HOSTING Guys - at what point would you switch from VPS to DEDICATED hosting?
 

I have a site that is starting to struggle - it has over 1000 people on at any one point in time, not massive I know, but at the rapid rate it is expanding, it is just a matter of time before I need a dedicated box, and mirrored servers. The VPS isn't up to it.

The VPS I'm on now has this spec:

Quad-Core Xeon
1280MB DDR2 ECC 667 RAM
40GB on SAS/SCSI
10Mbps Unmetered BW

I need something failsafe as advertisers are on there, so a mirrored setup is preferable.

I'm all ears.

If you can afford it I would upgrade. but thats just my two cents.

if it works - don't touch it!

I'd say that's probably the right time. But then again, it could be the software or just need some performance tweaks.

Yeah, my server guy is having a tweak to see if he can do anything.

Even if it's tweakable, if it goes down that's a major no no. I need mirroring I'm pretty certain of that.

If having a dedicated can rescue your website. Go for it.

Is it important?

Go ded.

You said twice " you need mirroring " ....


What are you referring to ? Raid, round robin, ????

See if your tech can tweak the httpd file ( max clients, max servers, keep alive, etc ... ). You can double the performance by a proper setup, mainly if you use a db based site.

Otherwise upgrade to dedicated, but make sure that it has more ressources that you actually have allocated now :2 cents:

Good luck :)

Thanks directfiesta. Nice monkey, I've seen them in Japan near Nagano.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I mean load balancing, so the site never goes down.

vps's are just a poor man's dedicated i never got the point of them.

lol. the point is they are a good solution for those with a medium size site. I didn't expect the site to require anything more so soon. now it's critical.

It sounds like you should have been on a dedicated a while ago.

You're a hosting expert no? Is 1000-1500 visitors on at once throughout the day really too much to expect a VPS to cope with?

It's doing ok, but I think it will fall on its ass with treble the traffic.

The biggest problem is probably the asp.net and database requirements.

Well honestly if there is no need to bigger bandwith then there is no need for dedicated server unless server is overloaded by other users.You should check cpu usage and load of server,so if its good then there is no need to upgrade to dedicated.

I have a couple of solutions for you if you want to hit me up.

-Chris

From my tech guy: "seems like the cpu is purring along, ~20%, but physical ram is down to 40mb".

how much are you paying now and what's your bandwidth usage?

Only $90 per month. That's the wrong package quoted above, that's another account I have. we only actually have 512mb ram which is probably the sticking point.

using just over 4gb bandwidth per week at the moment.

I wouldn't bother upgrading yet, curious what company is it with?

Rackforce. Good guys.

We offered VPS for a while. We thought it was a something that would be a great addition, but it wasn't accepted as well as we thought it would be.

Sandman suggested it was the poor mans dedicated. We did not really see it that way. More of a powerful virtual plan.

My experience (as limited as it was) was that a VPS sometimes had more limitations than a virtual because the resources, while your own, were set in stone (ie: inodes).

Granted, resources can be adjusted up on a VPS, but I think that is more like the upsell to a VPS plan. Kind of like a hosting company that gets you in with cheap rates only to kill you on the bandwidth overages.

That being said, I can see how 1000 - 1500 visitors at one time is probably going to be too much for your standard VPS plan, which is why I suggested you were ready for a dedicated.

You just need to get with a good hosting company that can fix your problem, but forget about success on a VPS. If any person on there does something dumb you're paying for it, too. Mojohost.com has always been good to me.

Thanks for the input everyone. We're going to go dedicated and get a load more ram for good measure.

Depending on your site, a better processor might be more valuable [unless you are sticking with the quad]. :2 cents:

Actually VPS is just a made up bunch of horse shit. It's a virtual plain and simple. Virtual, shared, vps or whatever you want to call them are all the same. It's either dedicated or it's not.:2 cents::2 cents:

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuump

Dedicated is better

Way to show you don't know the difference.

I thought the same.

After all, the VPS ressources are fully dedicated to the user , without influence by the other vps on the box.

Or is this wrong ( I do not offer nor plan to offer that ).

VPS is like taking the hdd from your pc and partitioning it out, so each user gets their own partition, whereas virtual . . . well, you know.

Since you have a tech already, getting a dedicated is not far off from your VPS pricing. You can actually get a dedicated server that will be more powerful than your VPS for the same price, or just a small bit more ($20-$50~)... it'll be unmanaged, but it sounds like you have a tech. Get cPanel+tech and you are good to go for about $120/month total with a new dual core server.

I just got a promo from theplanet.com

https://www.theplanet.com/servers/co...es=17&pc=dx24s

Dual Xeon 2.4
1 GB Ram
2x 73 GB SCI discs
1500 GB data transfer per month

For 115$ (cpanel +25$ /month)

I'm pretty happy with them for over 4 years now

just my 2 cents

Thats a good deal, but pretty old CPU's. The newer dual core CPU's out perform the older Xeons.

An example (yes, shameless) is one of our dual cores:

Intel E2180 Dual Core
1GB DDR2-667 RAM
250GB SATA-2 16MEG CACHE
1U Supermicro Server
$89/month + $28/month for cPanel

This dual core would have more horsepower than that older Xeon, unless for some reason you had a script that was very heavy on disk access.

or if you want to get right near that same price level, you can get something that is incredibly more powerful:

Intel C2Q Q9300 Quadcore, 1333Mhz FSB, 45nm
2GB DDR2-667 RAM
250GB SATA-2 16MEG CACHE
1U Supermicro Server
$129/month

^^ That is an amazing price though, and not even a special :)

great deals TidalWave. How much bandiwdth comes with that?

Hey Gasper,
Heres the feature list on both of those:

2000GB Monthly Transfer
100Mbps PUBLIC Network Port
10Mbps PRIVATE Network Port
Private VLAN
/29 IP Allocation
Remote Reboot Port

Tidalwave, I need it to handle asp.net - are there winblows servers with that spec?