A small Confluence installation on a 512MB virtual server - possible?

[Kristian Rasmussen]

I need a small Confluence with few simultaneous users, so I've subscribed to a cheap Ubuntu virtual server with 512 MB ram at alvotech.de and installed Confluence onto it. Now, my problem is that Confluence keeps hogging 4-500 MB of memory, which ultimately crashes the server as soon as it's put under just a little bit of pressure.

To reduce its memory usage I've tried two things (simultaneously):

1) Halved the allowed sizes in JAVA_OPTS so that it's now:

-Xms128m -Xmx256m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m

2) Tried to disable caching by setting, in ehcache.xml:

maxElementsInMemory="0"

Neither has any effect on memory usage - it's still around 4-500 MB.

Am I way off track here? Should I give up and buy myself a larger, non-virtual server? Or is it possible to get the memory usage below 512 MB?

[Thomas Wendel · Accepted solution]

Hello Kristian,

Virtualisation is not a problem at all. We run several instances of Atlassian products on virtual Linux servers. The problem as I see it is the amount of memory your virtual server has. Confluence alone needs 512 MB as a minimum.

Have you considered signing-up for Confluence OnDemand instead? Starting at USD 10.-- it is probably cheaper than your hosted Linux server and you don't have to worry about anything (Updates, security-fixes, etc.) at all.

Cheers,

Thomas

[Sergey E. Zaytsev]

Check the swapfile on server.

Make swapfile 1G (or extend swap partition).

It should be enough for work 1-2 users, but slow enough.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Very unlikely to work with 512MB. Confluence needs more memory with all the plugins it has now. I suggest you try 1GB (atleast!)!