Bitch Time

I am trying to get a real social network up using Dolphin and facing a nightmare.  We put the site up on a VPS and it is constantly crashing because we are overloading the VPS and users are complaining left and right.  I read through the documentation and unless I overlooked it I did not see "requirements, 16 gigs of ram or better, 4 cpu cores or better..."  In fact, they are misleading people to believe that Dolphin can be ran on a shared hosting environment by having links to Arvixe and others claiming "Dolphin Hosting, $4.00/month"; yes, if you don't plan on having any users on your site.  If I had had a clear understanding of what was needed for this platform, then I could have found a good dedicated server before launching our site on a VPS that is so underpowered.  Boonex just increased their licensing fees; fine, but quit misleading people about your software and be upfront about what is needed to run a real social network with Dolphin.  If you lose a few customers then so be it because customers need to be informed.  I have no problem getting the hardware needed to run Dolphin and I could have avoided this huge headache if I had been informed.  Put a bleeding link on your front page, "Requirements Needed For Dolphin" and remove those endorsements for shared hosting accounts because you know Dolphin can not be hosted on them.

Dolphin on shared is for in-development/developer/small sites with low requirements.  It's not an end-all solution.

The required setup depends on the site.  How many members do you have?  What do they do?  How many are on and doing something at the same time?  Then there's the question of the setup.  How much RAM?  VPS?  What's the host?  I know for a fact some hosts out there over-sell their VPS.

 Good luck, I've asked all that. In PM as well and get ignored.

She won't take the advise. "YOU need a better server" just endless rants about a server with "2" cores and wonders why.

I personally think that the responsibility weighs more on the hosting company than BoonEx to make it more 'visible' for potential clients to see those 'hidden' limitations. I will also have to disagree that Dolphin cannot be ran on shared hosting. It depends on the shared hosting environment setup.

Whether someone wants to admit it or not, they get caught in that whole 'Unlimited (almost) Everything for $4/mth' but fail to read the fine print. For anyone who thinks they can run a Dolphin site with say for example...500 active users online with a shared plan like that is completely wrong.

The best advise I could give for anyone inquiring about 'hosting' for Dolphin is to do some research on each, search these forums, and/or send your questions to the support staff before you decide to buy.

I feel your pain:

Take a trip to my post and see if you agree.

http://www.boonex.com/forums/#topic/So-mad-at-Boonex.htm

 I guess you should go and read some more because you will see that I am trying to get a dedicated server with 16 gigs of ram and a hex core cpu ordered.  Of course I know that will have to be upgraded as well as the site grows.

I guess I miss the part where Boonex stated, recommended hosts for DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES ONLY. I am not the only one that has criticised Boonex for listing a couple of recommended hosting companies misleading people to believe that one can use a shared hosting for Dolphin.  Arvixe is misleading people with their Dolphin shared hosting as well (you can not even use their basic VPS setup) and Boonex is backing them up by recommending them.  Again, it should be very clear that Dolphin requires a race horse to operate the thing and not a pony.  I would have ordered a dedicated server up front if Boonex had just been forthright with the real requirements of Dolphin and I would not have faced the headaches I am facing now.

The "recommended" hosting company should be removed and it should say, "A dedicated server with xx amount of ram and xx number of cores is required to run our social networking application".  By doing so, they will help their user base avoid the pains that I have went through.  I will give Boonex credit for mentioning in the docs that one might want to have the mysql server on its on box; that is one thing we will be doing as soon as we can afford it.

 Well stated and so true. 

@Netwon27.  I went back and looked in my messages and did find your PM.  I apologise if I did not replied.  Your message was basically pointing me to a VPS provider; I did not see any dedicated boxes on that site.  I had already determined that to purchase a VPS; and not knowing how many other accounts would be sharing the physical box, was not going to be the solution I needed.  For one, by the time I got the VPS with the necessary about of ram and cores I would be paying the same price for a dedicated box. 

If anyone is considering a real social network site using Dolphin; and by that I mean a site where several hundred users might be online at any one time messaging, leaving comments, blogging, uploading videos, sounds, etc.  you know like the other social networks out there, then forget about any VPS, because you will end up paying dedicated prices to get anything out of it.  Get the biggest dedicated server you can afford, and if you can afford it, put the database server on its own dedicated box.  Forget the recommended hosting by Boonex because it is worthless.  Find a good solid company that actually owns the hardware you will be renting with a real datacentre; otherwise you will have nothing but pain.

It is important to understand that Dolphin, per se, is not all there is on your server. In shared accounts, you're basically betting on how much of the server has been sold and is loaded. So, it may be nice and fast, even faster than VPS or small ded server, or it may not work at all. On your own dedicated server, there's a bunch of stuff that takes resources even before you start talking about Dolphin, or any CMS for that matter. OS will take something, SQL, PHP, media servers, image processors, web servers, etc, etc. So, when thinking about your first, say, 1-2Gb ram - it's as good as nothing, because little is left for Dolphin itself. Then, depending on various specifics (even, for example type of HDD used) a handful of online users can stress your box. Naturally, Dolphin with many activated modules will have to create lots of connections, queries, etc. So, you always need to consider many factors and look at the bigger picture, before making any definitive assessments. 

I'll give you an interesting example - this site - BoonEx.com runs on a very old, highly customised prototype build of Dolphin 8. It not even close to a tested/polished/streamlined software, and nonetheless it doesn't stress server that much. What we do constantly have  problems with is Trac - the dev section of the site, powered by a well-regarded software (Trac) that's often praised for good performance. In the last 3 years I'd say 9 out of 10 server performance issues would be due to Trac setup, and I should say that we have rather capable servers running BoonEx.com. And still, we should say that Trac is bad, it's just there're some issues that in our implementation and server setup don't get resolved due to a few know problems of Trac, which, we hope, would get resolved eventually. 

So, look at the bigger picture, try to deduct it to specific issues, bring them up and ask for possible solutions. And if you already have tens/hundreds of online users that create evenly high server load, upgrade asap and keep monitoring. You want to make sure there're no abnormal processes that load your servers, and if the're none, and it's just a general usage load - suck it up and upgrade, or re-evaluate your site's functionality.

 You left off another MAJOR issue with Arvixe... their support is awful! Average response time for a support ticket on their system is 6 to 20 hours! It took 18 hours for them to even acknowledge a simple request to have the server load my php.ini instead of from the server's root (shared).

I changed to them because they are on boonex.com/hosting... Live and learn. Can't always believe what you are being told when it comes to paid advertising.

 I was suggesting you go with cloud services.

Your wasting your money on "one" dedicated box IMO

 They answer anything that is posted on their forum almost immediately. Even the programming questions and things that have nothing to do with their hosting.  Any time I've sent a ticket number to one  of the support guys that someone sent me here they bent over backwards to fix the problem. 

I'll agree that a production Dolphin site isn't a good match for shared hosting, but you can't blame Arvixe for that.

 No wonder they don't answer the support tickets in a timely manner, they are spending too much time in the forums... Maybe I will have more luck there.

 Sorry but I could not pass this one up. So you are saying, as a 'Liaison' for Arvixe, that Dolphin isn't a good match for shared hosting on Arvixe? Have you checked the hosting page lately? It specifically has that banner ad that says "Web Hosting w/ Dolphin 7 preloaded on setup 4$/mo".

Maybe you should advise them to change that then.....

I'm saying, as a webmaster and long time user of Dolphin, that a site the proportions of the one in this thread isn't a good match for ANY shared hosting. As a co-owner of your own webhosting company would you advise a site using a terabyte of storage and 50gb of bandwidth to use shared hosting?

I think a host that sells a hosting package he (or she) knows won't support more than 1 user online at a time, then uses that failure to up sell an unsuspecting new Dolphin user to another package that costs more than it's worth is just morally suspect.

All one needs to do here is search 'Arvixe' and they will be met with the truth.

Basic questions should be answered by the host before they are even asked by the new Dolphin end user, especially when that host is supposed to be a 'Dolphin Expert'.

I just installed a dedicated server for less than I spend on my VPS with someone else. So far, it's been terrific AND it's managed by 2 people that are Dolphin experts. There are much better solutions out there than the ridiculous $4 share plan that won't even support a 5 page static site reliably.

 Yeah, but you can search for any of the hosts listed on the recommended page and be met with that same "truth". The vast majority of the people who first get involved with Dolphin aren't looking to invest any money in it. They just want to install the free version and kick the tires. $4 a month seems like a good alternative to trying to get WAMP setup on your home PC. 

I agree. The $4 plans are generally only good for testing or very lightweight setups (just basic, non-media modules activated) maybe just a few online users (which actually may mean hundreds of daily visitors, so it's not too bad either). Once you have your site up and running, and you like your settings - go on and upgrade plan, it's normally a hassle-free process then.

So what do you guys propose would be adequate for a dolphin site with X amount of users online at the SAME TIME, uploading videos, watching videos, doing EVERY TASK they can possibly do which would consume the most resources?  How many cores, and how much RAM would it take for the below amount of users to not experience hiccups, slowness?

100k users?

50k users?

10k users?

5K users?

1k users

100 users?

A direct answer would be very much appreciated.  Thanks in advance

A very rough rule of thumb that may guide you is - N amount of online users would want to be on server that costs N dollars a month.

Intel® Core™ i7-920 Quadcore
incl. Hyper-Threading Technology

• RAM 24 GB DDR3 RAM
• Hard disks 2 x 750 GB SATA 3 Gb/s HDD
  (Software-RAID 1)
• NIC 1 Gbit OnBoard  connected at 100 Mbit
• Backup Space 100 GB

Traffic Unlimited*

Your cpu is going to be overloaded before you are even close to use other resources fully.

Dont know what geek_girl is talking about (well maybe the geek part).

i have my dolphin site hosted not on a vps but even on a shared hosting with arvixe

and using it for a site only for family it works perfect.

so don't bleam boonex or arvixe or any other host for that mather if you don't know what you are doing.

of course if you want more users and more trafic you will have to pay more.

or did you really think you could start your own facebook for $4.00/month. :p

 Andrew, thanks for your reply.  However, I am seriously hoping that I can get a straight forward and direct answer about your software.  So let me try again.

How much POWER is required to run a site with "X" amount of online users doing every task possible?  I only need to know the specifics of the POWER that is needed, and not how much that POWER may cost.

Example:

Host A may charge $200 for a single core 2.0ghz processor, 2gb ram on VPS.

Host B may charge $10 (ten) for a dual quad core 8ghz processor, and 100gb ram on a dedicated server. 

How many dollars I may have to spend is pretty irrelevant if I do not know how much POWER my site requires for "X" amount of online users.

May I please have a direct answer to these simple questions with specifics (cores, frequency, & ram).

100 online users need "X" amount of cpu and "X" amount of ram 

1k online users need "X" amount of cpu and "X" amount of ram

10k online users need "X" amount of cpu and "X" amount of ram

50k online users need "X" amount of cpu and "X" amount of ram

100k online users need "X" amount of cpu and "X" amount of ram

Example Answer:

1ghz single core cpu & 1gb of ram is enough power for a site with 100 online users doing everything they can possibly do. 

I can't answer these cuz every site is very different with the amount of modules installed, edits and work done on it, server setup and many other things.

But i can answer your last question.

100k online users need "X" amount of cpu and "X" amount of ram

Open a datacenter :P

8 core amd opteron 16 gigs of ram ....

free -m

15886MB total ram

ps aux | grep 'mysql' | awk '{print $6}'

mysql memery usage average

315MB

ps aux | grep 'httpd' | awk '{print $6}'

average apache usage per request

6MB

(15886 - 315) / 6 = 2595 max user request

 LOL, good one, thanks for the laugh, and HONESTY.  I kinda figured one may need a datacenter for maybe 1 million users,

Dolphin_Jay- May I address you as "DJ" from now on? lol.

Jay, thanks for the info.  What I would like to know now is.... Is your results based on 2600 people doing everything all at once?  If so, then servers would be quite costly for a site with 10k users.

Andrew- Anything else you care to add?

I would have to agree with Prashank on this one. It's hard to determine the amount of resources being used since It really depends on how your site is setup such as:

- Template

- Modules installed

- Dynamic content being displayed

- What are the users doing

just to name a few.

So for example, if you have 2,000 users who are in the chat room and all of them are running their webcams, its definitely going to take up more resources then 2,000 users who are just uploading photos or posting messages on a wall. So to get an exact configuration is going to be extremely hard to do. Best thing to do is guesstimate. How many users do you have - How many do you expect to get - What is the most common thing done at your site - Get the best dedicated server you can afford :)

 You are mention a Huge site and for that you need more than 3 servers.

1 server for database

1 server for RMS

1 server for video storage and play

etc...

you can handle 100 user in a single server with all together but with a better tunning