Optimal Server Setup

[Lotus123]

Hey there all,

I've been planning a server setup for a brand new community, but I'm not entirely hundred percent sure if I'm going overkill to the point it actually is a detriment to my forum.

Starting off the installation in reference to these threads -

 

In addition to this fresh server install, I will be using MySQL for data storage and Redis for caching. Does it make sense to also use OPCache too as well?
+ ElasticSearch 6.8 coupled with Kibana and associated monitoring tools (Elastic Stack Beats and Logstash components).
+ Cloudflare CDN, Memcached + Railgun, Argo Tunneling.
+ Google Drive backups.

Would you guys argue there are certain improvements to be made to this setup?

[ASTRAPI]

Hello Lotus123

In my opinion i don't think that anyone can do a post and describe the perfect setup for all cases. The needs are not the same for all.

Most of us posting here some tools and technologies that will help for sure but is very hard to apply for all cases.

As i can see performance is what you are looking for.....

Performance starting from where you will have your domain dns entries ... Are you gone host them (your own nameservers)?

Has your domain registrar a fast and good in general network?

Which data center you will select? It will be good to get a server close to your visitors geolocation.

Use a CDN like Cloudflare for users that are not very close to your server and in general benefit from there free optimizations that they offer.

What kind of server you will get? Cpu (type, cores, clock), Ram (ddr3, ddr4 ECC) HDD nvme, ssd, network speed e.t.c

Then for software i recommend:

Centos 7

Nginx, Phpfpm (yes use Opcache also), MariaDB (use Innodb tables), Redis, Elastic search ....

Then you must check for system/kernel/network optimizations....

All the above will need configuration optimizations according to your forum data and server power...

As you can see i just scratch the surface of it as there are a lot more that can be done to improve the stock performance of all the above.

[Steph40]

I really like using centminmod. Google it!

[ASTRAPI]

There are a lot of panels and scripts that you may want to try:

Easyengine, VestaCP, Centminmod, Webinoly, OneInStack and a lot more...

[Lotus123]

Centminmod actually looks fairly great. I'm fairly impressed by its tool set. Thanks for letting me know about that. Thanks for the tips!
 

18 hours ago, ASTRAPI said:

Performance starting from where you will have your domain dns entries ... Are you gone host them (your own nameservers)?

Has your domain registrar a fast and good in general network?

Which data center you will select? It will be good to get a server close to your visitors geolocation.

Use a CDN like Cloudflare for users that are not very close to your server and in general benefit from there free optimizations that they offer.

What kind of server you will get? Cpu (type, cores, clock), Ram (ddr3, ddr4 ECC) HDD nvme, ssd, network speed e.t.c

 

I'll be using Cloudflare for DNS, registrar, CDN and WAF. In my eyes it's an extremely reliable provider with a huge enough network with enough redundancy measures to remain running. Railgun is an amazing tool from Cloudflare allowing for dynamic compression up to 99% saving loads of bandwidth and reducing load on the origin server. It is extremely useful for forums and blogs which have a lot of shifting dynamic content. Argo Tunneling improves latency whilst also securing my origin server.

As for a data center, I'll be using UpCloud as a scalable cloud hosting provider until it becomes more cost effective to run a dedicated server starting off with 2 cores and 4GB of RAM. With constant monitoring, we can automatically scale the site up should demand exceed thresholds. UpCloud seems to be a leading contender when you want the most performance per dollar in general and I've heard good things about it - https://joshtronic.com/2019/06/03/vps-showdown-digitalocean-lightsail-linode-upcloud-vultr/