# Estimating required server capacity for a popular forum
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** hosting
**Created:** [11월 15, 2015, 11:39오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574 "2015-11-15T11:39:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ljpp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ljpp)
#### Post date: [11월 15, 2015, 11:39오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574/1 "2015-11-15T11:39:37Z")
I am planning to move a rather popular forum from SMF to Discourse. The site has been running very stable of a 1GB Rackspace cloud server, but now I am trying to figure out what would be the minimum requirements with this traffic for running Discourse at Digital Ocean.
Old stats in Finnish: [Tappara.co](http://tappara.info/index.php?action=stats)
Members: 1500, with 100 being super active
Concurrent sessions: Can peak to 500-800 users online
Traffic: Potential for 100k page views per 24h
Posts: Thousands per month
This is a fan forum of an ice hockey club, so the traffic varies a lot. Quiet during the summer, but peaks at spring time during playoffs. Some unexpected incidents can occasionally cause spikes in traffic, without a pre-warning (big player transfers or unusual events in the game, causing strong emotional reactions).
So any estimate what Digital Ocean plan could take the heat? Site has a good reputation of staying online, and it must remain that way. There are competing forums out there where users will quickly jump to, if we fail to serve when things heat up.
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### Author:  [@ljpp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ljpp)
#### Post date: [11월 15, 2015, 12:02오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574/2 "2015-11-15T12:02:28Z")
Oh, btw - one question to @codinghorror and @sam : The old forum has been running on SMF for a decade. Is Discourse project future proof for the next 10 years?
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### Author:  [@wesochuck](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wesochuck)
#### Post date: [11월 15, 2015, 6:08오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574/3 "2015-11-15T18:08:27Z")
> [@ljpp](#):
>
> Is Discourse project future proof for the next 10 years?
From: [https://www.discourse.org/faq/](https://www.discourse.org/faq/)
> Discourse is designed for the next 10 years of the Internet, so the minimum browser requirements are high
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [11월 15, 2015, 9:29오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574/4 "2015-11-15T21:29:23Z")
It is very hard to estimate … I tried to cover some of the considerations here:
> [@With a server with 30GB of RAM How many users can I handle simultaneously](https://meta.discourse.org/t/with-a-server-with-30gb-of-ram-how-many-users-can-i-handle-simultaneously/35585/4):
>
> At that scale your server will be ample and over provisioned. A 4GB instance at Digital Ocean would probably be enough. There are tons of metrics that define load, it is very hard to estimate: Number of concurrent sessions Total number of posts in forum Anon vs Logged in breakdown (anon is WAY cheaper) Number of uniquely secured categories And so on…
At that scale possibly a 4GB instance at Digital Ocean will be enough, though you may prefer to get a couple and split the DB off.
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### Author:  [@GregoryMatthews](https://meta.discourse.org/u/GregoryMatthews)
#### Post date: [1월 8, 2017, 3:48오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/estimating-required-server-capacity-for-a-popular-forum/35574/5 "2017-01-08T03:48:00Z")
Is there a tutorial on how to put the Discourse DB on its own Instance as you mention above?