Website deployment setup on Dedicated Server

Configuring Website Deployment on Dedicated Server

Dedicated Server is a physical machine entirely at your disposal. Maximum performance, predictable resources, isolation from neighbors. Justified at high load (10k+ rps), DB performance requirements, or large data storage.

Configuration for Web Load

Typical configuration for a high-load website:

CPU: 2× Intel Xeon E5-2670 (16 cores / 32 threads)
RAM: 128 GB DDR4 ECC
SSD: 2× NVMe 960 GB (RAID 1 for OS, RAID 0 for data)
Network: 1 Gbps Unmetered
OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

RAID Setup

# Check disks
lsblk
fdisk -l

# Create RAID 1 for root partition
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda /dev/sdb
mkfs.ext4 /dev/md0

# RAID 10 for data (4 disks)
mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=10 --raid-devices=4 \
    /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

System Optimization for High Load

# /etc/sysctl.conf — network and file optimizations
net.core.somaxconn = 65536
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 65536
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 65536
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 15
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 10240 65535
fs.file-max = 2097152
vm.swappiness = 10

# /etc/security/limits.conf
*    soft nofile 1048576
*    hard nofile 1048576
root soft nofile 1048576

Nginx for High Load

# /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
worker_processes auto;
worker_rlimit_nofile 65536;

events {
    worker_connections 4096;
    use epoll;
    multi_accept on;
}

http {
    keepalive_timeout 65;
    keepalive_requests 1000;
    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;

    # Buffering
    client_body_buffer_size 128k;
    proxy_buffer_size 4k;
    proxy_buffers 8 4k;

    # Gzip
    gzip on;
    gzip_comp_level 6;
    gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript;
    gzip_min_length 1024;

    # File descriptor cache
    open_file_cache max=10000 inactive=30s;
    open_file_cache_valid 60s;
    open_file_cache_min_uses 2;
}

PHP-FPM Optimization

; /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 50
pm.start_servers = 10
pm.min_spare_servers = 5
pm.max_spare_servers = 20
pm.max_requests = 500

; Ulimit
rlimit_files = 65536

; OPcache
[opcache]
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.memory_consumption = 512
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 20000
opcache.validate_timestamps = 0    ; don't re-read files in production

PostgreSQL for Dedicated Server

-- postgresql.conf (tuned for RAM)
max_connections = 200
shared_buffers = 32GB              -- 25% of RAM
effective_cache_size = 96GB        -- 75% of RAM
maintenance_work_mem = 2GB
work_mem = 128MB
wal_buffers = 64MB
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
max_wal_size = 4GB
random_page_cost = 1.1             -- SSD
effective_io_concurrency = 200     -- NVMe

Hardware Monitoring

# Temperature and disk status
apt install -y smartmontools lm-sensors ipmitool

# SMART monitoring
smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartd -d -i 600  # check every 10 minutes

# RAID status
mdadm --detail /dev/md0
cat /proc/mdstat

# CPU temperature
sensors
ipmitool sdr type temperature

Load Testing After Setup

# wrk2 — HTTP performance test
wrk2 -t 12 -c 400 -d 60s -R 10000 https://example.com/api/products
# -t: threads (= number of CPUs)
# -c: connections
# -R: target RPS

Implementation Timeline

Dedicated server setup from scratch (OS, Nginx, PHP, PostgreSQL, SSL, monitoring): 3–5 days. Optimization for specific load — another 2–3 days.