Optimizing VPS with 128 MB RAM

**EFPower** · 09-12-2006, 02:27 AM

Hello,

I am new to this web business and I need some help. My VPS has only 128MB of RAM guaranteed (up to 512MB dynamic) and I have problems with slow response times / downtime at peak hours.
What could be wrong? The CPU utilization is never very high so my guess is the small RAM is to blame. I removed unnecessary apache modules and I will do the same with PHP extensions (btw: PHP scripts are extremely simple and short).

Here is the screenshot of 'top' at the time the server was failing to deliver pages (sorry can't link).

img216.imageshack.us/img216/705/topyk9.gif

Thank you!

**Atomm** · 09-13-2006, 07:12 PM

If you happen to use PowerVPS, you can ask them to optimize things for you. In my case, I had them optimize MySQL and it helped tremendously.

**EFPower** · 09-14-2006, 10:10 PM

Well I'll have to do it by myself I guess. Currently I'm experimenting with apache settings - MaxClients which the error log said was too low.
Its easy for the big guys.. they just add another gig of RAM, while I have to tweak my 128 MB VPS

**59ideas** · 09-15-2006, 01:42 PM

What kind of traffic are you getting at peak?

I run 5 wordpress blogs with no problem on my 128mb vps. It recently handled a small burst of traffic and was surprise that it had no problem. Am wonder how far I can push it.

**kthdsn** · 09-15-2006, 03:06 PM

My VPS has only 64mb ram. We got around this by using lighter software. We use Lighttpd instead of apache, we found it much easier to set up than apache with all the features we need. We use SQLite instead of MYSQL. We run visitors instead of awstats. You get the picture

Granted we're only running a handfull of very small sites at the moment, but the server seems to be managing really well.

**59ideas** · 09-15-2006, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kthdsn

We run visitors instead of awstats.

Could you point me to Visitors. I like to take a look.

**kthdsn** · 09-15-2006, 03:44 PM

Yep, it's here http://www.hping.org/visitors/

**59ideas** · 09-15-2006, 04:42 PM

Thanks! I look at webstats quite a bit and looked at many tools and have not come across this yet.

Opensource is truely amazing

**EFPower** · 09-16-2006, 12:49 PM

Well I got around 14.000 pageviews per day when I had trouble.

I figured out that apache was using swap file because it ran out of memory so I decreased the maximum number of apache clients. But the number (6 i think) was too low and apache couldn't serve everybody.
Then I set it to 15 clients and I don't have any problems.

I don't really any good statistics, I think I will use Google analytics.

**yung proxy** · 10-05-2006, 06:51 AM

Check this out it should really help - webhostingtalk(DOTCOM)/forumdisplay.php?f=108