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Which server(s) do you use for your mu?

Hi, what kind of server or servers do you use to manage your wpmu installation? I mean, vps or full dedicated? Single box or multiple boxes with load balance + master+slaves for the db? Which configuration (cpu, ram, hd, bw)? And finally, how many unique visits and page views do you manage per day (and/or month)?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:27:23
  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    edit: Just for reference, we do general managed webhosting, not juts mu hosting.

    Actually all of our mu installs are running as shared accounts on our boxes although we don’t overload them. We’re running dual Intel 2.8/3.0s with HT, 12 gigs of memory, and 2 120-250 gig hard drives. We only put 200 clients on a box though. (That’s more of an issue with our contacted tech support company though than any load issue. We’ve been told we could get away with 500+ clients on our boxes before load issues become a concern.)

    We have one of our installs sitting on a pair of those boxes. They have about 35k blogs, can’t remember how many is active. The dbs are on box 2 while the mu and upload files are on box 1. I know it;s been suggested to do memcache on the second box instead of db. *shrug* They’re happy with the setup.

    We’ve been bugging Andrew and James to do a write up on their setup for edublogs as they’re probably the largest public install outside of wp.com.

    Our biggest plus was to strip down the boxes as much as possible. Our spam solution for everything (ie email, forums, comment, etc) sits on a quad xeon. Our firewalls are at the routers. We also run Direct Admin than CPanel which has a much smaller footprint. And we don’t overload our boxes.

    I wouldn’t suggest anything less than a VPS though, simply for having the root access.

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    If you’re looking for suggestions for what you might need, there’s one answer – it depends. :slight_smile:

    I’ve seen a setup with 500+ blogs and a millions hits/month serverwide on a VPS with cPanel and 712 megs of RAM barely even blip.

    And I’ve seen a 10 blog setup on mt(gs) go down daily, with one blog getting 50K hits in one day.

  • Huemac
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    andrea, mmm.. for now i’m more for the second one so (server down a lot of time :slight_frown: probably also because of apache+prefork, i’ll have to try nginx and see if it improve, a part of some mysql optimization in the config, i’m still with the default one )

    drmike, intresting.. how many blogs have each client? about the software, what do you use? nginx, apache (prefork or worker?), lighttpd or something else? Do you have any hint to gain the maximum from a system?

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    A grid server or cloud hosting for MU is less than a VPS. And you need at *least* a VPS. If you can get a cheap small dedicated box you can add to or upgrade, that’s your best bet though.

    We’ve been playing around with nginx and it’s pretty awesome so far. Will know more when we move the rest of our stuff off our VPS.

    If you’ve already got a decent server and it’s *still* going down a lot of the time, then you have other issues, not MU or box size. Likely an errant plugin or process.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    If you’ve already got a decent server and it’s *still* going down a lot of the time,

    May want to consider a management service if you’re not comfortable with server management. You’re going to pay for it but it’s worth it if you;re serious about this.

  • Huemac
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    andrea, actually i’m on a decent vps (slice 2gb, which serves also other minor apps, for just 450k pageviews/month in total) and from what i’ve seen so far is that apache starts and stays good around ~600-800mb (only for wpmu), but sometimes i see that it takes so much memory and then dies (it keeps all the memory and doesn’t serve any request, just hang up… to make it work again i’ve to restart apache/mysql). I think it’s more an apache config as it has more or less the default config, i hope to have time to read about optimizing it or move directly everything under nginx

  • Huemac
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    > May want to consider a management service if you’re not comfortable with server management.

    > You’re going to pay for it but it’s worth it if you;re serious about this.

    that would be an option.. :slight_smile: but i hope to study and try more about optimizations before going to a managed system

  • SimonJ
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    My humble setup :

    A single dedicated server

    Processor Intel Core 2 6600 @ 2.40GHz

    2 gigs of ram

    2x 160gigs HD

    I’m not myself a sys admin but when we started our newspaper project on the web, we had the server (a basic hosting plan) overloaded and we busted the bandwidth when we started to make some webtv.

    So two years ago I made the moove and bought this box. I use it also to host some other site and my own projects. Last year, only for the newspaper, we had an average of more than 1 000 000 hits with more than 50 gigs of bandwidth monthly. I think I restarted the box maybe twice. Never had any problem… On the newspaper account, I had 20 wordpress installation, openads to manage and display advertisement and some other scripts. Not much.

    Now I mooved all the single WP to MU for a month. We’re on the transition now and we did’nt advertise the “open your blog” feature. We’ll start it soon. I really don’t expect problems (our target public is not so wide though, we’re specialized in alternative culture and our site is in french).

    S.

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    “sometimes i see that it takes so much memory and then dies “

    Then you’ve likely got an errant plugin. Or, as mentioned in other places, people using the rss widget with their own rss feeds. Or, if you’re pulling feeds internally across the system, that can hang things up as well.

    You can still tweak apache a lil’ bit tho.

    But my money is on a plugin / bad process somewhere.