In this article, I have shared my first experiences with VPS. After that experience, I have decided to just stick with shared hosting. However, my sites have just grown too big that they became resource hungry. They kept on exceeding the resource allocation of shared hosting and almost always getting suspensions. This was the main reason why I decided to go back to VPS hosting with 256MB dedicated RAM and 512 MB burstable RAM.
My previous experience with VPS made me decide to set-up my own server manually using LAMP with Centos 5. I was successful but my memory usage was just to high. I tried minimal configuration for Mysql and Apache but I just can’t get the right setting to reduce my memory usage which is averaging at 200 MB. This became worst when I upgraded to WordPress 3.2 which requires PHP version 5.2+.
Centos 5 does not have an upgrade to PHP 5.2+ but instead, it will be from Fedora rpm. I wasted no time to upgrade. Again, it should have been flawless but I have been getting errors with Mysql. The Fedora upgrade was not compatible with the installed version of MySQL server.
I was able to solve the issue by uninstalling the Mysql server then doing the PHP upgrade. I was successful but memory usage just soared to unimaginable state. Beyond the 512 MB burstable RAM. This made my sites crawling.
I even asked for more RAM from my provider by I just can’t afford the additional expense for additional RAM.
I have search for options. I tried Nginx but I have some problems with configurations. I back out from Nginx. I just can’t afford the delay anymore.
The second opion was to use LightTPD. I tried the Host-In-A-Box option on my VPS control panel to re-install the OS.
Despite having to learn Kloxo, I found out that Kloxo can replace the expensive CPANEL which I have been using on my shared hosting. When everything was setup, I activated my sites on the new this new server configuration using Kloxo.
I was amazed that the resource usage is very low. With LLMP running, I am only using about 54 MB.
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 512 54 457 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 54 457
Swap: 0 0 0
It’s good that I did not request for more RAM. Now that I am using LLMP, I even have more than enough to spare.