hosting a vbulletin forum

[ed_meyer]

I understand that my question has so many variables that a definite answer is impossible, but I would like your experienced opinion. I have the smallest reseller account and wonder if running vbulletin with an average of 5-10 concurrent users should be ok, load wise? As a second part of this question, how many concurrent users should I expect to be able to serve before I should upgrade to either semi-dedicated or vps server. While I’m at it, would I get get more cpu time by upgrading to higher reseller packages? Again, I realize that this is a subjective question and you can’t be held to a definite answer. Thanks for taking a stab at this question.

[Matt]

Its impossible to say especially considering the number of plugins and mods that could be enabled with vBulletin, but I'd think your current account should be able to handle 5-10 concurrent users with a "stock" vBulletin installation.

All the reseller accts have the same available CPU the only place you'd get more is on a semi-dedicated or dedicated server. A VPS will probably be a little slower than a semi-dedicated and I only recommend them for developmental purposes where root access is required.

[omarfilip]

I think you should skip the VPS when considering your upgrade path. When you're on the shared server, the other sites competing for the server resources are rather static, so your vBulletin should have enough breathing room for quite some time. If you upgrade to a VPS you will be competing for resources with some very active sites, many of which use the MySQL server and that's where vBulletin might choke. Best to eventually skip over the VPS and go for semi- or dedicated hosting.

[ed_meyer]

Thanks for the replies. I'm starting to better understand the VPS structure. I thought that CPU timeslices were better controled between the Virtual accounts on a server and if such was the case, others couldn't use up all your cpu resources like can happen on other shared accounts.

[omarfilip]

I think you do get your CPU slice protected, but disk access becomes the bottleneck.