Choosing a VPS solution for CiviCRM

Question

I'm consistently maxing out my "MySQL Time" on my shared hosting provider (rhymes with MiviMosting), causing both my host and users to get upset. I'm pretty much tripling what I'm allowed to have on the shared setup.

So now I'm looking for a VPS solution but am not sure what specs are ideal for running CiviCRM (the Drupal side goes nearly unused). Currently, I have 1GB disk space, 200MB RAM, and 20GB transfer. I'm well below the limits on disk space and bandwidth so my assumption is that it's the RAM that's holding me back. Are there other important considerations? Recommended hosts?

Answer 1

Most recent installs I have done of CiviCRM seem to behave best with 2gig minimum of memory. 1.5gig should work as a minimum, but memory is cheap so go with 2gig.

We typically use eApps for most of our clients. They have a nice interface to easily adjust your resources up and down as you need: memory, cpu, disk space. Being able to easily raise and lower these resources (and just pay for the days used) is really nice, for those times you are importing or exporting or doing some other resource intensive tasks. They also have a relatively great support desk.

Answer 2

A great resource as you sort out hosting is a talk by Peter Petrik from Skvare at CiviCon Denver: CiviCRM Hosting & Performance Optimizations

For other Civi provider options, see CiviCRM Hosting Providers.

For what it's worth, I would recommend at least 2GB of Ram for a Civi install. We use Media Temple VPS hosting. We started with their 4GB Ram plan and had no troubles with Civi. (We recently upped our plan because of our storage needs). However, a non-profit website/Civi install I helped with has Media Temple's 2GB Ram plan and has not had any trouble with their Civi (albeit, with a much smaller amount of records).