A question about resources

[chetbaker]

Hi there!

I have a question about the resources needed for having a stable Cloudron instance.

Currently, this is the situation I have:

Nothing really weird, IMHO. I'm using a Start-2-S-SATA dedibox at Scaleway (1× Intel C2350 (Avoton)
CPU - 2C/2T - 1.7 GHz - 4GB RAM) but I've been suffering hardware problems lately, specially with Etherpad Lite.

According to Support, the server is on its limit with cpu at 100% quite often that has cascading effects. Including the disk I/O that has been really bad.

I know that Nextcloud (I have 2) might be a little bit resources heavy, but neither of the 2 instances has more than 5 users and I thought the machine I'm using is strong enough to deal with my requirements.

I wonder if some of you can share some thoughts about this based on your experience. Maybe I'm just over estimating the resources needed, or maybe Etherpad Lite is evil. Happy to hear any thoughts on that.

Cheers!

[BrutalBirdie]

Bandwidth
250 Mbps 

wtf? this is very slow imo.

Storage
1 × 1 TB SATA

Ok but slow.
6Gb/s and has a bandwidth throughput of 600MB/s.

Memory
4 GB DDR3 

Errr....

And all the for €13.99 ex. VAT/month???

In my opinion this hardware is super old and quite slow for that price tag.

The CPU is from Q3'13
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/77977/intel-atom-processor-c2350-1m-cache-1-70-ghz.html

I'd suggest its time for an upgrade.

[chetbaker]

@brutalbirdie said in A question about resources:

Bandwidth
250 Mbps 

wtf? this is very slow imo.

Storage
1 × 1 TB SATA

Ok but slow.
6Gb/s and has a bandwidth throughput of 600MB/s.

Memory
4 GB DDR3 

Errr....

And all the for €13.99 ex. VAT/month???

Yes to all of that

Thanks for checking the server details, although my question is less about the deal I'm getting (please let me know better options that include 500gb/1tb of disk space!) and more about the resources I need for the instance I have.

[BrutalBirdie]

@chetbaker
Do you have any preferences location wise?
What are you willing to pay?

Its hard to say what hardware is the perfect fit for you, since I can only guess the real usage.
If two nextcloud apps are used like 24/7 you want some high Network I/O with good Disk Speeds.

For example Netcup 'dedicated' Servers have a 2.5 Gbit NIC and 2TB SSD on the highest Tier.
https://www.netcup.eu/vserver/#root-server-details
44€-46€

If you are looking for high bursts of data going from SSD to NVMe SSD with 1 Gbit would be good as well.
https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax
I am using a AX51-NVMe myself.

And my system is bored when it comes to CPU utilization but I already use 20GB Ram for Minecraft, Valheim etc.

It really depends on the usage.

You could also use a Hetzner Cloud VM like the CX31, which only has 80GB Disk space but can be enhanced by Cloud Volumes - 1 TB 48,74 € which makes a dedicated server cheaper already.

But instead of Cloud Volumes you could use Hetzner Storage boxes, which then are cheaper.
9.40 €/m - 1 TB but then lack some IO and are more used for backups but can be used for storage for nextcloud.

It really depends.

[chetbaker]

@brutalbirdie I'm based in South America, so I would rather prefer a server based in the US.

In terms of resources, you are right, it really depends on the usage. I can share some screenshots of the current usage I have with the apps I already showed before:

CPU usage:

RAM:

[jdaviescoates]

@chetbaker said in A question about resources:

I would rather prefer a server based in the US.

Hetzner have US servers now too (although I've not yet heard if they are also powered by renewables or not https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates/status/1456296202249572354 )

[girish]

Do we have an idea of what app is consuming CPU? Generally, what happens when RAM is low is that it starts swapping to disk, which in turn consumes much I/O and CPU. Is it the swapping that is causing issues? For light use, apps shouldn't consume much CPU. They will only require CPU sometimes during "startup" because some of the apps build assets/plugins. For example, composer will run out of memory without even 4GB exclusively allocated to it at times.

[ruihildt]

If you're willing to pay a bit more to get a lot more, Contabo has a very interesting VPS (available in 3 US zone, no ide where those are):

8 vCPU Cores
30 GB RAM
200 GB NVMe or 800 GB SSD
32 TB Traffic (Unlimited Incoming)

https://contabo.com/en/vps/vps-l-ssd/?image=ubuntu.267&qty=1&contract=1&storage-type=vps-l-800-gb-ssd

[jdaviescoates]

@girish said in A question about resources:

For example, composer will run out of memory without even 4GB exclusively allocated to it at times.

Yeah, I think the main issue here @chetbaker is likely your lack of RAM.

[chetbaker]

Thanks for all your comments.
It seems it's a RAM issue then. I will check that Contabo, I'm OK paying a little extra for something eventually better.