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I am moving my small phpBB website from a hosting to cloud (digitalocean) the size of my mysql server is 400MB, and I wonder if I should buy one big server for my site or two small servers ?

let say I have budget of $20, I have two scenarios which one is better?

First Scenario : put both web server and mysql database on one server, (2GB ram, 2 core cpu) $20/month

Second Scenario : put web server on one small server (1GB ram, 1 core cpu) $10/month
put mysql server on one small server, (1GB ram, 1 core cpu) $10/month

Medya
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  • often a powerful back end server (in your case) should contain an instance of each mission critical applications (i.e Apache and MySQL). as you reach milestones, you can grow the memory, as well as the number of CPUs (also important). between milestones, utilize proper caching techniques within phpBB, and sprinkle cloud based load balancers on top of the stack. these could contain caching reverse proxies like nginx or varnish, and they could serve from as close as possible location using GeoIP. replications of the database for redundancy. and even queue and send mail servers (if so required). – RapidWebs Jun 23 '14 at 01:50

1 Answers1

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One big server for your case.

Reasons:

  1. You aren't big enough for more than one physical server.
  2. MySQL will have extra latency to communicate with a second server, even if it is only a ms being in the same datacenter.
  3. Sharing resources. 2GB of RAM can be fully used by whichever needs it, Apache or MySQL. Otherwise, each is limited to 1GB.
  4. Twice the possibility of your site being offline, if the web server crashes or if the mysql server crashes.

Once you grow beyond the point of one physical server then you can decide to split them up. The only other reason is for redundancy, but seeing as MySQL and Apache are separate services that most likely need each other, there is no redundancy. If one goes offline, so will your web site.

Devon
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