Nate

iTrader: (2)

Hi guys,

I have a forum that has outgrown any VPS providers and is causing issues as they are all grinding to a halt.

I have come to the conclusion that I should either:-

a. Get a managed dedicated server
b. as above but unmanaged

or

C. Get my own server

I am leaning towards my own, as I can then tailor it, but I have never had my own server (I know that in theory, they are just another computer).

Would I need to get a dedicated internet connection to run it due to the amount of traffic, as I am guessing upload speeds will be important ..... And do you think Virgin would supply such a service if I need it ?

Any other things I should consider ?

Cheers

Fonzey

iTrader: (5)

The main restriction of having your own, is you'd probably need a static IP address rather than one which is dynamically assigned on a lease basis. You'll have DNS records point your namespace to an address, so a static will be needed.

I'm not sure how available statics are with personal ISP's nowadays, but I believe there are some third party solutions to get around it. (OpenDNS might be one?)

I personally rent a managed dedicated server, I got the cheapest package and it's been fine for my use - but I've got rather low bandwidth and access requirements to be fair.

Jamie330S

iTrader: (2)

Hi Nate im an install engineer for VM and spend most of my days providing services in data centres for such solutions. It however is not cheap. Unless you compare to BT identical services, but still...

Check out virginmediabusiness.co.uk for the solutions.

Personally i'd go option A. No initial massive cost outlay, not stuck with own equipment which is soon obsolete. Also saves you travelling to the data centre to make physical changes yourself, DC fees to plug in a simple patch lead is usually £130+vat per cable :S Oh then the rental space in a rack per month not even worth thinking about.
If you look to the likes of Netflix etc they all rent from someone else to save on some if not all of the problems outlined above.

Beef

When you say outgrown, how so?

Nate

iTrader: (2)

The amount of traffic through the VPS package is forcing the site to timeout and cause lots of random issues.

The software has been gone through a few times to see if there are any problems, and there doesn't appear to be any, the forum has been moved through about 3 different servers now, and the same issues are repeating.

This leads me to believe that, as it is a VPS (shared) server, most hosts will cram as many onto the server as possible to make their money..... this is why I feel I have no option than to go Dedicated.

Nate

iTrader: (2)

Some food for thought.....

Pjamie

You can't really run an online system from a home or office connection unless you have the infrastructure to support it and a decent connection in both directions. Most ISPs don't allow you to connect servers to their set-up anyway. You could get your own server and colocate it in a datacentre - it isn't that expensive - but unless you live close to the datacentre it won't work as you will be responsible for maintaining hardware (it does break down) and all other aspects.

Choice b - unmanaged. Only do that if you're an experienced server admin who has done this before. It's not just about setting up sites, it's about securing the server, maintaining it, and looking after it when it's connected directly to a hostile environment 24.7 (that is NOT the same as your PC being connected 24/7). Sites need more than just a "server". You need DNS (already discussed), FTP, you'll probably need email for it, a database server, and backup. It's just too much trouble unless you know what you're doing. If anything goes wrong your host will replace damaged hardware and re-install the operating system if required. Everything else is up to you.

Choice a - managed is the easy way to go. Let your host worry about the techy stuff as that's what they do all the time. They will probably install a control panel to let you do the day-to-day stuff yourself, but let them manage the server.....don't forget about backup too.

As for needing a dedicated server, are you sure? A proper VPS should be providing you with dedicated resources so it shouldn't be a case of running out due to overselling. Then again there is some dodgy VPS software out there that is little better than shared hosting.

Maybe you need a different hosting company rather than a dedicated server? I work for a hosting company and over 95% of our environment is now virtualized (the other 5% isn't far away). We have some massive workloads on our systems and we'd never move back to providing purely dedicated servers ever again as virtualization is the way to go - infinitely expandable, super reliable, brilliant for disaster recovery, clustering & load balancing become a breeze, and hardware upgrades are simple.

Why anyone would want a purely dedicated server is beyond me for most situations. There's nothing wrong with wanting all the resources and control of a dedicated server to yourself, but by installing a hypervisor layer first (turning it into a Virtualized server by definition) is much more sensible because you then get the best of both worlds.

Lee

Hi Nate

I can help if you are interested. I used to own/run Titan Internet who hosted these forums amongst many others. I sold that business and have started another where we focus on cloud based solutions. Its a top quality offering using all enterprise kit like Dell, EMC SAN, Arista 10Gb switching, VMware. We host the MLR btw - see their forum fly now

You mention VPS - the owners of no-offence.org were referred to us as their forum was constantly generating HTTP500 errors, was offline or extremely slow. I examined their VPS and found the CPU to be 100% flatlined all of the time, quite simply the VPS they were using was on a ridiculously overcrowded server. This sounds very similar to your story.

We moved them to a very small VM on our cloud platform, you can see the speed of the site/forum for yourself. In addition see the attachment of their current CPU performance, due to our special build of FastCGI/PHP-FPM the box generates very little CPU load indeed, averaging just 1%.

This outlines the fact that cheap VPS providers are cramming their servers, so what appears to be a "very busy VPS" is in fact not.

So if you want a very fast and efficient server to run your site from, let me know. We'll do the migration for you free of charge.

Nate

iTrader: (2)

Hi Lee,

Thanks for the reply ..... It was originally Steve (Nevetas) that set the sites up on your hosting many years ago.

Since IOmart were running the hosting into the ground, I moved to Hostgator (who were good for around 18 months or so) then I have tried a couple of others who tbh, shouldn't be calling themselves hosts

I did contact a company (UKfast ?) who were giving me some prices for different options (managed dedicated and cloud based).

If you have any idea of cost etc, feel free to PM me ..... And I am guessing your datacentres are based in the UK ?

Lee

I did think I recognised your name, but hey I started Titan 13 years ago so in that time have seen a lot of names, sorry

To be honest, the hosting market infuriates me at times. True Cloud is where you don't have to worry where the resource is coming from, its complete abstraction away from hardware. So many hosts are installing Xen on a machine with local disk storage and calling the VMs "cloud servers" which is a joke. When the machine dies your VM dies with it and won't come back until the underlying hardware is fixed.

I've spent a fortune on the very best hardware you can buy today and we are doing it *right*.

UKFast will give you something fair to medium but charge a lot for it. A great marketing and sales company they are.

I'll PM you my email address and we can have a better discussion there.