Hosting resources required

I have recently started up a Dolphin site, and I have an opportunity to pick up the membership of a site that has closed, which will mean possibly 5,000 - 10,000 users, all of whom may be signing up in a surge over 3 - 5 days. We may be able to spread that out if necessary, but it could still result in an ongoing peak load of 500 - 1,000 simultaneous users. The site has been customized with a very complex matching algorithm-- fairly resource hungry-- plus the usual photo uploads, messaging, etc. No video yet.

My VPS is probably not adequate to handle this-- current resources are

Storage: 100 GB
Bandwidth: 5.84 TB
RAM: 2048 MB
Burst RAM: 4056 MB

I do not know the processor specs, which may be the most critical factor.

I don't want to spend any money unnecessarily, because I'm still not getting any income (these will all be free trial memberships) but obviously can't afford to lose these people because my site won't handle the traffic.

What sort of resources do you think I'd need?

The hosting company has said I need a dedicated server with RAID10 and 4 drives.

Do you think that is excessive?

No suggestions were made as to processor or memory requirements.

I'll appreciate any insight you can offer.

Thanks,

Brian

Your Specs are better than mine and I have no issues on my VPS.

I have provided some useful information that may help with configuration. 

Server Requirements

• Linux/Unix (Red Hat, Debian, FreeBSD, Mandrake, etc.) or Windows OS

• Apache v.1.3 and higher or LiteSpeed web server. Other web servers can be used too, but custom rewrite rules are required, we have one for nginx web server.

• PHP 5.2.0 or higher.

• register_globals must be Off
  safe_mode must be Off
  exec() (executable files) must be allowed
  short_open_tag must be On
  allow_url_fopen should be On
  allow_url_include should be Off
  open_basedir should not have any value
  memory_limit should be 128M or higher

• mbstring, mysql, mysqli, curl, gd, xslt extensions must be installed.

• MySQL 4.1.2 and higher.

• The magic_quotes_gpc option must be disabled for Dolphin 7.x, but enabled for Dolphin 6.x.

• If a security module is installed (such as mod_security for Apache), it should be able to be configured for specific folders (or disabled).

• mod_rewrite for Apache

• Direct connection to boonex.com should be able to be established (i.e. connection without requiring proxy authorization). This is required for license verification.

• GD library compiled with FreeType fonts (for photo processing) or ImageMagick as an alternative.

• Sendmail or Postfix programs for sending emails.

• Ability to create Cron Jobs.

• You should be able to run executable files (you would need it for ffmpeg.exe, which converts videos).

More Info can be found here:

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/HostingServerSetupRecommendations

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/DolTech

Mike,

How many users do you get concurrently?

Thanks for the configuration tips. I will have my site admin review these again.

Brian

Go with at least a four core CPU; server cpu if possible.

at least 16 gigs of ram

The 5 terrabytes of traffic will probably be sufficient; video is the most hungry of bandwidth; most will have a plan where you simply pay for going over instead of throttling your site but check on this as you don't want your site throttled

Storage, you are way low; at least two 1-terrabytes drives in RAID; you can always increase storage later as your users add content and you see you are approaching the limit.

Skip VPS and go with a dedicated server; it will be just your site and you will have full access to all resources and you will find the prices comparable for the same configuration.

If you can not set up the dedicated server, many hosts will do it for you, installing the LAMP or LEMP stack for you.

Which Host is the best? What  you guys think about Godaddy? i7 CPU and so on.. Is it possible to use Godaddy on Dolphin??

I would recommend zarconia.net as this is run by Nathan Paton and Zarcon, both moderator here on Boonex.

Excellent service and the server, shared and dedicated, are set-up perfectly for Boonex.

Richard,

Thank you for this suggestion. Being hosted by someone familiar with Dolphin would probably be a relief, as configuration has had it's problems.

I went to their site-- they appear to be a reseller, but do they run their own facility? How big are they?

Do you-- or anyone reading this-- have direct experience as to their record of uptime, or the speed of their support response?

Thanks again,

Brian

We're a small host that's focused on Dolphin.  Primary focus is on shared, but we also include dedicated for those who need it, and make sure all servers are configured to make the most out of Dolphin.  It's not the biggest secret in the world that we lease from a data center, and include additional support and the guarantee that Dolphin works.

Target response time is within a few minutes, and I think we meet that target for most tickets.  After-hours (1-6 AM EST) is about the same, but non-critical tickets may not be answered until the morning - even Dolphin users need to catch some Z's.

If you have any other questions, feel free to message me.

Don't let the fact that Zarconia uses a datacentre deter you; the biggest names in the industry do.  What that means is that they can off-load such things as the connection to the backbone and equipment upkeep to the datacentre and focus on support and services.

 Geek Girl,

 I'm not deterred pers se by the reseller status, but by the lag it may create in troubleshooting. We had a problem a while back with the site being unbearably slow, at times essentially inoperable, and it turned out to be a DoS attack on another VPS on the node, which was consuming all resources, and it was difficult enough to get the Host to track the problem down when I was dealing with them directly-- I'm concerned that being one step removed will introduce even more delay.

Or, is it possible that having the reseller intervene on our behalf might actually speed up the response time? I suppose that depends on the relationship they have with the hosting company.

Brian

Because of our status (signed contract, more than a dozen servers, etc.), we have more "perks", such as discounts and additional support options - all of which is then passed on.  Unless it's network related, or the server is on fire, the data center is never involved.  And in case we need to contact them (if it's network, chances are they already know), information is quickly passed on.  We also monitor the situation from our end, and in most cases, can let you know updates before the data center has informed us.

One server admin I consulted summarized thusly:

"What versions of database/application are you using? Check the publisher recommended specs for memory, CPU cores etc; and add them up. Add a GB for overhead, and that's your bare minimum requirement."

Does anyone know what these specs are for Dolphin 7.0.9?

Minimum requirements are here: http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/DolTech

Nathan,

Appreciate your quick response, but those are pretty much software and configuration specs, not hardware.

B.

I just wrote all of that without reading the first post.. hang on..haha

According to your initial post, if that is what you are planning to do and have a site with 10k members with the possibility of 500-1k online at a time, then I would definitely recommend a dedicated server.

Now which one do you want, need, or can afford? That all depends on you but maybe I can offer some assistance..

If there is a possibility that you do not get 10k members or 500-1k members online, but maybe get 1/4 of that, you could start with something like the Z900.

But, if you are pretty confident that you will get those numbers and possibly exceed them.. then you need to look into the ZX models. Either way, since we are based on monthly contracts, if you choose that you need something bigger later, then simply upgrade :)

P.S There has never been a 'required' server spec for Dolphin..

I have been surprisingly happy with TMD Hosting.

I would suggest you to go with Cloudways Managed hosting instead of VPS or shared. Managed hosting is best because It performs everything in minutes and speed is amazing.

Actually, managed hosting has nothing to do with speed.  Managed means that you have support that you can use to help managed such things as backups and server problems.

No, that's the reason why people always get wrong hosting, Cloudways is totally different, they have their console where you can do everything yourself instead of asking someone to do, they have different providers like Amazon, Google Cloud, Kyup, Vultr, DO.. also all the platforms can be installed in minutes. You can use 3 days trial for now.

I have been with Zarconia for 3 years. They are excellent and in all that time there response has been well within 30 minutes quite often quicker than that. I often wonder if Nathon sleeps at all.

Alexmorco, it sounds to me like you work for Cloudways...