Is 360MB-RAM on VPS enough...

[Dorza]

...for a new website?

I am looking at lots of different hosts that give me full control of my VPS environment at no more than $20pm (around £11pm, I am in the UK). From the beginning Linode has been a firm favourite of mine, given the freedom you appear to get and the price. Slicehost is just a little expensive for 512MB of RAM and the others I have narrowed it down to (in2net, vpsland, vpsright cheapvsp and MediaTemple) have little things here and there which put me off going with them. I've compared them all but I must admit that linode, the one I came across right at the start of my research, is the one I am favouring at the moment. Their set up just seems right for diy kind of people and thus far I haven't read anything about them that concerns me.

The one black mark is the amount of RAM they provide for their cheapest package. I have read many instances (mainly on forums) that 256MB of RAM is not enough for a VPS and that 512MB should really be the minimum. However Linode's 360 plan provides the odd figure of 360MB of RAM and I was just wondering if this would be enough for a new website.

I will be running apache, php and mysql and more than likely a website statistics app (I guess I could just use Google Analytics for this though). My OS of choice at the moment would be debian and keep it as sleek as possible without compromising security. I have a fairly complex, custom made CMS and I've made the front end as light on resources as I can. I am also running mod_rewrite if that makes much difference. I have three databases, one of the admin/cms side, one of the public front end and one for php sessions; its roughly 20 tables. Other than what linode provide I am not planning on using any site management systems such as cpanel or plesk. I will make use of SSH and whatever the host provides to manage the site.

This might be a long shot, but what sort of performance could I expect out of 360MB of ram, is it enough for a start up as described above?

[WindowsHosting]

Hello,

IMHO you should get at least 512 RAM. If you have not budget you could start with shared hosting and later to move on VPS one.

Regards

[EastCoast]

How much ram you need is equated to how much traffic you expect - with a lot of traffic you'll need to keep a lot of apache threads active which is what will generally uses most of the memeory on a lamp setup. For what it's worth, I have a linode 360 that has handled reasonable amounts of traffic with no problems, and has been extremely reliable.

[dklynn]

Dorza,

For a "fairly complex" CMS with lots of db accesses, I think that even 512 won't be enough (I'm on a VPS plan with 512Mb and burst to 1024Mb). Unfortunately, I have no analytical backup for that, just a gut feel.

Regards,

DK

[SiberForum]

You need to calculate a bit. Firtly you need to understand what CP you will be use (Cpanel will eat up 128MB) + what are web applications are etc

Then you will make the decision and have liberal RAM just in case

[eukhost]

512 MB is the minimum amount of RAM ideally recommended for a VPS but since you are on a limited budget and you don't need cPanel or Plesk CP either, I think you can try the VPS with 360 MB of RAM.

[Karl]

Hi,

You could be fine, then again it could fail badly - the real thing that decides it is going to be how well optimised your code is i.e. How well optimised the queries are, the app logic itself, and if you've removed queries where possible and cached content etc.

Thanks,

[ldcdc]

Well, if there's no or a very basic control panel, then there's likely going to be little overhead, and 360MB will be equivalent to 521MB or so on a VPS with something like cPanel installed.

[Dorza]

Thank you for your replies everyone. Ideally I would prefer 512MB as some of you have recommended. As a couple of you have indicated though 360MB might be fine for my fledgling site. My CMS is quite complex only because I have designed it to allow multiple users to use it at the same time, so I have had to create access restrictions and stuff of that nature on certain parts of the CMS. However to begin with, it will only be me using it and once I have everything set up I will only be adding content through it.

As I said I don't plan on using a control panel other than the main Linode one and my site won't be getting much traffic to begin with (eventually hopefully it will) I don't think, so maybe the 360 package would be ok for now. With linode I can always upgrade if I find my site needs it. I think for now I will go with the cheapest option, see how it goes and upgrade as necessary. Linode don't put you under a contract so I think I will be free to upgrade at any time.

[~ServerPoint~]

Hello,

IMHO you should get at least 512 RAM. If you have not budget you could start with shared hosting and later to move on VPS one.

Regards

I believe with the such RAM requirements that is recommended to think over the dedicated server. I believe that is what you need

[djgravy]

The vds i had before i upgraded was only 256mb of ram and it was fine just for hosting a apache server but i had to tweek the apache config file big time and if you are planning on using mysql php etc. go for more ram or else you will have major problems.