Hello all, First post! I have a photography blog/gallery type website that receives about 1,000 unique visitors per day. Sometimes there are around 10-15 concurrent users viewing images that range in sizes from 250KB to 2.5MB on the server. On occasion there are 'leecher' type users that open up several images at once, which obviously puts additional stress on the server. The main problem is I am using a standard shared hosting account, and I keep getting warnings that I am using too much CPU due to MySQL queries. I have spent a considerable amount of time optimizing the database and queries, but to no avail - I still get CPU spikes and temporary database blocks due to high usage. I am thinking of upgrading to a dedicated server in the near future after earnings from revenue increase, with the following specifications: CPU Intel Xeon E3-1265L 2.5GHz 100 mbps Uplink 4 GB DDR3 Memory 500 GB RAID-1 Drives 10 TB Bandwidth In my opinion it seems to be more than enough for my site based on the figures from my shared package, but I need a professional opinion. Will the above server be enough to handle my photo blog, even under high load? Thanks.
Dear PeteJB, I believe with this amount of unique visitors you need to upgrade to one dedicated servers. This amount of visitors put much load on your RAM and CPU and because of your Gallery Viewing more load must be on server Hard Drives too. We provide premium hardware and network for our Dedicated Servers in many varieties like Dual,Quad or Multi Quad Core. You are able to find many 100TB and Custom Dedicated Servers either. HostPlate is currently is its End Year Low Prices for all of the Dedicated Servers. Please check our website @ HostPlate If you need any further question, please do not hesitate to contact us @ sales at hostplate dot com Kind regards, HostPlate Sales
it;s not that much of users, 1000 uniques a day is nothing, any shared hosting can handle it easily, if you want a good solution i can get it for you in a price of shared.
you don't need a dedicated server, you could get VPS for better solution for you to get better bandwidth than shared hosting. However, if you feel your site might grow bigger in the near future and willing to pay for dedicated server so why not. but again your current site don't need it.
Photography site. Are you selling photographs as high resolution? If so, simply reduce the image resolution to make them smaller. They will render just fine in a browser without tying up your bandwidth. One megabyte (and up) sized images can really slow things down.
At this traffic level you definitely don't need a dedicated server. A good vps or a hybrid server should be more than enough.
I have had problems with hosting mainly when content goes viral. I fixed it all by going with Amazon Web Services cloud hosting... I have never had the problem since.
Considering the current usage of your website, it would be a wise decision to upgrade to a VPS. When your current website stats gets tripled then you should consider moving onto a Dedicated Server.
You do not need to go for dedicated server. VPS will satisfy your all requirements. Dedicated server cost is high as compare to VPS.
I think that you are using a bad hosting service, I would recommend you to host your site on bluehost or hostgator. Secondly, why you don't you save your images on Amazon S3 and then fetch them from there? IMO it will reduce your site load and it will be cheaper than buying a dedicated server. But if you still think that these solutions will not work then upgrade to a VPS first because based on your current requirements dedicated server will be an overkill and it will cost more.
I won't recommend a VPS unless it's Xen based in which case other VPSs wont affect you. Though 1000 unique visitors isn't a lot but after-all what files/queries each request process is important. If you have images and it takes a lot of CPU for it to process, Shared hosting provider won't allow you on their servers. CPU usage is higher for image processing so make sure you have more CPU than RAM. You can infact have less than 4GB RAM but should have more CPU.
That is a good configuration. You should be able to find a reputable data center provider for less than $100/month.
The configuration is good, BUT there are two points you should consider. A dedi will have higher costs per month probably between 80 and 100 USD besides you will need to know how to run a server to have a stable hosting. I would suggest to go with a VPS, maybe XEN based to ensure the resources. This way you will cut the price a bit, which will enable to get you a managed feature for the VPS. So in the end the VPS should feel like a shared hosting plan for you but with the advantage of guaranteed resources and the luxury of knowing what is hosted on your IP (bad neighborhood)