once you are licensed (some even for free )

 

[John Stone]

Thanks for the help, folks, I purchased my Xen license this morning (waiting for it to show under my account). I didn't mean to step over the pre-sale help line.

I set up a test CentOS server w/ Centminmod and got my biggest Wordpress site (mostly) working. I also converted the existing WP DB from Latin1 to UTF8, and from MyISAM to InnoDB . I ran into a few issues with my many existing htaccess rules and some firewall stuff, but got most of that working pretty well, too.

Coming from Debian/Apache, there's definitely a learning curve with CentOS/NGINX. Pretty much everything is different than what I'm used to, and I'm time-crunched. I'm probably going to have fall back to what I know for this round, but will continue to learn on my test CentOS/NGINX server.

 

[John Stone]

I successfully paid for my XF license and Media add-on via PayPal, but it's still showing that I don't have a licensed product. How long does this process take? I was hoping to get started on this project this morning.

 

[Slavik]

I successfully paid for my XF license and Media add-on via PayPal, but it's still showing that I don't have a licensed product. How long does this process take? I was hoping to get started on this project this morning.

Most likely Paypal is holding the payment for review, soon as it gets released your license will automatically be created.

 

[John Stone]

Most likely Paypal is holding the payment for review, soon as it gets released your license will automatically be created.

I just looked at the PayPal transaction and it seems that it went through as an e-check for some reason (the default is supposed to be my company debit card). I think that can take a few days to clear. Any chance I can be manually approved so I can get started? Or, if not, can the payment be refunded so I can re-purchase as a debit card. Sorry for the extra hassle.

 

[Slavik]

I just looked at the PayPal transaction and it seems that it went through as an e-check for some reason (the default is supposed to be my company debit card). I think that can take a few days to clear. Any chance I can be manually approved so I can get started? Or, if not, can the payment be refunded so I can re-purchase as a debit card. Sorry for the extra hassle.

Sure, send in a ticket using the contact form and i'll pass it onto Ashley to make the refund.

 

[John Stone]

Sure, send in a ticket using the contact form and i'll pass it onto Ashley to make the refund.

Thank you very much! Done.

 

[Slavik]

Thank you very much! Done.

No problem, if you want to make the purchase again in the meantime to get you going, Ashley will sort out the e-check refund soon as possible.

 

[Liam W]

I just looked at the PayPal transaction and it seems that it went through as an e-check for some reason (the default is supposed to be my company debit card). I think that can take a few days to clear. Any chance I can be manually approved so I can get started? Or, if not, can the payment be refunded so I can re-purchase as a debit card. Sorry for the extra hassle.

I did this once... Just warning you, when I got it refunded it still came out of my bank and was credited to my PayPal account. (The refund didn't cancel the transfer).

Also, I'm using Centmin. The learning curve isn't that large, and my sites (albeit low traffic ones) work very quickly on my lowmid-range cheap VPS.

Liam

 

[John Stone]

I'm all set now, fully licensed. Thanks again for all the help.

Liam, I think they were able to catch it in time, as the money never came out and PayPal shows the transaction as "Cancelled". Thanks for the caution, though!