VPS sizing

[WoodiE]

I'm looking to move a forum that averages around 400 new posts a day and user activity that's around 80 users and 100-200 guests online at any given time from a shared hosting environment to a VPS setup.

This will be the only site on the new VPS. Would a 2vCPU / 4GB RAM VPS suffice or do really need to look at using 8GB or more plans?

 

[JonathanW]

That would be a good starting point, yes. VPSs generally can be easily resized so there's no harm in starting on the smaller side since you can quickly grow it if needed.

 

[gerryvz]

I'd recommend that you start with a 4GB plan and as @JonathanW says, expand if needed to an 8GB plan.

Linode allows you to easily and seamlessly upsize and downsize your plan as needed. Also to use and attach up to 8 block storage volumes directly to your Linode if you need cheap but performant storage space to take the load off of the system disk (which for their $20/month 4GB plan is 80GB, and 160GB for the $40/month 8GB plan. Block storage is $0.10 per GB per month. Linode support is excellent and they have data centers around the country and world.

 

[m1ne]

Linode is good, but Vultr is even better. Same pricing but better hardware.

 

[gerryvz]

Looks like their prices are about the same as Linode, but they are touting higher performance than competitors.

 

[m1ne]

Looks like their prices are about the same as Linode, but they are touting higher performance than competitors.

Indeed. The 4 big ones all offer the same pricing but vary in performance. I find the following order to be correct:

4: DigitalOcean
3: Linode
2: UpCloud
1: Vultr

 

[WoodiE]

Indeed. The 4 big ones all offer the same pricing but vary in performance. I find the following order to be correct:

4: DigitalOcean
3: Linode
2: UpCloud
1: Vultr

That seems to pretty well line up with the 13 VPS benchmarking tests that @eva2000 done earlier this year.

 

[gerryvz]

I believe it would be difficult to go wrong with any of those companies, though I only have direct experience with one of them.