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Yes, You Can Run 18 Static Sites on a 64MB VPS
- spitfire 15y agoYes you can. We used to run whole webservers on 486DX/2-66's with 8megs memory. Ran just fine. Kids these days.
- ddrager 15y agoWhy not just 18... why not 48 or 128 or 1024? Questions like this are always loaded. First of all: - This assumes the end user is familiar with command line usage. The typical consumer of VPSes aren't, in my experience, and rely on something like cPanel to do all administration. Which is why you can't really run on 64MB. - The site itself doesn't take up RAM, just disk space. If you have 1024 static sites the only thing taking up ram is the configuration of the sites sitting in Apache's memory. As long as there isn't a lot of traffic on the site, it doesn't really matter how many there are. - You could have 1 static site that has a medium amount of traffic and it would bring the 64MB instance to its knees as soon as you have more than a few concurrent connections. Anyway, from this hoster's experience, when I get a question like "What can I run on a 64MB VPS" the easy answer is "Not much" because usually the type of person that wants to spend $3/mo on 64MB VPS instead of $7/mo for a 1GB VPS doesn't really have their priorities in place.
- St-Clock 15y ago"This assumes the end user is familiar with command line usage. The typical consumer of VPSes aren't"? What? I thought it was the opposite, i.e., that typical VPS customers were familiar with a command line or had to get familiar pretty quickly :-) Do you have any data or experience to back this claim (I ask because I don't have any data to back my perception)? Maybe you are referring to managed VPS as opposed to unmanaged VPS? Btw, the article is 2 yrs old so (should have been in the summary...).
- mikeryan 15y agoI'm sure I could think about this more and figure it out, but its a lazy Saturday. If you aren't comfortable at the command line to the point where you need something like cPanel then whats the point of using a VPS over shared hosting? I pay something ridiculous like $8 a month for dreamhost just to host a few sites I don't want to deal with. (Note I also run a VPS for other things - but I maintain it myself from a prompt)
- duskwuff 15y ago> If you have 1024 static sites the only thing taking up ram is the configuration of the sites sitting in Apache's memory. As long as there isn't a lot of traffic on the site, it doesn't really matter how many there are. And if you're smart about the setup, you don't even necessarily have to have a separate configuration for each site. See mod_vhost_alias for Apache, for instance. With that in place, memory is no longer an issue at all.
- dmmcintyre3 15y agoWhy would you use apache for static sites? Did you even read the article? It uses lighttpd.
- cdx 15y agoAgreed. Using apache on a lowendbox is not a smart idea. Lighttpd serving static sites takes ~5MB in practise. That's also including a SSHd and other services.
- jonknee 15y agoThere's no practical limit to the number of static sites you can host on a 64MB VPS. There is a limit to the amount of traffic that a 64MB VPS can serve, but if you want to host 10,000 low-traffic sites then by all means go ahead.
- tristanperry 15y agoMany hosts (and users of hosts) - including myself - over at WebHostingTalk use/sell cPanel hosting a fair amount. And naturally 64 MB of RAM would NOT be enough for a VPS running cPanel (or any other mainstream server control panel, for that matter). If the user is happy to use command line though then yes, he can run 18 static sites on a 64 MB VPS. His post doesn't mention whether he's happy to have a no-control panel VPS though, so this entire blog post (well, the basis for it) does seem to be predicated on a fairly big assumption... Overall it's a good, informative post though.
- bcl 15y agoWhy the heck do you need a control panel to simply scp or sftp files over to a virtual host?
- jonknee 15y agoMany people in the market for such entry-level hosting don't have the know-how to setup and manage accounts/virtual hosts.
- norova 15y agoThose people in the market for entry-level hosting don't use a VPS, they use a shared hosting service.
- jonknee 15y agoThey use whatever's cheap and then will ask for help.
- cdx 15y agoThis article is more aimed to the type of user who would use a command line interface. If they require cpanel, they should look elsewhere. Negating this article because of a potential user deficiency is ludicrous.
- dmmcintyre3 15y ago
- jws 15y agoMemory is under your control, and if you can keep your content cached will serve you well. The catch with very small VPS slices for me is disk performance. Small slices means more neighbors, and if a few of your neighbors are high disk use applications your disk latency can get ugly. The nasty bit is you can benchmark and check it all out when you move in, then a month later your site is suddenly a dog. CPU has the same dynamic, but I think the virtualization platforms do a better job at "fair" for CPU, and if you are using nginx or lighttpd you don't need much so should be treated well by the scheduler.
- ck2 15y agoJust wait until there are several active WP connections and then there is a cache miss. WordPress can sometimes use 32M to build a page. That kind of setup is only useful where most of your visitors are NOT logged in, since logged in users often cause cache-misses.
- jonknee 15y agoThe headline says "static sites". That means WordPress isn't being used.
- kronusaturn 15y agoBut the article talks about installing WordPress. So the confusion is understandable.
- cdx 15y ago"Kinda." The article says it might be possible to take it one step further to run a low volume wordpress/basic PHP install.
- jack12 15y agoYes, but beyond the headline is the article :) It actually ends with MySQL + Nginx + PHP + WordPress all running in addition to the 18 static sites, which does seem a bit unlikely to hold up very well, even if the setup shown does leave the VPS with 48MB free.
- mestudent 15y agoIt does but at the end he also talks about running 2 or 3 wordpress sites on such a box.
- benatkin 15y agoI was disappointed that this article didn't have anything about traffic but speculation. I expected it because of the title. There's no point to me in how many static sites it can host if traffic isn't taken into account. As jonknee said, it could host 10,000 low-traffic sites. I also looked up the VPS mentioned in the article, and noted that it's not really that cheap. There's only two price levels below $20, and $20/mo for 256MB isn't great. I got a tax-day special on Zerigo that amounts to about $20/mo for 640MB, and RackSpace Cloud has 512MB for $21.90/mo. The author of the article also mentioned getting a billing issue resolved, and I expect not to have any billing issues in the first place for web hosting. I'm more willing to give other types of services some slack but I think hosting companies ought to have this one figured out.
- 46Bit 15y agoSounds a lot like my thoughts on hosting. To me, a good provider isn't necessarily the one with the best 2-second-reply support. To me, it's the provider where unless you're running a really high traffic complex site you pretty much never need to contact support. For instance, having to contact support rather than pressing a cancel button is something of a red flag for me.
- cdx 15y agoHave a look at BuyVM.net - $15/year for 128MB.
- Osiris 15y agoI found a Windows host with 1GB of RAM for just $8.00 at vpsport.com. That's a heck of deal.
- powertower 15y agoNice try, VPSport.
- cdx 15y agoWhy must you assume that is spam? It could very well be from the front pages of LEB.
- jack12 15y agoWorth pointing out that the site behind this is itself running Wordpress on a 80MB VPS (plus swap): http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/quickweb-7-128mb-xen-vps-in-la-chicago-and-germany/#comment-31158 http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/quickweb-7-128mb-xen-vps-in-la... That's an old article, but LowEndBox is a fun site for checking out the bottom end of the VPS market, these days it's mostly only postings of very cheap providers ($7/month limit) the blogger has been sent or seen on WebHostingTalk. Then the ensuing discussion of how long until the company behind it goes bankrupt. 64MB VPSes like this don't really get offered anymore, while 128MB and 256MB offers are much more popular, usually in the $15-$20/year range.
- rs 15y ago> $15-$20/year $15/$20 a YEAR ?
- Kompottkin 15y agoYup. :)
- yuvadam 15y agoI would argue that the most cheapest option for hosting static sites nowadays is on S3. At $0.14/GB and $1/million requests - I don't think you can get any cheaper. Or reliable, for that matter.
- mestudent 15y agoYour numbers are wrong, $0.14/GB is only for storage. The thing that will most likely bite you depending on what kind of site you are hosting is the $0.15/GB outbound transfers. But yes it will still be cheap for most static sites like a jekyll blog or something, if you ever reach more than 130 GB of outbound transfer you have just reached the cost of an entry level linode with transfer of 200gb included.
- dmmcintyre3 15y agoMy $3/month VPS has 500gb transfer, and it's not the cheapest around.
- mestudent 15y agoWhat provider would that be?
- cdx 15y agoHostigation. Another good one would be BuyVM at $15/y =)
- ez77 15y agoRuby Ring [1] offers an unlimited VPS for $2.49! I'm a flat-fee junkie, and although I hope I some day have the prospect of actual overuse, I love the peace of mind associated with flat fees. Just for the curious, yes, you do get quite a few interruptions in your service, but the staff is pretty good about it, and it's a reasonable thing to expect given the conditions. Certainly it is OK just for learning, which is my case. [1] http://rubyringtech.com/ http://rubyringtech.com/
- 15y ago
- dmmcintyre3 15y agoMy main VPS has 128mb RAM and is running a MyBB forum which gets 80k pageviews a month. If I dropped the PHP, MySQL, IRC stuff and email server I could run it on 16-32mb except when updating the software on the VPS.
- dedward 15y ago"number of sites" isn't a metric you can design against - you know nothing about the app requirements. "number of static sites" is marginally better - the "number of sites" in that case is meaningless - the limiting factor will be the request rate and desired response time.
- iphoneedbot 15y agoAGGHHH!!! This is CLEARLY a very well DISGUISED ad-article/spam. Im so angered when I see an article that has "WebHostingTalk", "Discount", "Heres how you..." Its so painful to see this on HN! P.S. @spitfire -- Yeah.. thems were the days! goes to show you how old I am
- cdx 15y agoNope. Try again, bro. The host mentioned was in the original thread that this blog post was a response to.
- iphoneedbot 15y agoSorry 'Bro' Clearly you are a SHILL -- your account was created TWO hours ago! Sorry 'BRO' we see right thru you.
- cdx 15y agoNah, just a supporter of LEB. If you actually looked at the post in a sensible way you'd come to the same realizations.
- iphoneedbot 15y agoYeah.. you are admit.. Looking at it in a sensible way. 1) Title was written and posted as such to draw flame 2) Post is quickly started with a discount 3) The page is littered with advert The merit of the technical write up is not in question; its the specific intention to incite controversy. thats the problem. Its obvious to this crowd that 64mb is plenty to run a 18 Static Sites. It is the very fact of challenging the ability to run 18 static sites on 64mb via a VPS is ridiculous. Now, if the article asked the question of "how quickly can you max out 64mb VPS and tactics to avoid it" -then, it would be less inflamatory.
- cdx 15y agoHave a look at this thread - http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=765561 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=765561 . The title of the blog post retorts what is generally said in that thread (No, you can't run 18 static sites on a 64mb VPS). It's a (more detailed) reply - nothing more. The offers (which, LEA most likely doesn't make money on - just the sidebar ads) were there about a month or so before the post. So, what else is wrong with it?
- Osiris 15y agoHas any VPS provider thought of building customized Linux distributions specifically to reduce the memory footprint, preconfigured with lightttpd/nginx, php, and mysql, all with pre-configured configuration settings? I find that most VPS hosts just install a standard distribution and expect the customer to do all the work to reduce the memory footprint, or they install memory hogging Apache + Plesk control panel configurations that are hard to change. I think one of these providers could make a great offering by having this type of small VPS all pre-configured and ready to run as soon as it's provisioned.
- chrismsnz 15y agoI believe that Virtualmin (a YC startup) is currently building[1] a control panel with the ability to configure a low-memory setup. 1. http://www.virtualmin.com/node/11831#comment-51928 http://www.virtualmin.com/node/11831#comment-51928
- mikelbring 15y agohttp://vps.net http://vps.net does this (I highly recommend them)
- chrisjsmith 15y agoPfft - Back in '00, I shifted a million requests a month across 22 static (using SSI though) sites off a circa 1991 SparcStation 2 (weitek 80MHz upgrade) with 64Mb, NetBSD, thttpd and a couple of 4.3Gb SCSI2 disks. It finally gave up in 2002 when the AUI port decided it'd had enough of electrons. I reckon you could do that with one eye shut on even the crappiest VPS.
- mmaunder 15y agoThis may not seem practical to many who have larger boxes, but much of this advice is extremely useful when you're running a large cluster with millions of hits a day and every spare ounce of memory you save translates into less money for Dell. Great job!!
- mmaunder 15y agoI'd add that if the site is purely static (the example is a PHP site), you can get away with 2MB to 8MB for Nginx and the rest will be filesystem cache and OS. If you don't have too many files, CPU and network throughput will be your only bottleneck and you can have unlimited domains.
- newman314 15y agoAs an alternate option, it's more than possible to run a static site on Google App Engine (for free). Obviously, this is for low traffic and resource requirements.
- sixtyby3 15y agoSure you could run dynamic sites as well. But this isn't a VPS option.
- lsc 15y agoI sell 64MiB VPSs and there has been a lot of internal discussion on the subject; should we continue selling them? As the article says, if you are willing to put in the work, even 64MiB can be useful. On the other hand, more ram gives you a lot more breathing room. It is much easier to do useful things if you get the 128MiB service instead of the 64MiB service. (I charge $4 per account, and $1 for every 64MiB ram, so 128MiB is only a dollar more a month than 64) Nick, an employee of mine, points out that the 64MiB guests are still useful because they force people to learn about every process running on the box, and to only run what is absolutely required. And he's right; that is a great thing to learn. But it is also a lot of work.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- brianwillis 15y agoMy personal favourite is Nginx (pronounced Engine X) I had no idea. I've been calling in "ninks" all this time.
- kristofferR 15y agoI used to call it enjinx.
- mixdev 15y agoMe too. And I am not going to change it.