Someone knowledgable on servers and Q2A - server requirements?

Question

TL;DR: I want a server to host Q2A for about 2000 users. What requirements are there for such a server?

Hi Q2A community. I'm looking for someone who's a lot smarter than I am when it comes to servers and Q2A.

I know jack shit about servers, and I have been asked by management at work to give them details on what server requirements there are for running the Q2A platform for 2000 co-workers. I know that Q2A communities exist with over 40,000 users, like the Pokémon Q2A community, but what exactly does it take to host the platform?

So if someone who knows a little about servers could give me an oversimplified explanation on what factors determine a server's capacity, I would highly appreciate it :) I can't imagine it being all that demanding.. but like I said, I know nothing about servers so bare with me!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It's difficult to give a recommendation without knowing how much the site would be used. Will all 2000 co-workers be using the system constantly?

I run the Pokemon site and although we have a lot of users, the vast majority of visitors come from Google. So if you're using it for some kind of internal system the traffic would not be too high. I think you probably wouldn't need anything super fancy.

If you don't know much about servers you'd need "shared" or "VPS" hosting where they provide everything you need (PHP/MySQL) and you basically just upload the Q2A files and get started. VPS hosting is usually fairly reasonable.

If you know a bit more about servers and you're happy using the command line then "unmanaged" cloud hosting is very cost-effective. For around $5/month you can get essentially a dedicated server from Linode or Digital Ocean which will handle most sites just fine. Like I said, they are a bit more complex to set up, but they do usually have extra tools to help.

Hope that helps :)