VPS or Dedicated hosting

[RichAndKim]

Just got my first gallery posted on The Hun on Valentines Day (What a great present!). Unfortunately, I'm currently running on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) that I've been *extremely* happy with - Until Valentines Day.

The site was brought to it's knees, beaten, and thrown to the dogs. My current VPS Server specs are Equal Share processor with 256MB RAM (Burstable to 1GB of RAM) running CentOS. The server was running at 99+% resources, which caused it to systematically shut down processes - in other words, they shut the Apache service off. I have been fighting with the hosting company that there is a deeper problem. The server runs at ~70-80% utilization of resources even when mySQL is turned off (their original blame for the resource use), now they're blaming it on Apache - despite the fact that I'm looking at only a handful of simultanious connections using static HTML pages (no PHP or database interaction). Reinstallation of the Apache service has not helped and the hosting company is throwing their hands up saying everything's fine (Which I suppose is true until I start throwing traffic at it again). I insist that the problem has been there the whole time, the problem just never showed up on the small volume of traffic that I was doing.

So, needless to say, I'm looking for a new host that might be a little bit more supportive. The only modification to the server I had done was had them install Fantastico (which I would like to have on the new server as well).

I'm open to suggestions for hosting:
- NOT shared hosting, either VPS or an entry level dedicated server.
- Linux Server with root SSH access
- Fantastico
- cPanel
- Adult hosting, of course

Spam me here or hit me up on ICQ if you prefer.

Rich & Kim

[u-Bob]

I recommend you contact Amy (368164844) or Caz (304883574) from OC3 Networks.

[Lycanthrope]

Hosthead would love the chance to earn your business. Please contact me to discuss your needs and options. jerry\@\hosthead.com or ICQ: 129435880

[AmyAmy]

Hi Rich and Kim,

Shoot me an email, or hit me up on ICQ. I'd be happy to help.

Thanks, Amy

[Cradle]

Feel free to contact us as well for VPS solutions.

Regards,

[Cash]

A good virtual plan is ok, see sig for a good host. my icq is 30160426 in case you need more info ...

[testpie]

I don't know if you are already using them, or if you have the money to, but i used to be very happy with VPSLink.

[wjxxx]

I recommend semi-dedicated plans at Atcihosting

[schneemann]

Rich & Kim -

Before you jump for one of these deals people are throwing at you, consider this:

Your site took a major shit when it was hit with a ton of traffic, right?
So what you need to find out is whether any of these people offering to host you are going to be able to handle the traffic next time you get a big surge like that.

First, you need to realize that there are a LOT of things that probably caused your site to shut down:
1 - Other crap that always uses a lot of memory. For instance, SpamAssassin (provided on a lot of CPanel accounts) is a major pig. If you're on a VPS, turn off everything you don't need.
2 - Poorly optimized SQL queries and database structure. Your host was probably right when he said that MySQL was using a lot of resources. A lot of programmers (professionals and hobbyists alike) don't really know how to optimize their database schema and their SQL queries. For instance, I see a lot of people doing a 'SELECT *..." query when they only need a few fields. Similarly, people will query the database for only one record without a limit. Let's say you have a gallery page coming from the database. People will do a query that looks like this "SELECT stuff FROM gallery WHERE id='$id'" What they don't realize is that even though you know there's only one gallery with that ID value, the database doesn't, so it keeps looking at every record in the table for more matches. You need to limit the results like so: 'SELECT stuff FROM gallery WHERE id='$id' LIMIT 1'
There are a lot of similar ways that people poorly use SQL. When you only have a few hundred visits a day, it is no big deal. When you're getting a few hundred an hour, it can really cause big problems.
3. Other things like XML parsing (i.e. if you serve up feeds from sponsors) can eat up a lot of memory, too. If you're including feeds from elsewhere, you might want to read them & dump them into a database instead.
4. You may just not have enough memory. 256mb is NOT enough memory for a high-traffic website. It just isn't.

Good luck, whatever you choose.

[Freeway]

What ever you do get your own server with min 1 gig of ram. You want to be ready if you start to grow fast.