can i afford dedicated server ?

hello experts,

I have zero experience in professional website hosting methods and do not know how exactly one manages to host a site which has got multiuser login etc. I have one website http://thinkingparticle.com ... i have started getting some traffic for this site (almost 100 unique users per day) , but the site already seems pretty slow . I am using drupal as framework for this site with loads of custom and submitted modules. Currently i am hosting this site on Bluehost.com on shared hosting .
when i started my site i didnt have any idea about VPS and dedicated hosting etc.Now i feel i need a better hosting environment if this site has to make its mark.

Please help me in this regard and suggest me options that are available . I have very modest budget of 50 k INR (almost 1200 $) / yr

Thanks in advance

 

yes, i think you can afford dedicated with 1200 dollars, but i don't think dedicated is required for just 100 unique per day
VPS is more than enough i think, just my thought though

 

thanks avpower,

i forgot to mention that traffic to my site is increasing rapidly, and i am targeting 15 k - 20 k users per month by Dec 2011 . considering my high (?) expectations , will you suggest VPS ? I have no idea about how good VPS can be and what kind of traffic is good for VPS /dedicated server.

Please can you give few minutes of yours and explain me in detail about the scalability of VPS.

 

Using visitor numbers as a way of measuring the hardware requirements for a VPS or Dedicated Server is unscientific (at best) and a complete guess (at worse). While it's true that with a given site, the more visitors, the more that will be asked of the server, knowing your hardware requirements in advance is pretty much impossible to say. The operating system you use, the application you use to run the site, and any additional modules or plugins, all have an effect on the performance capabilities of a site. I've seen servers that have sites with visitors of less that 1K visitors per days struggle, while the same specification of server for another client can cope with literally hundreds of thousands of vistors per day. It's largely down to the programming, and the efficiency of the code. Not much help, I know.

However, you've hit on one of the great things about VPSs - their scalability. If you go for a relatively low specification VPS, and find that it struggles, you can upgrade it with no downtime (or very little) - or you can look for more efficient coding methods if that is possible. While no-one can really tell you in advance what your web sites require in terms of hardware, you should be able to upgrade with little difficulty.

VPSs should be ultimately scalable, but that depends on the underlying operating system and the capabilites of the virtualisation software, and the willingness of your host. I can only talk from a Windows and Hyper-V R2 perspective, and you can start with a single CPU, 512MB Ram and 40GB of space (for example) and scale that up to 4 CPUs, 64GB of Ram, and as much diskspace as you need. If this still isn't enough you can move to clusters where your site runs over more than one web server - it starts to get quite expensive at this stage.

One important thing to remember is that all VPSs are NOT created equal. One host may be offering 1CPU, 512MB Ram and 40GB of diskspace, and another may be offering exactly the same....but how well it performs will depend on the underlying hardware. One company might operate their VPSs on one quad-core desktop cpu, a single 2TB drive, and 8GB of ram, while the other runs theirs on dual 8 core cpu, with 64GB of RAM, and RAID 10 with hardware raid controllers. The company with the higher-spec server will provide much greater performance than the one with the lower specced hardware, but on the surface the VPS specifications are exactly the same. Always find out what the host is using for the underlying hardware. If they won't tell you, chances are it's not going to be good news.

 

if you get 100 unique visitors per day, stick with a shared host, it will probably be faster than a low end vps
a typical dual-core xeon dedicated server can handle up to 50k visitors/day and a typical quad-core can handle up to 100k visitors/day

 

@RonBrown

Thanks for the detailed reply...your suggestions will surely help in deciding my next webhost ...

 

actually i am not happy with the response time of my current hosting service...my website is a bit heavy...its a travel community website...i am looking for an alternate which is in my budget with decent response time and should be scalable.

Thanks for your reply

 

in your current traffic you only need a shared hosting but I would suggest you go to a high-end shared hosting like the ones that you can find in mediatemple.net. They call it a Grid Server and its very fast and reliable for a shared hosting.

 

Here's how hard it is to tell, just from visitor numbers, what sort of resources your require. Here's 2 genuine daily visitor stats from 2 different sites for Monday 20 December.....

Site 1
Page Views: 617,637
Hits: 3,977,350
Bandwidth: 47,626,825
Visits: 120,002

Site 2
Page Views: 75,322
Hits: 198,122
Bandwidth: 4,321,895
Visits: 9,214

Both sites are completely dynamic (i.e. no static pages) and both use databases on database servers that are remote from the web server.

As you can see, Site 1 is by far the busiest site.

Site 1 operates on a VPS with 1CPU, 2GB Ram, and shares that VPS with 2 other sites doing approximately 30% of the traffic of that main site. The VPS is so unstressed that it barely registers much CPU usage, there is usually 1GB of RAM free, and disk I/O is about 2mb/s. It has so little effect on the hardware that you'd be pushed to realize it was even there.

Site 2 operates with 4CPUs, 12GB of RAM, and the VPS struggles with it regularly maxing out the CPU, there's usually 300MB-500MB Ram free and it does need to be upgraded to faster hardware (or more efficiently coded). There are 2 other sites on this VPS generating similar amounts of traffic.

The big difference is that site 1 is coded extremely well while the code on site 2 is a mess. Site 1 was developed by a professional developer of many years experience while site 2 was created by a someone with who was self-taught, but didn't learn good coding practice, and the code is a mess.

Site 1 uses .net and MS SQL 2008, site 2 uses PHP with a MySQL database. The underlying hardware for both VPSs is exactly the same.

I'd be happy to host Site 1 it on a shared hosting server from a resource-usage persepctive since it is so light on the hardware, but I wouldn't let site 2 anywhere near a shared hosting server.

Just wanted to make the point that you can't tell, from visitor numbers/page views/hits/ or traffic, what sort of resources you need for ANY site until you test it for yourself. The better the coding, the more more efficiently it's written, the less "hardware" you'll need to run it.

 

To avoid traffic you can use virtual dedicated servers and dedicated servers in use of this you have maintain a separate server if you want this then you visit the site tucktail.com and the web hosting also cheap in this site

 

It'd better to go with vps first. You can buy a decent vps with 512mb of ram for $20 per month.

 

VPS sounds like a good deal but make sure you get one from companies which dont overload the servers

 

VPS or Dedicated, it all depends on your budget really. Check your bandwidth usage and take that intoconsideration when ordering a server. If your traffic is huge or are expecting huge increase, better get a dedicated once and for all.

 

Hi

As some guys are suggesting to go with vps.

u should ask something before you proceed.

#1. Is VPS Server Is Overloaded ? ( You never know)
#2. Can You manage Server on Your Own ? (yes then its good else you might need cpanel & managed service which cost you another $15/mo to $40/mo.)
#3. Can You make your server hacker proof ?.
#4. Do You get Enough RAM ?

Actual when u increase ram u find that by adding some more $$$ you can have your own dedicated box.

My experience is that vps is not useful because host say same thing that your vps is taking lost of res please switch to dedicated box.

I paid $200 for vps and same happened with me so i search for good host now i have dedicated server.

so finally you have to go to dedicated box then why not purchase from beginning ?.

let me know if u want to share my dedicated box having 2 processors with 2 cores each.

Thanks

 

your best bet is to take it a month at a time,
Find a descent shared host, if you find your website begins to slow due to excessive visits/bw usage, look at moving to a VPS, when the time is right move to a dedicated server.
It doesn't take long to move a website, and its not like traffic flow is going to turn from 1,000 to 1,000,000 visits overnight, so you will have ample time to move when required.

Thats just my two cents.

 

unless your shared host says you use to many resources and threatening to suspend your website, you do not need to upgrade to dedicated