this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
-45 points (22.2% liked)

Selfhosted

62664 readers
362 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world
-45
How Many Users Can a 1 vCPU / 2 GB RAM Server Actually Handle? (thecybersecguru.com)
submitted 1 day ago by UnLocoPoco@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
12 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I put together a practical breakdown of how many users a small 1 vCPU + 2 GB RAM server can realistically handle. The answer isn't simply "X users" because it depends heavily on the workload, application stack, caching, database usage, concurrent requests, and whether you're serving static or dynamic content. For anyone running small self-hosted services or websites on inexpensive VPS instances, this may be useful

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ahmedezat_katteb@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

The most useful number you can get is from your own stack: put your actual app on the box and hit it with k6 or wrk using a realistic mix of pages, and watch memory rather than CPU. On 2 GB the failure mode is almost always RAM: too many PHP-FPM/worker processes plus a database on default buffers, then swap thrashing and the OOM killer, long before the single core is the limit.

What buys the most headroom on boxes this size:

  • cap the worker count (pm.max_children or the equivalent) to what actually fits in RAM
  • size the DB buffer pool deliberately instead of leaving defaults
  • zram for bursts
  • serve anything static or cacheable straight from nginx so it never touches the app

And rate-limit or block the obvious scrapers. As someone said above, bot traffic is often the real load.