server requirements and OS question

[petrozza]

Hi! I currently have Invision Power Board on my website and plan on switching to vBulletin. My site is on a dedicated server with the following configuration:

AMD 3000+ Barton
1024MB RAM
FreeBSD 4.x

My forum has about 300-400 concurrent users during its peak times. So, I'd like to know if my server would be able to handle vBulletin with 300-400 users (IPB does have problems) and if there are any FreeBSD 4.x related issues.

Thank you

[petrozza]

So, I guess no one can answer my question?

[Steve Machol]

Please wait at least 12 hours before bumping your posts. Thanks.

Don't know much about servers but I do know there are a lot of factors involved other than OS, processor type and memory. You might want to add more info.

[Andy Huang]

I'm not familiar with the FreeBSD OS based servers, but I know that there is a pretty high probability that you'll get bottlenecks when you are at that number of concurrent visitors. This is simply because your server will need to allocate cpu resources (threads) as well as RAM memory for each user's httpd and mysql queries to execute. Since your server configuration is pretty high up, my guess is that you should be able to handle around a good 200 to 250 concurrent visitors with VB no lag/bottlenecks what so ever. However, its just a guess, because there are lots and lots of other factors also needs to be taken into consideration -- Php configuration, Mysql configuration, apache configuration, other installed applications, hardware configurations etc. are just a few to list. Maybe someone from the vb dev crew who are more familiar with servers and vb loads will be able to answer the question better for you as well as give you better advises on load balancing across two or more servers.

Cheers.

[waterwheel]

My experience says you'll be fine.

I'm running on a 2.4Ghz P4, mandrake, 1 gig. PhpBB was crashing mysql completely at around 200 busy users, or if 20-30 folks posted too fast. The frequent crashes at busy times are why I tried switching to vBulletin.

We just went through another one of our busy times. 600 online at once, all very actively posting (it's a student forum and marks were released that day). The user experience during this load was unchanged - the server responded as fast as ever. Server load was noticeable by me with 'top', but that's it. .

We're continuing to grow so I now have 200-300 users online every day all day. The server doesn't blink.

If load is an issue, there are various options availabe specifically for this in the vbulletin control panel. I've turned off sorting the list of logged in users and turned the list off completely under my heaviest load. - little tweaks like that.

I suggest you also comb through the templates and remove all the white space, tabs, carriage returns etc. The templates out of the box are probably 20% bloat that can be removed. Also, make sure your css style sheet is a file and not embedded with every page (users will request the file once only, instead of downloading the entire style sheet every page).

In short, I think my circumstances are similiar to yours, and I am *very* happy with vbulletin performance. (I also note that I visit another 'deals' forum that is very busy that runs vbulletin flawlessly). Best hundred bucks I've spent in a while.