Hi,
One of my customer wants to make a forum site on football fans and i expect ~1000 concurrent users at long term -if project succeeds also-. This is approximately the same capacity of WHT.

I also wanna use vBulletin. What i want to learn is the server numbers and features of WHT, if developers want to share.

Info like,
How many database servers? Whether they are Clustered/Mirrored.
How many web servers, load balancers?
And bw usage monthly.

Well, you are free to delete this post and free not to answer these details.
Kind Regards.

WHT is hosted on a cluster with the other iNet properties, 1000 users does require a cluster and going on what WHT uses isn't necessarily the best choice, after all WHT's uptime isn't all that great.

Generally if you are asking questions on what you need then you would be best looking for someone to assist you in capacity planning. For that you could try rack911 or totalserversolutions.

Given the fact you do not have those users yet there is no point starting big, you can adapt as you grow.

hi Scott.Mc
Thanks for reply, so you not only use a clustered database for WHT but for other sites as well, which increases concurrent users perhaps up to 10000+, right?

I know rack services, they really give big trust. My customer is a national tv, they prefer to host it at their own office. They can/will put name of site during a national soccer match and can boom number of users easily if they like the system.

At start i plan to use,
One Dual Quad 16GB RAM as Master Mysql, Sunfire vz40 8GB RAM as MySql slave and backup
These 2 are at their office readily.
2 load balancers
and 3 web servers after them.

I want to learn the hardware behind WHT to get an idea -at least a kind of comparable measure- for vBulletin resource consumption. I am not sure if above hardware is enough for 1000 registered 1000 guest users concurrently.

Those specs are overkill for just 1000 users online at a time.

I am not sure because i have never used vBulletin before, this is why i wanted to ask it here.
My time is limited so i choosed vBulletin as a trust brand.

For instance how many user requests can be handled by a Dual Quad 16Gb MySql database server at vBulletin. As you see it is not clustered, only mirrored.

i see it now, your site hostgeekz is cool, i am now installing ffmpeg from your tutorial, i have many .ogg videos, i ll convert them to avi or some ext. that is preferable by youtube.
Thanks for tutorials.

If you have a large budget, then you could just give rackspace a call and discuss your requirements. I believe WHT has their servers at rackspace..

Alternatively, you can get in touch with WebNX or Rack911 and discuss your requirements too. They'll be able to advise on what you need and set it up too. They do provide custom set ups with some pretty meaty servers.

go for a small setup in start and if succeed go big, right now this config sounds high overkill, plus I sugget using lighttpd for the webserver.

One Dual Quad 16GB RAM as Master Mysql, Sunfire vz40 8GB RAM as MySql slave and backup

just 1 of those servers will host 1000 users.

This is a complete overkill. Not to mention a waste of money, because unless you know 1,000 people who would want to become active in your site, you're not going to get that amount of visitors right off the back.

I would go as far and say a VPS would do. Than go up as you grow.

WHT won't tell you what they use for security reasons, the question has been asked many times before.

A few things about your suggested setup:

* Your MySQL servers should really be the same spec, admittedly only the primary will be handling your queries but they have to be able to keep up with each other.

* MySQL isn't brilliant for clustering (it's getting better). I'd suggest Oracle or Postgres.

* If you're going to have lots of searches you might want to have a dedicated server for searches so as not to have any effect on your main database.

* Use something like LigHTTPD for serving images, or stick a Squid reverse proxy infront of the website so only your dynamic content is being served by the web servers.

Clearly the specs are complete overkill, but will allow for substancial (probably ten-fold) growth. If you've got the capital available and are confident in the growth of the venture, my suggestion would be to spend it and build a solution that's going to grow very easily. If the cash is going to be a stretch, keep the basic structure but scale it down, single processors, less memory, less disks. You can add these in to good servers at a later date with minimal impact on the infrastructure.

Are you looking to do this yourself, or are you looking to outsource it to a managed hosting company?

Dan

About the bandwidth, with 2000 concurrent users(1000 registered, 1000 guests)
you'll need a minimum of 200mbps to provide some burstibility during peak hours..
200mbps should be just about enough for you.
I guess you'd be burning close to 10-15 TB per month...which is about 50mbps however, you'll need to keep your cap high since the site will run really sluggishly if you're capped at 50mbit

About the bandwidth, with 2000 concurrent users(1000 registered, 1000 guests)
you'll need a minimum of 200mbps to provide some burstibility during peak hours..
200mbps should be just about enough for you.
I guess you'd be burning close to 10-15 TB per month...which is about 50mbps however, you'll need to keep your cap high since the site will run really sluggishly if you're capped at 50mbit

Where does information come from? he does not says he is serving anything else beside VBB so there is not need for such high bandwidth.

btw,
I have a Vbb FORUM that is currently have about 100K members. Average online is 1000, and peak is 3000K.

This board runs fine on 2 Single Quad core Xeon 5335. With 4GB of RAM for webserver, and 8GB of RAM for database server. Load at peak is about 4 on webserver( which is equal to 1 since this is Quad core) and about 2 on database server.
If i need to upgrade, i would just add another CPU on both server. And couple GB of ram for them. That should be fine for upto 5K people online at peak.

The bandwidth usage alone for Vbb is about 2000GB to 3000GB.


For a new start up VBB forum. I guess a single Quad Core is enough even you grow fast.

One Dual Quad 16GB RAM as Master Mysql, Sunfire vz40 8GB RAM as MySql slave and backup
These 2 are at their office readily.
2 load balancers
and 3 web servers after them

That setup would run like a VBB that is at at least 5-8 times WHT.


Hope it helps

Where does information come from? he does not says he is serving anything else beside VBB so there is not need for such high bandwidth.
...
...
I guess he replaced the 'V' with a 'W' - made any sense to you? :eek:

I guess he replaced the 'V' with a 'W' - made any sense to you? :eek:

I'd suggest you use IPB, its better off (and cheaper) and more lighter compared to vB or so I think about it that way.

Personally, I like VB, it's great for forums and it has many administrator options. Very easy to edit also. And for only $160 for an owned license, it's well worth the price! I would go with a VPS provider that sells Dedicateds too so that when you make your switch, you don't have to do much of the transferring, you could ask your host to do it:)

Regards,
Nick Kitmitto

vanilla FTW..