My website is seasonal. For my first 2 years, I survived on a shared hosting plan.

Last year, when my big rush of traffic hit (about 2 months worth) I was transfering about 120 GB per month.

My site was still pretty fast because I talked to the hosting company and connected extra bandwidth to my site. Here's what I had to do to keep things running smoothly.

1 Shared MS SQL server
2 Shared Win 2000 Servers (each on a different machine).

I ended up splitting my traffic betwee my 2 shared web and both getting their data from the 1 shared SQL server. Had some problems, but for the most part everything worked ok.

This year I expect around 200GB per month for my 2 months.

I need a better solution than last year. I don't think my ISP will let me have 2 high traffic sites on their network again as I monopolized both web servers and other customers sites were slowed greatly.

I'm an programmer and don't really have time to maintain my own dedicated server. So some kind of managed plan is probably what I need.

What setup would server my needs at a reasonable cost?

Is 1 D-Server enough?
Do I need 2 servers to 1 for web and 1 for SQL?

My costs were pretty low, $30 for each web server /month and another $50 or so for the SQL plan.

What would be the next step up, have a reasonable cost, and meet my high seasonal traffic?

My out of season traffic is less than 30GB per month.

Help please! --Steve

My recommendation is to get a dedicated server or a large virtual server account with a host who will let you vary the amount of bandwidth you contract for my season. You are talking about a significant price increase. However, this is a against a price you can no longer get. Just the in season bandwidth will cost you anywhere from $300 - $800 per month depending on the provider.

If I get a dedicated server, should I run my web server and SQL server on the same machine.

Will that be better than my 2 shared web servers and my 1 shared SQL server?

Or should I find a company where I could use my server to run my website and then share their SQL server?

If I have SQL on my dedicated machine, I would have to buy a copy of SQL. That's expensive right?


I'm close to 100MB MS SQL DB right now. I'll probably purge most of last years data, but I expect I'll end up at around 150-200MB by then end of 2002.

Which companies have reasonably priced managed care dedicated server options?

The extra money for bandwidth during in season is worth it because usually the more traffic, the more money I make. I can probably afford around $350 / month for server fees and stay at about the same profit level (right now, I pay for extra services that I would not have to pay for with my own server).

I don't want to spend my time putting in the latest patches to stop hackers or running backups.

I would rather just call and say "Why is my ASPemail not working?".

Isn't there anything between a shared and dedicated server for Win 2000?

These are generally called virtual servers. However, most of those are not managed either. However, there may be hosts who are willing to specifically design a plan for your needs. Although quite expensive, Rackspace is well regarded for their managed plans.