I have a medium to large sized vBulletin 4 forum (Just over 21,000 registered members), traffic - Visits Today: 1,348 - Last Week: 12,075 - Last Month: 45,830, we get about 7.5 million page views a year. I have a dedicated server for the site in The UK which I pay £160 a month for, I am looking at reducing my costs and possibly moving host so I have been contacting some of the large hosting companies around and getting prices / advice, yesterday I was talking to a tech at HostGator.com with whom I have a baby account with and the techy seems to think that I can put the forum onto this account with no problems! If he is correct that fantastic I will be saving £1860 a year on my hosting but I do not want to move over to Host Gator to then find that they turn my account off for using too much resources or I get continued outage at busy periods because as it is I have not had a outage on my site in over two years since I moved to the dedicated server and the page load times are great at the moment (I use my hostgator plan as a CDN for all the site images) So the main question is "Do you think this is a good idea?" and "Can you suggest a host for a large and growing forum?"
Personally, I think that is FAR too large for a shared host. Not sure what HostGator is smoking, but I can almost guarantee you would be shut down for resource usage. Of course, I say that not knowing the exact resource usage you're experiencing, but running forums around the size of yours, I'm sure the resource usage is about the same. I would not get rid of the dedicated server, honestly. With 21,000 members, surely you can take donations or something to help cover some of the costs. Even if 1,000 of those people gave you $1 per year, your costs would be remarkably offset. You could try to cram the forum onto a large VPS and at least cut the budget in half, but performance will most likely be nowhere near that of your dedicated box.
Covering the costs of the hosting is not a problem, making a profit is. If I can reduce the costs by even half it would be a great help, I know what you are saying about the dedicated server, I have had very few problems with it compared to the VPS server I was on before and even the shared hosting I was on before that but I am willing to compromise a little on performance and seep for saving a few pounds. I find hosting in The UK expensive compared to some of the deals available in The USA and if I have to move to another country to save money then I will, moving from my current host will be a hard decision as I have been with them for 8 or 9 years now and their customer support really is good, not that I use it that much any more but when I do it is the best. My current specs are; Total processors: 4 Processor #1,2,3,4 Vendor GenuineIntel Name Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3430 @ 2.40GHz Speed 2394.049 MHz Cache 8192 KB Server load 0.97 (4 CPUs) Memory Used 21.5% (867,216 of 4,033,204) Swap Used 1.68% (70,352 of 4,192,956) OK it is 1.20am here in The UK so this usage is half of what it usually is but there is still 244 people online.
Do you happen to know how much resources your server uses during peak times? Also, how much ram and hard drive space do you currently have on your server? Do you require your server to have management from the datacenter/provider?
Not sure on the resources usage during peak times, is there something I can run in a shall to get this data? apart from running the top comand when it is busy I am unsure on how to get this information. I have 8gb if ram and 2 80gb HHD on a raid system. The backups are only done monthly to reduce resource usage and I have also turned off a number of features like statistics too. As for management, I have done pretty well upto now although every now and then I may need a push in the right direction.
Well, you're looking at least at 1.5 - 2GB of RAM during the off-peak period, as you obviously want some left over. Would definitely be interested to see what you use during the peak periods. TOP is fine for that. You're certainly looking at a larger VPS, quite possibly even an equal amount of RAM that you have now (4GB). You can probably cut your budget at least in half that way, since you'll be sharing the server with other users. Honestly, you're paying a lot of money for your server specs. You can definitely find something cheaper, and might even ask your current host what they can do on the price. The RAM is low and the hard drives are tiny for the price you're paying. Be careful about switching the physical location of your server as well, particularly if your target audience is in the UK. Having a server elsewhere is going to slow things down. Whether it will be a noticeable difference or not is obviously to be determined. Just as I wouldn't want a server in the UK for my target audience here in the US, you probably wouldn't want one in the US. As far as management, it sounds like you don't need it. If you do need it, you can simply purchase it at an hourly rate when you do. Sounds to me like you're doing fine without. Of course, management will also drive the price up considerably.
Are you using any additional plug-ins with your vbulletin? If not, then I don't think you need a dedicated server or even a VPS. I have a vbulletin forum (3.6.8), 7700 members, 2000+ uniques a day, 13 million page views a year. I am using reseller account for the forum and paid $449 for a period of 4 years.
The biggest problem, sachin410, is that he is using almost 1GB of RAM during the off-peak period. Of course, some of that is going to be general server overhead, but even so, there is not going to be a reseller provider out there that is going to let you get away with using a GB of RAM while only paying $9/mo. If you are getting away with it, I wouldn't expect it to last long. If I let clients do that, for example, it would amount to around $145/mo. That's barely enough to pay for 1/2 of one of my servers. I would be losing money on every single server I provisioned. Ferret147, it doesn't hurt to ask. If you can find a reseller who will let you get away with the kind of resources you're using, it might be an option, but it's highly doubtful.
What could be the reason why his forum is consuming so much RAM? Is it because it's a large forum with many threads and posts? Compared to my forum, his forum gets less users/pageviews, but my forum has fewer posts and threads (10% of his).
Yeah, that's a very good question. We would really have to break things down and see what's happening on the server. Out of curiosity sachin410, do you know specifically what your RAM usage is? Ferret, top would give us somewhat of an idea as would ps -aux
Is is possible to track memory usage of individual sites from whm? I don't think so. I am using the same account for many sites including one with a very large database (150,000+ articles) and a wallpaper site with 10000+ wallpapers and 1000 uniques a day. Anyway, this is what my whm's "Server Information" says:
Sachin410, no, you probably aren't going to be able to track your specific usage. That usage you list is for the server as a whole.
My forum is running on shared hosting without any problem - I hit 800 to 1,100 Unique/day with upto 2100 pageviews/day. But same as sachin - about 10% of the user details.