Planning with uncertain memory and storage requirements

diginized

Hi OpalStack team (and community).
I'm looking for consultation on the best way (mainly from a billing perspective) to build out a new project on OpalStack. I'm supporting a company that needs to build out multiple Wordpress instances and was planning to use AWS Lightsail or EC2+RDS. As I look at their requirements, I think a managed OpalStack account sounds much more pleasant--and maybe even more cost effective if I can set it up right. And I love the idea of having one SSH user instead of signing into 3+ servers to set up roughly the same thing 3 times.

But there are two things giving me pause right now:
a) There's a small chance these Wordpress instances could consume a lot of disk. Our prototype system quickly grew to a 40GB database file in a month. I think a nightly cleanup job to correct for a sloppy WP plugin can fix that and keep it to well under <1GB, but I wanted to plan for the worst.
b) The prototype system (again unoptimized) appeared to struggle with only 2GB of RAM. This doesn't make sense to me since the php.ini file capped PHP memory usage at 512mb. But let's assume we should have 4+GB RAM.

This leads me to a few questions:
1) If we need to increase our RAM after we get started, is it easy (automated) to migrate to the higher plan or does it require setting everything up again in the new console?

2) I've only ever used the OpalStack Shared Hosting. If we use the Managed VPS tiers, are there any features I'm used to that won't carry over?

3) Can we attach additional storage to either the Shared or Managed VPS plans without jumping to another tier? The price jump from 8 to 16GB plans seems unnecessary if I just need more disk.
Other forum posts indicated I can just buy more disk, but have a limit on the Shared plans. But those posts are >1yr old, so I just wanted to check the latest status here since it's not mentioned on the pricing page.

4) Based on what you know you can do, is there another way I should be thinking about it?

5) If it's storage we need to maximize, am I better having them create a separate OpalStack Shared account for each WP site they want to create? (that takes away the advantage of having one set of SSH and database credentials)

For comparison: What they were considering was one $40/mo AWS Lightsail server per WP instance (database included), so $120/mo for a dedicated 8GB ram per WP install (which I think is overkill), but this lacks things I like in OpalStack like easier DNS management, automated backups, etc. My initial thinking was that the 8GB VPS could be ideal because it comes in cheaper, but of course that's 8GB shared not 8GB each.

I should probably note that I dislike Wordpress and am not experienced with managing or optimizing it, so that's part of the challenge. These sites are just intended as a 6-month holdover till we can build a custom solution.

Sorry this is long, just thought it'd be better to get all the context in there. Appreciate any guidance you can offer to help us from building ourselves into a dead end that requires a big migration!

Thank you!
@diginized

sean

diginized And I love the idea of having one SSH user instead of signing into 3+ servers to set up roughly the same thing 3 times.

I recommend using a separate shell user for each WordPress site. If you run them all under a common shell user then you make it easy for WordPress malware to spread from one site to another.

If you want a single shell user for convenience then after you've created the sites with their own shell users, then create a new shell user and grant access to the other shell user home directories. This way you'll still have a common shell user for yourself while the sites will remain walled off from each other.

diginized If we need to increase our RAM after we get started, is it easy (automated) to migrate to the higher plan or does it require setting everything up again in the new console?

Upgrading a shared hosting tier is an instantaneous change, no downtime.
Upgrading from shared to VPS requires an managed migration to new hardware, typically with almost zero downtime but that can vary if you have really huge databases.
Upgrading an existing VPS requires a small amount of downtime to reconfigure the server, typically around 15 minutes.

diginized I've only ever used the OpalStack Shared Hosting. If we use the Managed VPS tiers, are there any features I'm used to that won't carry over?

Our VPS hosting is managed the same way as our shared hosting. We manage the servers and you manage your apps etc in the same control panel. Since we manage the server you do not get root access to the VPS.

diginized Can we attach additional storage to either the Shared or Managed VPS plans without jumping to another tier? The price jump from 8 to 16GB plans seems unnecessary if I just need more disk.

Yes, a la carte storage upgrades are available for both shared and VPS.

diginized Based on what you know you can do, is there another way I should be thinking about it?

I'm not sure I understand your question here. If you're looking for a general hosting recommendation then I recommend starting with a Double Stack plan and use the free trial to get a feel for how our system works and to stage your site. Once you've got things staged and working you'll have a better idea how you might want to move forward.

diginized If it's storage we need to maximize, am I better having them create a separate OpalStack Shared account for each WP site they want to create? (that takes away the advantage of having one set of SSH and database credentials)

If you're building sites for clients then yes, I recommend a separate hosting account for each client primarily because it gives you a separate invoice for each client.

As I mentioned above, I do not recommend using shared SSH credentials across multiple sites (nor shared database credentials).