Hi everyone, This is a doubt I have had for a long time, and have not found a real answer over the internet nor have had a satisfactory answer when contacted my hosting customer service. What I want to know: How to choose the correct hosting server (not talking about providers but server specs) in order to satisfy my requirements, without wasting resources and money? I am currently running a Standard dedicated with hostgator (+200usd), and I pretend to find out whether this server is too sophisticated for my needs. Bottom line, this is what I want to open the discussion about: How to find out what is the best server solution with the data available. How to use that data to figure it out? I know there is data available in WHM such as cpu load, bandwidth, others parameters? Also data at Cpanel statistics, such as kilobytes downloaded per website, and others? I also run Statcounter for more data. So again, is there a way to use that information, make a logic process and find out what will be an appropriate hosting server? thanks for your help
How many clients are you hosting? What are your resources usage now? What are current specs? Average these out and it will help you know what you need.
RAM and disk usage are two big factors to consider when choosing a server. Of course, you want to have ample bandwidth if you find yourself using a lot and a good network behind it.
Bandwidth is cheap enough to not really be a factor anymore these days. Disk usage should definitely be a factor. If you're using 1TB of disk space for example, there is really no VPS that is going to fit your needs. Also, look at the CPU. Are you hammering the CPU? Are the loads on your server high? What is the disk i/o?
Thanks for your help! If I didn't provide the actual numbers was because I pretended to do the math on my own and figute it out by my self by just comparing the numbers of whatever you guided me to take as a parameter. However, since it seems to be more clear with the actual data on the table, lets bring them on: My dedicated server specs: Standard Intel Xeon 3360* (Quad Core) 4 GB DDR3 Memory 2 X 250 GB Hard Drive 10 TB Bandwidth 5 Dedicated IPs FREE cPanel Today server stats: Server load 0.5 (8 CPUs) Memory Used 19.55% (808,916 of 4,137,860) Swap Used 0.51% (10,664 of 2,096,440) I have asked my hostgator to provide CPU usage for the last year, but the response was "This data is stored in /var/log/sa and can be retrieved via the sar command etc etc", just too complicated for me. So anyway I got a capture of yesterday's cpu usage, a normal day: See attachment About bandwith May's bandwith usage was 428.36 Gig I use this server to host several websites. Some are joomla based, and others are wordpress based. I have installed cache on all sites. All websites are informational sites, they have text and still images. No gaming, streaming, etc etc So, supposing the data given correspond to average numbers (and nothing will change in the future), what are the actual numbers I should compare in order to find out whether I am wasting resources or not?
In any event, if those are the average resources, you aren't using anywhere close to the full potential of that server. Your loads are quite good, the memory usage is low (under 1GB), etc. You could almost definitely get away with running your sites on a VPS if you really wanted to. That said, VPS is again a shared environment, and you have to worry about other users utilizing the server resources, etc. On your own dedicated server, that really isn't something you need to worry about. If you are worried about price, there are many, many cheaper alternatives to HostGator. If you wanted to stay with HG, you could "probably" drop down to their $139/mo. plan. However, that only offers 2GB of RAM, which is ridiculously low for a server these days. You would be utilizing about 50% of that RAM right off the bat, based upon what you provided above, and the 1GB left over might not be enough for spikes, or for future expansion.
Considering the fact that you could save quite some Dollar did you think about a Xen based VPS which is fixed in the guaranteed resources? Sure there will be other clients and the Node but with an honest provider you shouldn't have trouble and pay less than the 200 USD you are paying right now.
We do provide for cloud solution so called as cloud nodes hosting and cloud server, if you need further help or assistance and you may poke me.
No point if you rent a dedicated server yet you are not using the entire resources, why not go for pay as you use method - cloud hosting =)
Do not go to the sites that say top 10 hosting or anything of the likes because those are affiliate sites and for them the best host will be the one that pays them the most for passing you on to them.