is the vps plan with 256 mb of ram work? i currently have a situation where i have directadmin+server stuff installed in the vps and i will be running about 10 sites using mysql/php and the traffic i get about is 10k uniques per site. what are your suggestions? how do i know that this wouldnt crash server? what are limits i should be aware of.
I am far from an expert on the subject. I am repeating what I have read. DirectAdmin is a better choice than cPanel for use with 256mb. Even so it uses a good chunck of that 256mb. If the sites aren't real busy you might be okay. With busy php/mysql sites I would venture that you would have a problem.
Yes...if that 256MB RAM is guaranteed RAM. I'd suggest you to upgrade to all latest packages like Apache 2.2, PHP 5.2.1 and MySQL 5.0.37; all other updated too like dovecot, openssl etc. I've been using this setup and RAM usage is only 80MB. You also need to optimize the apache and mysql config files in order to get the best performance out of the vps.
Is that 80mb when cPanel is not open? As reported from your vm manager? That sounds like some good tweaking. Now that I think about you posted an article on this some time back didn't you?
I'm running directadmin as OP on my VPS. Yep it's kinda tweaked setup. Yea, I had written a blog post on this, but that's vague for most people with different setups and configs.
What is your Linux distro? (Debian /derivates) seem to be the best in terms of low resource usage. Also, keep in mind that stuff like email filtering (anti-virus, anti-spam, etc) can use a lot of ram. Still, 256MB *should* be enough to spare.
thanks i noticed that i had only 30mb free ram free when i issued top or free command. why is it so? what is the decent value of this?
I guess what you need is server optimization. Is the 256MB RAM guaranteed or burst? How much traffic is there when the free RAM you quoted as 30MB? What is the OS ? Any extra packages installed on the VPS ?
mine is 256 guaranteed w/ debian. it was in ideal condition and no sites hosted. Is it true that running dns (bind) consumes too much memory? Just curious
If it's still free now (no sites hosted), I'd be happy to have a look at it and try to optimize the setup if you wish... I'm more proficient in CentOS DA management...IMO CentOS is a better and robust choice for a VPS.
On a VPS, it is really best to keep it as lean as possible and what you can run externally, it is best to do so that way. BIND does not take up too much memory unless you are running thousands of requests each minute. Personally on my 512mb VPS, I elected not to run a DNS Server but use the free option provided by Namecheap since all my domain names are there. It allows me to redirect my sites to a backup server in case something goes wrong with my VPS. I would think that Directadmin is quite lightweight so it should work with what you want. If you have not done so, select a VPS provider which allows you to upgrade RAM as and when needed.
You can always transfer to a plan higher than what you're currently using if you "outgrow" your current VPS.
Keep in mind that the "top" command shows not only free ram, but also cached wich is also available ram. i still stick with my opinion that 256MB are fine except for email anti-spam/av filtering (spamassassin, dcc, amavis, clamav etc really hurt your ram usage) Bind i believe starts at about 20-30MB