Time to upgrade my VPS - Suggestions & Advices

Markos

Markos

Well-known member
I have a Essential VPS Plan on my forum (opened 3 months ago). I have CPanel + LAMP. Standard configuration. No particular VPS optimization, i use simply XCache with some addons (XenCache+ BD Cache).

In the previous month my traffic grow and i had some problems, my site become very slow when i have many users online. So i think it's time to upgrade my VPS to a superior plan.

I love Servint so i chosed to upgrade to SolidFire Essential. They have a good CPanel to Cpanel migration so i don't think i will have particular problem with that, i have just to wait because they have VPS in other region so i will have new IP etc.

But now i don't want to stay with Apache, i want to use Centmin and have a super-optimized VPS.

1) If i trasfer my site under CPanel, can i disinstall the panel without "data/configuration" lost? I have some FTP Accounts, configuration with Mandrill, e-mail accounts etc.
2) Is difficult to use Centmin with very little server administration knowledge? The tech guys of Servint said me that will provide very little support if i don't use CPanel, they will help me only about server problems (I have a "tech guy" on my team, but he doesn't have much time so i have to do various things myself).
3) Except of Centmin and Xencache/BD Cache, there are other software/systems to optmize my board?
4) Do you know someone that can help me to install/configure and optmize my VPS for a growing board with an honest price?

Thank you in advance for your replies!
 
I just setup a Digital Ocean server and installed Centmin, was a BIT of a learning curve, but overall it went really well!

I'm very happy so far on the outcome. I actually bought a new XF license and threw it on there for testing and to confirm everything was actually working as expected.

I have my largest forum on a ServInt VPS right now, I've had great luck.. however, EVERYTHING is outdated. PHP, Apache, CentOS... you name it. So, I'm looking ahead with Centmin to get ahead of the learning curve.
 
Well it's Centmin Mod not Centmin (the original project that I forked from :) )

@Markos

1). technically you could, but Centmin Mod is best do from fresh virgin CentOS OS install (minimal CentOS ideally) so I'd advise against it

2). hard to say but I know of quite a few Centmin Mod users who don't have much server admin knowledge who are using Centmin Mod. Ideally, you best bet is as @RoldanLT said, get a test VPS spun up and install and play with Centmin Mod first with a test copy of your data until you are more comfortable switching to production live use ;) Plenty of cheap VPS you can use for testing from as little as US$18-35/yr or few bucks per month outlined at https://community.centminmod.com/forums/virtual-private-server-vps-hosting.26/ or dedicated servers https://community.centminmod.com/forums/dedicated-server-hosting.25/

I posted some Centmin Mod install guides for various VPS providers too
CentOS 7 support is only in beta status with Centmin Mod 1.2.3-eva2000.08 beta https://community.centminmod.com/threads/how-to-help-test-08-centos-7-betas-with-github-code.813/. So probably want Centmin Mod .07 stable and CentOS 6.5 right now.

3). well for Centmin Mod Nginx it's compiled to support ngx_pagespeed module which is running on my forums - details at http://centminmod.com/nginx_ngx_pagespeed.html and some example benefits at https://community.centminmod.com/threads/benefits-of-ngx_pagespeed.1032/

4). honest price is relative, but @MattW would be your best best for Centmin Mod and VPS setups (besides me of course but my prices are way higher and I am usually booked up several weeks in advance). Matt's an official moderator on Centmin Mod Community forums of mine too https://community.centminmod.com/threads/moderator-appointments-matt.139/ and definitely knows his way around both WHM/Cpanel and Centmin Mod :)
 
Markos said:
3) Except of Centmin and Xencache/BD Cache, there are other software/systems to optmize my board?
4) Do you know someone that can help me to install/configure and optmize my VPS for a growing board with an honest price?
Click to expand...
Suggestion... get with @MattW to get a price from him (he's very reasonable and knowledgable) to move your current site over... either with a panel or without on the new one.
I have been known to do it for people but I'm booked solid with other work for the foreseeable future.
@eva2000 and @MattW could tell you my opinion on panels... but I have been messing with Linux since Slackware came out.
 
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@Markos

1) If i trasfer my site under CPanel, can i disinstall the panel without "data/configuration" lost? I have some FTP Accounts, configuration with Mandrill, e-mail accounts etc.
Click to expand...
Mandrill is external configuration as far as I know, but cPanel is just a frontend. You should be able to backup the services themselves, but don't quote me on that because I never use panels myself, hate 'em.

2) Is difficult to use Centmin with very little server administration knowledge? The tech guys of Servint said me that will provide very little support if i don't use CPanel, they will help me only about server problems (I have a "tech guy" on my team, but he doesn't have much time so i have to do various things myself).
Click to expand...
That's what their page says it does. To be honest, I use all of that already and I've never really used Centmin in the past. I recommend just setting it up from scratch, it's much more flexible. I really only use their ngx_pagespeed configuration as a guideline.

3) Except of Centmin and Xencache/BD Cache, there are other software/systems to optmize my board?
Click to expand...
Compression, CloudFlare, there are a lot of ways to optimise your board.

4) Do you know someone that can help me to install/configure and optmize my VPS for a growing board with an honest price?
Click to expand...
It'd make sense to say myself, but my prices fluctuate a lot depending on the job and time frame, I've heard a lot of good about @MattW around these forums, he'd seem like a good choice too.
 
Tracy Perry said:
That's fine if you got one VPS (or even two)... but if you have 13 VPS's and several of them are 8GB RAM you are at $215 a year each, for the smaller ones it's $150 each.
Click to expand...
Instead of having 13 VPS`, you can have 2 strong dedicated machines. I never rent Litepseed licenses anyway since it's not economical in the long run.
For newbies that don't mind to pay extra $$$ since server maintenance is not their priority (learning how to do this and keep things updated), Litespeed is much more "user friendly" than the above, so this is my main reason on keeping supporting it.

Version 5 is going to introduce SPDY, so that's going to be interesting as well.
 
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Moshe1010 said:
Instead of having 13 VPS`, you can have 2 strong dedicated machines. I never rent Litepseed licenses anyway since it's not economical in the long run.
For newbies that don't mind to pay extra $$$ since server maintenance is not their priority (learning how to do this and keep things updated), Litespeed is much more "user friendly" than the above, so this is my main reason on keeping supporting it.
Version 5 is going to introduce SPDY, so that's going to be interesting as well.
Click to expand...
Point being, I have my own server (dual processor, 96GB RAM, 4TB storage in RAID 10, 1Gbps uplink) that runs ProxMox that allows me to create those VPS's with and isolate one forum from the other. Like I said... 2 of the VPS's have 10GB RAM (4 cores) dedicated and the other 12GB (6 cores) and each has 450GB HD space so other than another dedicated server I don't know may VPS providers that offer that for a reasonable price.

I already have SPDY and PageSpeed with nginx. I've used OpenLiteSpeed and it was OK, but went back to nginx because I didn't see that much of a performance difference in it.
 
Litespeed Enterprise > OpenLitespeed.

I'm not sure why do you need a server with 96GB RAM when you don't really run any forums/websites with traffic.
 
Moshe1010 said:
Litespeed Enterprise > OpenLitespeed.

I'm not sure why do you need a server with 96GB RAM when you don't really run any forums/websites with traffic.
Click to expand...
Because I can. ;)
It also allows me to test different setups since I frequently help other people install VPS's.
Not to mention I have a couple of local business sites on VPS's on it as well as a support site I run for the computer tech support I provide.
 
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Thank you for all your advices and suggestions! I will follow the suggestion of @RoldanLT and try Centmin on a test vps.

I have my largest forum on a ServInt VPS right now, I've had great luck.. however, EVERYTHING is outdated. PHP, Apache, CentOS... you name it. So, I'm looking ahead with Centmin to get ahead of the learning curve.
Click to expand...

Personally, i have HUGE ISSUES about directory permissions. It's very annoying. Sometimes, it happens that i can't install addons with the Addon Installer, i have to contact staff to set the correct permissions (because the system doesn't allow me to set 0777 to directories with Filezilla).
 
Markos said:
Thank you for all your advices and suggestions! I will follow the suggestion of @RoldanLT and try Centmin on a test vps.



Personally, i have HUGE ISSUES about directory permissions. It's very annoying. Sometimes, it happens that i can't install addons with the Addon Installer, i have to contact staff to set the correct permissions (because the system doesn't allow me to set 0777 to directories with Filezilla).
Click to expand...

No problems with directory permissions on my end. I do know if you're experiencing a lot of problems, they will move you to a new host machine. I've done that once because of CPU spikes, no problems since.
 
Markos said:
Thank you for all your advices and suggestions! I will follow the suggestion of @RoldanLT and try Centmin on a test vps.



Personally, i have HUGE ISSUES about directory permissions. It's very annoying. Sometimes, it happens that i can't install addons with the Addon Installer, i have to contact staff to set the correct permissions (because the system doesn't allow me to set 0777 to directories with Filezilla).
Click to expand...
I don't really think chmod 777 is really ever needed. Just set the chown to the web server and 644 or 755 should be perfect. Anyway, as far as it goes, you shouldn't use 777 directory perms often at all. Isn't really good practice, or in production areas.
 
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