This article explains how to estimate the CPU and RAM needed for your cloud server.
By Alain Francois and Pablo Puig
Cloud computing requires a lot of service resources, so hardware capacity is an important factor that should be calculated systematically and accurately. There is cloud terminology, such as vCPU, cores, RAM, and GPU, and it is important to estimate what you need to run all your services properly.
Define the Requirements
When considering a cloud deployment or migration, the common questions include:
- How many vCPUs per server are required for my application?
- How much RAM do I need?
- How much storage is necessary?
Those questions are difficult to answer because every application is different. However, you can look at the overall size of the application, the anticipated traffic, the number of repeat visitors, and the page views per visitor to start.
Gaming on the Cloud
Video games have started their cloud revolution. You need a powerful computer equipped with a recent graphics card, plenty of memory, and a powerful processor to play the latest video games comfortably.
Web Hosting
Web hosting resources encompass several different elements. The web hosting resources most relevant to you will depend on the size of your site, what you use it for, and how much traffic it receives. There are many types of web hosting services. You should think carefully about the requirements based on each type.
Software Requirements
You must meet specific software requirements to install and use cloud services. This can depend on the operating systems you use, the simultaneous requests you will receive, and the amount of data being transferred.
Scaling the Server
You can increase or decrease the compute, memory, or networking resources that have been allocated with cloud services. It means you can go with the basic performance needed regarding your resources, and you can scale your server up by resizing a server to give it supplemental or fewer CPUs and memory.
Virtualization
You need to virtualize some environments based on the service you will deploy. This means you will need a lot of resources because it also recommends limiting the number of virtual machines (VMs) per instance. It is risky to place too many VMs on a cloud server instance. If the server goes down, you could lose all of your VMs at once.
Hardware Requirements
Right-sizing your RAM or processor requirements is also a balancing act; too much or too little can force contention. For example, adding unnecessary vCPUs can hurt your consolidation ratio and overprovisioning vCPUs can cause ready time and hurt performance. Providers like Alibaba Cloud can offer a variety of cloud server configurations, such as memory-optimized or processor-optimized. These are best suited for fast workload performance that processes data sets in memory.
Cost
When choosing a cloud server, costs are also an important part of the process. A higher capacity results in a higher price. If you need a lot of resources, it will also cost a lot, and you need to balance your server to fit your needs.
What Is the Appropriate Hardware Configuration?
New CPUs usually have two or more cores. Each additional core provides an increase in processing power, enabling your server to handle more requests and carry them out faster. Generally, memory between 8 GiB and 64 GiB is suitable for the services below:
- Web Server: This is for a web server. We recommend using 2 CPU to 4 CPU and memory between 2GB to 6GB.
- Database Server: Normally, the database constructor tells you the necessary requirements. MySQL recommends 4 CPU cores or more and 8 GB RAM of memory or more.
- Virtualization Server: You should keep in mind that virtualization requires a lot of resources because you may need to reproduce a virtual hardware environment (RAM, CPU, etc.) It means that you could need at least 8 GB of memory and 4 CPU for an acceptable experience. It will depend on the number of machines you want to virtualize and the resources you are willing to allow. If you want to virtualize a database server by following the recommendation of MySQL, you will need at least 16GB of memory and 8 CPU.
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