Need really good dedicated server suggestions

Okay, two friends and I just opened a new website and it seems our current dedicated server just can't handle it. The site we opened was a new adoptables site, for Pokémon nonetheless, so you can imagine the massive traffic it can accumulate instantly. It only just opened this past Saturday but already got over 360k impressions today so far.

Our current server is now running an Intel core2duo 2.83GHz quad core processor. It was originally running a 2.0ghz dual core but we upgraded for this site. It seems like the new one can't handle the load either because a lot of times during the day the server load goes up over 90% as does memory used and nothing loads. We've gone through and optimized a lot of stuff we could on all the sites we host on our server but we have several sites running IPB forum software so that doesn't help much.

What I really need is some suggestions on where to get a new dedicated server from with some better specs that can handle the new site and hopefully at a price that isn't insane. I need suggestions here from people who run high traffic websites and what solutions they use. I was wondering if anyone also knows of any co-location deals out there maybe where you build the dedicated server and they run it for you at a not-so-enormous price.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide me with.. I need to do something quick because the site is just killing all the other sites.

 

I use since more than 2 years hetzner.de.
Excellent hardware so far no known downtimes.
All servers have dual drives, dual X86_64 processors and unlimited traffic !

a few months ago I upgraded from one server to currently 3 servers for my one site and I am very happy with all.

there is NO minimum contract duration - months by months if you want. I choose yearly to have all stable and free from payment time schedules.

 

i will recommend you rackspace for dedicated servers

 

Rackspace are expensive, but theplanet are good. Also check www.giga-international.com they have cheap and good servers from what I have read.

 

Take a look at Liquidweb.com

 

zerxer: beside the CPU, can you let us know more about the RAM, hard disks? How much are you paying for that? There is a chance the vendor is using desktop board for reducing the cost. Mostly, desktop board can run okay, but when using with high-traffic / busy site, server board will show its power.

Let us know more details.
Thanks.

 

We have 2GB RAM and are running an 80GB HDD with a 160GB HDD that backups are stored to. I honestly do not know the specific information on anything other than the processor but I'm sure it is a desktop board.. We're using surpasshosting.com and the cost right now is $250/month.

 

Is that SATA disk? Single disk will be your bottle-neck then, not the CPU. Upgrading to SAS/SCSI if you still want to play with single disk, or going with raid-10 disks array. Putting more memory will help too. However, it costs more. How much can you afford monthly?

 

They might be SCSI..

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/7396/74046128.png

We can still afford more monthly, just don't really want to have to put a fortune into it all. Ads and donations can cover it and more though.

 

Is this from cPanel? I am not sure how it shows in cPanel, it's long time to use cPanel. However, you can login your server in ssh, try command dmesg, it will show series of hard disk, then we can be sure what kind of disk, how many rpm is it. Remember raid-10 SATA-II will beat single SAS/SCSI disk.

 

I have heard theplanet is good.

 

I got that screenshot from WebHost Manager, not cPanel. Where exactly in dmesg's output does it say anything about the hard disks? I even googled that command and it doesn't seem to mention anything about doing that.

 

Try hostdime. email their sales division ask them what they can offer you for the site your running. They will make you a great deal for a powerful server. You will not go wrong.

PS im not affiliated with them but i had the same problem as the OP and they came through.

also have you tried litespeed for the web server part of your site? Cuts resources way down.

 

Checkout Knownhost.com. They have "hybrid dedicated servers" that may meet your needs. The price is not insane. Reasonable one. You can read many excellent reviews about this company at webhostingtalk.com. Technical Support is really good.

 

You can view result, and check around sda, sdb lines. It should have drive model around.

KH's hybrid is limited at 1GB RAM. I have heard that getting more RAM from them is expensive. Also, the OP's current server has 2GB RAM already, and he's having trouble. It's no sense to advice him to downgrade to 1GB RAM.

 

We're not sure yet if we want to bother moving to another server.. we're still in that "huh? the server should be able to handle it all fine!" phase and are looking into potential problems with our filesystem layouts since I'd assume the hard drive is bottlenecking us too. :/

Can something like this cause a lot of problems? For every adoptable that's made, it creates a randomly named subfolder in an img folder. Now, there's several thousand adoptables created, so there are maaaaany subfolders inside one folder. Could having a filesystem like this make server load go up massively? Especially when it's either creating a new one (using tempnam() to generate a random name that's not already used) or updating a previous one's image.

 

In case you are working with many small files, I believe raid-10 disks array will really help. However, as said, it will cost more, comparing to single disk. If you feel good with current vendor, you can ask them to upgrade your server. However, I would really consider other vendors who can work with your closer to find out your trouble, and give you solution.

 

Can you give me more information on raid-10? How many drives are needed and such?

EDIT: Actually, I asked our host about this before due to having a spare 80GB hard drive that we aren't using (along with our main 80GB hard drive and a 160GB drive used to store backups) and this is what he said to me:

 

raid-10 requires 4 disk drives at least. With a good raid card such as from 3ware or Adaptec.

 

I just edited something into my last post. Didn't realize you had replied.