What OS to use, when installing xenforo?

[farber]

I want to install xenforo on my vps but I am not sure of what OS to use and what panel I should go with.
Right now my vps is on centos 7 and I want to go with VestaCP but I don't know if it's good.
Any recommendations?

 

[Black Tiger]

I would either stay with Centos 7 for the time being (do not change to Centos 8 or wait until it's more clear how Centos 8 stream will work), or use Debian. Both of these are the most stable for hosting.
I don't know VestaCP, we're using cPanel and Directadmin for hosting. Directadmin has a ver nice personal license nowadays, cost only $24 a year and you have 1 admin account and 10 domains (so -not- 10 user accounts), which is very good for hobby stuff.
Ubuntu is popular for at home, but is based on Debian and Ubuntu is not really good supported by panels so I would stick to Centos or Debian.

 

[MesterPerfect]

My experience is good with ubuntu
I use the Hestia Control Panel and it's great
This board is programmed by the programmer who created VestaCP

Hestia Control Panel | Open-source web server control panel.

Open-source web server control panel.

www.hestiacp.com

 

[m1ne]

Ubuntu or FreeBSD.

 

[Hristo Avramov]

I am going to change my hosting because I think I can get better speed at cloud hosting service like vultr for example.
Still wondering what OS to pick up.

 

[rdn]

Ubuntu LTS and basic LEMP

 

[duderuud]

Centminmod (CentOS 7 based) if you want a fast and secure server.

 

[briansol]

i have a vultr high freq vps
running cent os7 and cpanel

someday, i'll get to centminmod, but the learning curve has kept me away.

 

[duderuud]

It may be intimidating in the beginning but the default is pretty darn good really.

And the basics are really simple. A default CentOS 7 install and running one specific script...

 

[Hristo Avramov]

It may be intimidating in the beginning but the default is pretty darn good really.

And the basics are really simple. A default CentOS 7 install and running one specific script...

I always hear how there are so many things I need to configure for a "fast speed site" so I stay away from the cloud for now.

 

[dknife]

I always hear how there are so many things I need to configure for a "fast speed site" so I stay away from the cloud for now.

centminmod takes care of almost all of it for you. The out of box experience is fantastic for running a fast XenForo site.

 

[briansol]

It may be intimidating in the beginning but the default is pretty darn good really.

And the basics are really simple. A default CentOS 7 install and running one specific script...

it's all the extras that scare me.

setting up ssl / managing DNS
setting up email services with SES, etc

 

[duderuud]

Setting up SSL has never been easier with Centminmod, it's all automated
Setting up email with SES has nothing to do with the OS.

 

[gerryvz]

I've been running Ubuntu LTS (started with 18.04, migrated to 20.04, and will be migrating to 22.04 in the future) since March 2019, and have zero issues. Very stable and exceedingly well supported, and with a certain, long-term roadmap. Highly recommend Ubuntu.

 

[Masetrix]

If the Xenforo on the server is not only supposed to be fun for leisure, to be able to cope with high loads and to be operated with relatively little administrative effort

Ubuntu root server installation with Plesk as admin panel. I haven't used anything less complicated.
But that alone is not enough.
You should plan for a large forum with at least 32GB Ram, better from 64GB up. The CPU should not be chosen too weak either, 8 cores/16 threads make the server really fun. If you then configure MariaBD (~10.7) correctly and use SSD as hard disk, there is no longer any "bottleneck".

PS: Never neglect backups!

 

[Forsaken]

If the Xenforo on the server is not only supposed to be fun for leisure, to be able to cope with high loads and to be operated with relatively little administrative effort

Ubuntu root server installation with Plesk as admin panel. I haven't used anything less complicated.
But that alone is not enough.
You should plan for a large forum with at least 32GB Ram, better from 64GB up. The CPU should not be chosen too weak either, 8 cores/16 threads make the server really fun. If you then configure MariaBD (~10.7) correctly and use SSD as hard disk, there is no longer any "bottleneck".

PS: Never neglect backups!

Those specs for a new site are wayyyyyyyyyyy too much; many sites don't even get to the point where they're active enough to need 8-16GB after a year or two. Even most medium sites don't need that much.

Plesk Migration is simple enough to use, so they can easily just migrate to a larger server from a VPS or something when needed.

 

[duderuud]

The amount of memory can be matched by the database size so the entire db can be run from memory.
But that is a nice to have and not mandatory.

In practice I tend to agree with @Forsaken. For most forums 4-8gb should be enough.

It's like what men with small eh...penii say: It's not the size that matters but what you do with it.

A tuned vps (like Centminmod) with 4gb will perform better compared to a default Ubuntu vps with 8gb.

 

[briansol]

Setting up email with SES has nothing to do with the OS.

sure, it's not a part of it, but it's an extra config item that needs to happen that i'm not quite sure about.

 

[Masetrix]

Those specs for a new site are wayyyyyyyyyyy too much; many sites don't even get to the point where they're active enough to need 8-16GB after a year or two. Even most medium sites don't need that much.

As I said before:

...to be able to cope with high loads and to be operated with relatively little administrative effort

and in connection with the topic title...

What OS to use, when installing xenforo?

Of course you can also run XF efficiently with minimal requirements, but that's not what my answer was about...

 

[Masetrix]

The amount of memory can be matched by the database size so the entire db can be run from memory.
But that is a nice to have and not mandatory.

If you have a large database (~10GB on disk ~20GB in memory) this is no longer nice to have.
My answer is also aimed at operators of VB forums with larger databases and long-standing forums who are looking for a high-performance replacement for vB and the right environment for it.