VPS for CiviCRM?
 

I've been looking into VPSs for a project that would be using CiviCRM (with Drupal as a website). I'm just wanting to get a second opinion on that a VPS would work well for this since CiviCRM says that their software is resource intensive and shared hosting probably won't cut it. I'm new to VPS hosting, but I'm looking into using probably either KnownHost or ServInt (since they provide managed VPSs and backups). I've also been looking into VPS cloud hosting (particularly vps.net) or just cloud hosting in general, and Cloud Hosting just seems so... complicated. It seems that a VPS is a cheaper route than cloud hosting. :/

My key questions are:

• Is VPS a good solution for CiviCRM?
  
• I would be using Cpanel, DirectAdmin, or Plesk as a control panel since I lack experience using a web server w/out a CP. Which one is least resource intensive and would use less space/RAM?
  
• What would be the minimum RAM/space needed for running a control panel alongside with CiviCRM?

Hi there,

1. from a personal experience, yes a VPS will be the best solution for running CiviCRM (rather than a shared web hosting) as it requires quite a lot of resources.

2. Amongst the control panels you mentioned, cPanel is the most user-friendly one, with a wide range of features installed. However, is the most "heavy" panel.

3. According to cPanel's requirements, 256MB of RAM are enough for installing/running cPanel, but I will recommend you to go for a 512MB Ram, just to be on the safe side.

For Direct Admin, 256MB of RAM should be okay, I haven't experienced any problems with such amount of ram on DirectAdmin.

As for the Plesk, Parallel (the Plesk's developers) suggest 512MB to install and run Plesk 10 on a Linux environment.


I hope the were helpful to your decision. feel free to shoot any more questions you have!

Good to see people using CiviCRM more and more. Already advised it a while ago to an organization i was doing an assignment for.

A (Cloud) VPS will handle CiviCRM just fine. Make sure you go for a decent package (> 1GB RAM) and a provider where the IO is good (no ultra-budget provider).

About the control panel, i would drop plesk. Cpanel and DA are both good.

just a quick respond to your questions:

Is VPS a good solution for CiviCRM?
>>> Personally I never use it before, but we have clients who using it previously without any issue on VPS

I would be using Cpanel, DirectAdmin, or Plesk as a control panel since I lack experience using a web server w/out a CP. Which one is least resource intensive and would use less space/RAM?
>>>> go for directadmin if you're looking for less resources consumption.


What would be the minimum RAM/space needed for running a control panel alongside with CiviCRM?
>>>> Minimum 1GB is recommended to run if you select cPanel as your control panel. Otherwise, you will have unforeseen issue.

I only looked into using a Cloud VPS package. Although the cloud redundancy would be great for uptime, they're expensive and billing for it seems too complicated (for me) to understand. It's a local organization that would be using it, so I don't think it would be overly bogged by visitors. I was looking into getting the KnownHost VS2 package (http://www.knownhost.com/vps_packages.html)