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I have a number of sites running on various physical servers that I'm looking at moving into our virtual environment.

  • Most of these are small sites usually with a MySQL database.
  • User base is ~200-300 users using each site - so load isn't a particularly big issue.
  • Number of sites currently is 10.

Should I run up a single standard LAMP VM and use multiple VirtualHosts or would one LMAP VM per site be the smarter way to go?

As I see it going with the LAMP VM per site seems to be more flexible in the long run.

  • Potentially easier to migrate one site to another system e.g. AWS or remote office
  • Easier to allocate more resources to one site if needed without affecting the other sites.
  • Better load balancing across my VM hosts - e.g. busy site A can auto-migrate to a quieter host.
  • Better management of user access?

Is this thinking along the right path or am I just going overboard?

EDIT - Updated users - Updated number of sites

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  • @TomTom I've clarified what I meant by number of users and added the number of sites.
    – Ben
    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:56
  • If i understand you need 10 vm (1 per site?) . they all need the same mods ? (php-fpm , mysql etc ?) or all site use different stack ?
    – YuKYuK
    Feb 18, 2015 at 10:29

2 Answers 2

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Well, 10 VM means you will have 10 VM to manage (update, monitor, ...) so in terms of resource utilization and cost it is better to consolidate.

On the other hand, all sites on 1 VM means they will all share the same resources, the same OS & LAMP versions and you can have issues when 1 site needs different versions or becomes incompatible with the new PHP version. Also, planned (or unplanned) outtage means all 10 sites are down and it can become difficult to find a maintenance window.

Also, 10 x 200-300 users all on 1 VM looks you may have to size a big VM and that's not good for performance.

I would say, try to find a compromise and set up a few VM (2-3) by grouping sites according to their development freshness (still evolving, old&freezed), size, importance, business department...

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  • I hadn't thought of your last idea. This makes sense. The sites are too hard to separate even if they're on the same VM. Thanks.
    – Ben
    Feb 20, 2015 at 8:10
  • meant to say "aren't too hard" above.
    – Ben
    Feb 23, 2015 at 4:43
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Without more information, there is no way to tell in which situation you are in. If load isn't an issue, I would go with a LAMP VM per site.

In my experience, this makes management far easier.

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  • To be concrete - that would be 200-300 VM's to patch and the overhead of 200-300 kernels would be brutal compared to virtual hosts. Someone did not do his math basics here. A separate VM is nice, but not for a smalllllish website.
    – TomTom
    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:32
  • That's a good point, but I was going under the assumption that what he was proposing, he would be able to do. If the server can't handle 200-300 VMs, than this is a silly question in the first place.
    – user270795
    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:41
  • Even if it can - it will use a TON more ressource and is wasteful. I am quite sure he did not calculate it through - at 256MB per VM 300 VMs are 75GB memory... and that is a VERY small vm.
    – TomTom
    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:46
  • Sorry guys - not 200-300 sites - I meant 200-300 staff using each site. I'll update the question to be clearer
    – Ben
    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:51

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