Help with choosing the right software for my server?

[Eduardo Bautista]

I will be going with an unmanaged server for my new website that is coming in late May. I will be running IP.Board and IP.Content to begin with. I am planning on using the following for the server:

Litespeed - I plan on going with the Standard (free) edition first and then upgrade to the paid version.
Percona Server with XtraDB - This will replace standard MySQL.
PHP - Obviously.
Ubuntu Server 12.04 - Might decide to go with CentOS, still not 100% sure.

I am also going to look into some cache software later.

Is there anything you would recommend?

Edit Also, I am going to be working without a control panel.

[Grumpy]

For server based usage, I'd recommend centos instead. Primarily because it's easier to find tutorials for centos than ubuntu. Ubuntu has the biggest community, but it's really only true for desktop usage. Centos has the biggest server community, thus more tutorials.

I'm personally not a lightspeed user, so I can't comment on experiences...
But the fact that they ask you to pay when everything else is free, there's quite a few people who seem to hate it, combined with nginx favoring benches, and bigger community (market share), I never found the reason to try.

[GregT]

centOS is pretty slow compared to anything spunoff from debian, personally I would go with Debian itself.. (according to mysql, postgresql, apache and other benchmarks)

And as far as using / learning / having tutorials.. there are plenty all over, it takes less than 5 minutes to setup that kind of stuff with fresh installs of either OS, so you won't have / shouldn't have any problems

If you want an unmanaged server I'd go with debian or CentOS over ubuntu, however.. or even BSD

[Enkidu]

I will be going with an unmanaged server for my new website that is coming in late May. I will be running IP.Board and IP.Content to begin with. I am planning on using the following for the server:

Litespeed

- I plan on going with the Standard (free) edition first and then upgrade to the paid version.

Percona Server with XtraDB

- This will replace standard MySQL.

PHP - Obviously.

Ubuntu Server 12.04 - Might decide to go with CentOS, still not 100% sure.

I am also going to look into some cache software later.

Is there anything you would recommend?

Edit Also, I am going to be working without a control panel.

AFAIK, the free version of LT doesn't allow you to use mod_security rules so your server would potentially be vulnerable

[raindog308]

CentOS is not slow. It's RHEL and RHEL is plenty fast :rofl:

I would go with Debian or CentOS, not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is usable as a server but is geared towards desktop.

LiteSpeed is fine and all, but I would second nginx. I have heard good things about lighttpd (lots of places use it, like Wikimedia) but haven't used it myself. Nginx + php-fpm is a great combo.

You will get more bang for your buck in using some kind of PHP cache (APC, xcache, etc.) than by different web servers when you're just starting. You don't need a huge size but I would definitely add a PHP cache.

I don't see the point of Percona. Why are you going to be using XtraDB? IPB doesn't need it, nor do you really want it, as then you also need to add a text search engine like Sphinx. Percona is great if you are using InnoDB, but in this case I don't think it really buys you anything. I would stick with basic MySQL you get from the distro.

How big a VPS or server are you getting?

I would focus on basic, common solutions - nginx or lighttpd, mysql, a cache - and not try to design a Ferrari in your head for your first server. Once you are up and running you can drill into where problems are, if any.

You might read up in the Linode Library - even if you're not hosting with them, anyone can read their docs.

[Rhett]

Centos is for sure the way to go, however on he rest we will need some stats on your site... total post, total members, users online in 15 minutes etc... you may be going through a ton of extra work for nothing depending on your stats.

Setting up a proper server is more about proper hardware AND software then software alone... most time people move to other software when in fact the weak link is hardware related, and while different web servers (apache, lightpd) or database servers (mysql, percona) may increase performance slightly, in most cases the issue or weak link can be easily resolved with proper hardware and configuration.

[Eduardo Bautista]

CentOS is not slow. It's RHEL and RHEL is plenty fast :rofl:

I would go with Debian or CentOS, not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is usable as a server but is geared towards desktop.

LiteSpeed is fine and all, but I would second nginx. I have heard good things about lighttpd (lots of places use it, like Wikimedia) but haven't used it myself. Nginx + php-fpm is a great combo.

You will get more bang for your buck in using some kind of PHP cache (APC, xcache, etc.) than by different web servers when you're just starting. You don't need a huge size but I would definitely add a PHP cache.

I don't see the point of Percona. Why are you going to be using XtraDB? IPB doesn't need it, nor do you really want it, as then you also need to add a text search engine like Sphinx. Percona is great if you are using InnoDB, but in this case I don't think it really buys you anything. I would stick with basic MySQL you get from the distro.

How big a VPS or server are you getting?

I would focus on basic, common solutions - nginx or lighttpd, mysql, a cache - and not try to design a Ferrari in your head for your first server. Once you are up and running you can drill into where problems are, if any.

You might read up in the Linode Library - even if you're not hosting with them, anyone can read their docs.

Centos is for sure the way to go, however on he rest we will need some stats on your site... total post, total members, users online in 15 minutes etc... you may be going through a ton of extra work for nothing depending on your stats.

Setting up a proper server is more about proper hardware AND software then software alone... most time people move to other software when in fact the weak link is hardware related, and while different web servers (apache, lightpd) or database servers (mysql, percona) may increase performance slightly, in most cases the issue or weak link can be easily resolved with proper hardware and configuration.

OK, the server I will be going with has:

256 RAM (512 Burst)
1 Core 2.0 GHZ
10 GB of Disk Space
500 GB of Transfer

I am already going to go with a cache software, but I need to know which ones are supported by IP.Board and which would be the best for me to use.

Oh, and I am going with Percona because I am going to use InnoDB.

And on the Litespeed vs nginx part, I have looked around on the internet and it appears nginx is faster with static files but litespeed is faster with dynamic files. I could be wrong, but that's why I am asking.

Also, the part I don't understand is that Ubuntu Server is also geared for the desktop?

[raindog308]

256 RAM is a pretty small, though for a board starting out it would probably work. I would definitely not use InnoDB though - you'll consume 60-80GB of RAM just to have the InnoDB engine loaded.

IPB supports APC, xcache, and eaccelerator. Look in the docs to set the appropriate variable in conf_global.php

[Chel]

I would strongly recommend more ram.

2 months ago I moved my board from shared hosting to a 512mb VPS. Performance was awful, I had to move back within 24 hours.

I'm trying again now, moving to a VPS with 1.5Gb of ram on Monday.

My site isn't big - 150 real members, of which id get maybe 15 online at once, and 100k posts.

I really don't think 256mb will even handle Google boys, never mind a small community.

[Eduardo Bautista]

256 RAM is a pretty small, though for a board starting out it would probably work. I would definitely not use InnoDB though - you'll consume 60-80GB of RAM just to have the InnoDB engine loaded.

IPB supports APC, xcache, and eaccelerator. Look in the docs to set the appropriate variable in conf_global.php

Isn't InnoDB faster? I could pay extra to get 512mb if necessary, not that much more money.

[AlexJ]

I would definitely not use InnoDB though - you'll consume 60-80GB of RAM just to have the InnoDB engine loaded.

You kidding right? 60-80GB of RAM? Do you really know what you are saying?

[raindog308]

InnoDB is only faster when you have a lot of contention, because it does row-level locking.

Using InnoDB means you can't have text search, unless you purchase something like sphinx.

Here is an old but still valid comparison:

http://mikebernat.com/blog/MySQL_-_InnoDB_vs_MyISAM

Hopefully you have a good VPS provider and can scale up your package as needed if it isn't performing well due to RAM or CPU limits.

You kidding right? 60-80GB of RAM? Do you really know what you are saying?

LOL...I meant 60-80MB. Typo.

[AlexJ]

Using InnoDB means you can't have text search, unless you purchase something like sphinx.

Not trying to be nut picky but isn't sphinx free? Why someone needs to purchase it if it's free? My bad, if I am wrong.

[raindog308]

Not trying to be nut picky but isn't sphinx free? Why someone needs to purchase it if it's free? My bad, if I am wrong.

Looks like you're right:

http://sphinxsearch.com/

Anyway, to the OP - either you use MyISAM or you need something to do full text search (like sphinx) with InnoDB.

[Eduardo Bautista]

Hmmm, I can always change my tables to InnoDB in the future I guess. Thanks for the tip! For now, I think I will just go with Apache, PHP, standard MySQL, and one of those cache things haha. Which one is the best in your opinion for me to use with IP.Board and IP.Content?

[Grumpy]

If you're running a low ram environment, I would heavily suggest AWAY from innodb and litespeed. Both are heavy memory users and they sacrifice this for speed in other areas.

Technically, nginx vs litespeed isn't a directly fair comparison. Nor is innodb vs myisam.
nginx is designed to run under minimal ram usage. You can run a nginx + php-fpm server with like 64M ram (you'll need to turn off lot of system stuff though). With litespeed, more ram the better. While nginx does have caching abilities when enabled, litespeed is designed for the sake of caching stuff in ram. So, if you don't have much ram to spare, there's almost nothing litespeed can give you above nginx or even apache... well, probably still faster than apache.
The same goes for innodb vs myisam. Innodb hogs ram so it buffers things like writes. This allows less disk usage and thus a higher performance when situation calls for it. This is essential to its operation of row level locking. But again, if you run out of ram, you'll be in a worse situation than myisam because you'll start hitting swap. And when anything goes to swap, you're going to be crawling.

This is why litespeed and innodb will beat nginx an myisam in benches. They serve from pre-cached ram while the others serve from disk (or os cache), but it comes at the sacrifice of the ram usage.
Getting nginx to cache stuff well takes lot of time on your hands, but it is achievable and does very well.
The entire problem can also be solved by hardware means. SSD + myisam = awesome because the hardware level bottleneck is so much more reduced. (ofc innodb + ssd rocks too)

[Eduardo Bautista]

If you're running a low ram environment, I would heavily suggest AWAY from innodb and litespeed. Both are heavy memory users and they sacrifice this for speed in other areas.

Technically, nginx vs litespeed isn't a directly fair comparison. Nor is innodb vs myisam.

nginx is designed to run under minimal ram usage. You can run a nginx + php-fpm server with like 64M ram (you'll need to turn off lot of system stuff though). With litespeed, more ram the better. While nginx does have caching abilities when enabled, litespeed is designed for the sake of caching stuff in ram. So, if you don't have much ram to spare, there's almost nothing litespeed can give you above nginx or even apache... well, probably still faster than apache.

The same goes for innodb vs myisam. Innodb hogs ram so it buffers things like writes. This allows less disk usage and thus a higher performance when situation calls for it. This is essential to its operation of row level locking. But again, if you run out of ram, you'll be in a worse situation than myisam because you'll start hitting swap. And when anything goes to swap, you're going to be crawling.

This is why litespeed and innodb will beat nginx an myisam in benches. They serve from pre-cached ram while the others serve from disk (or os cache), but it comes at the sacrifice of the ram usage.

Getting nginx to cache stuff well takes lot of time on your hands, but it is achievable and does very well.

The entire problem can also be solved by hardware means. SSD + myisam = awesome because the hardware level bottleneck is so much more reduced. (ofc innodb + ssd rocks too)

OK, thanks. I will consider litespeed when I will be upgrading to a better server then.

[Lee69]

Here's another one for centos + nginx + php-fpm + apc if you're comfortable setting it up yourself. Take note that the more caching techniques you use the more RAM you'll need. :smile: