Hey guys,

I have a site that has huge traffic (50 million pageviews a month) and now it's hosted on iWeb (web Server and DB server).

Because iWeb support was terrible as the connection between servers was broken and it took them 40 hours to fix it!! I'm moving to another web host, and I'm considering Cloud hosting.

Now my question is: Would cloud hosting be good for this huge traffic? If yes, what is the best Windows Cloud Hosting out there (even if it's expensive)??

Much appreciated
Me!

how expensive? I'm already paying $800/mo to iWeb, would it more than that? Can you explain what you wanna explain here?

Thanks

It would depend largely on bandwidth, I have quite a few contacts in various DC's that will be able to take care of you with hardware - enough contacts so you can take your choice between a few larger names.

What is your peak bandwidth utilization and how many servers do you hold just one web and one DB ?

Because iWeb support was terrible as the connection between servers was broken and it took them 40 hours to fix it!! I'm moving to another web host, and I'm considering Cloud hosting.

Can you please provide me a ticket number for this. I will verify with Martin and the customer service director why we took so long to fix the problem.

Thanks.

I'm not sure that cloud hosting would be the best move for you, unless you have an extremely viral website or a website that gets massive floods of traffic for short periods and then none for a while. To that extend, if you have a pretty consistent influx of visitors a managed server setup will probably be less hassle to get up and running.

I would definitely find out from iweb why a problem took so long to fix. 40 hours in a month means your downtime is already less than 99.8% for the year, which is pretty terrible for shared hosting, let alone a managed dedicated setup.

@fbc I don't think you can do anything about it though, unless you do a serious change to your technical and customer support TEAM. Cuz during these 40 hours I had to reexplain the problem more than 6 times to different technician, and none of them could figure out the problem.

For the readers to know: the problem was the network card on the DB server was stopped every 10 minutes! and that happened after one of iWeb guys missed up the conflagration on the server trying to solve the slowness problem between the two server!!!

Anyway ... the ticket# is 3176533

I'm now experiencing change of traffic amount as we implemented a premium membership so that's why we're considering Cloud Hosting.

So from back-end perspective, dedicated server is more manageable? I have a huge SQL Server DB how could we manage that with Cloud?

What traffic is the server doing, what hardware is it on at the moment and how stressed is it currently? These are important questions to work out whether cloud hosting is what you need. :)

you would want something like this: http://ditlev.dk/snitch/Dock-20100125-162529.jpg that would take care of redundancy and scalability.

The FusionIO SAN would be for your SQL DB.

@jayglade

...would be a good start with modern hardware and such i web usually sells the older gear.

Not sure what this statement is based on. Seems like inaccurate to me.

I am looking at your web site and you are listing the same hardware as we list in our regular offers; Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Xeon Quad Core. I also see you have a closeout server list and promotions, as we do, where older models are listed. It's up to the customer to choose hardware specs he needs.

Regards,

@jayglade



Not sure what this statement is based on. Seems like inaccurate to me.

I am looking at your web site and you are listing the same hardware as we list in our regular offers; Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Xeon Quad Core. I also see you have a closeout server list and promotions, as we do, where older models are listed. It's up to the customer to choose hardware specs he needs.

Regards,

I don't care about all these details, what I care about is a robust reliable infrastructure that doesn't take my site down for 40 hours!!!

I don't care about all these details, what I care about is a robust reliable infrastructure that doesn't take my site down for 40 hours!!!I understand your frustration. According to the ticket our staff has been actively working and trying to solve the network problem between your two servers, replacing hardware and network adapters and having the server back up several times (but the problem reoccured). The problem has been escalated and we will make sure that the exact cause is identified and problem resolved once and for all.

I understand your frustration. According to the ticket our staff has been actively working and trying to solve the network problem between your two servers, replacing hardware and network adapters and having the server back up several times (but the problem reoccured). The problem has been escalated and we will make sure that the exact cause is identified and problem resolved once and for all.

The exact cause is the Tech staff is not well trained. Cuz it took them 40 hours to think of updating the drivers (which solved the problem)!!

Really Martin, you need to either send them for training or replace them!

I am happy to know the problem has been solved.

We will review the case and take actions if it could have been handled in a better way.

Since the problem was intermittent, there were delays to see if it would reoccur, etc. but we will make sure that the proper procedures are followed in order to diagnose and fix those problems in a timely manner if it should occur again.

Regards,

While cloud hosting may be benficial for your 50,000,000 page views a month, it may not be so beneficial to your wallet. What is your budget for something like this? Perhaps a more robust solution than you currently have with iWeb is available, while keeping your costs down? Sorry to hear about your downtime, good luck to you.

As jayglate said, you can blend the two approaches--use virtual cloud servers for your web / application tier, and dedicated hardware for your database tier. Aside from Amazon (which probably isn't going to offer you the kind of support you want), many of the cloud server providers are also traditional hosting providers, and they should be able to offer such a setup. Certainly any of the so-called "enterprise" clouds can do that. But I think you'll need to adjust your expectations a bit. The cloud services you'll be able to afford are typically unmanaged, or certainly less managed, than what's considered a managed hosting solution in this business. You're not in any sort of high availability configuration currently (and in fact, aside from downtime caused by excessive load, splitting your web and database tiers to separate, single servers is less reliable than doing both on a single server), and unless you up your budget considerably, it isn't really going to allow for that either.

Having said that, Hybrid hosting is what I need? what is the best company that provides this? Does Peer1 provide it?

As jayglate said, you can blend the two approaches--use virtual cloud servers for your web / application tier, and dedicated hardware for your database tier. Aside from Amazon (which probably isn't going to offer you the kind of support you want), many of the cloud server providers are also traditional hosting providers, and they should be able to offer such a setup. Certainly any of the so-called "enterprise" clouds can do that. But I think you'll need to adjust your expectations a bit. The cloud services you'll be able to afford are typically unmanaged, or certainly less managed, than what's considered a managed hosting solution in this business. You're not in any sort of high availability configuration currently (and in fact, aside from downtime caused by excessive load, splitting your web and database tiers to separate, single servers is less reliable than doing both on a single server), and unless you up your budget considerably, it isn't really going to allow for that either.