Hi there,

i need your advice, as i need to make a serious decision.
I am currently running a .NET / MSSQL based social network (flirt / dating) on a 2 GIG RAM VPS with a shared db on another server (not my server) It's all hosted at kickass vps

The problem is now, that the database was always the bottelneck for the past 3 months. Sometimes SQL server response times are just way to slow (up to 5 seconds, until statements are executed, most of the times between 0 and 2 seconds) - however this is too slow for our needs. We need an slq server that delivers continous immediate reaction/performance 24/7. I guess this will just not work on a shared server, becuase if other clients on the same server are causing high db loads, it slows down the whole machine.

We were asking kickass to resolve that, but they said so - it's a shared server, and they can't do anything about it. Last week it was so bad that some client "killed" a whole server and our db had to move to another physical machine for them to clean up the old db server.

To cut a long story short - i need to be sure if this is really a shared db intrisic problem or if "only" kickass might have these problems? what do you think?

If it's kickass vps specific we might want to move on to another hoster, if it's a general problem, then i think we need to upgrade to a dedicated db. The problem then are the cost however... licenses (workgroup or standard) i found cost aournd 1000$ (express version wouldn't work as it only supports up to 1 GIG db RAM usage, which will not be enough) Unfortunately i did not find any hoster with sql server licenses to lease.

The next problem would be that a dedicate db needs a lot of RAM/CPU ressources, which would require another vps server or one really big vps.
Whichever way you look at it - it is too expensive for us now.
Do you have any idea? We need RDP, so the typical cloud hosting offers are not an option for us unfortunately. And all i found did not offer dedicated mssql servers either.

So - do you have any idea on what to do?
Some stats regarding our application:

- dynamic, .NET community, most content db oriented
- max concurrent users: today 50, in 3 months expected 150
- average concurrent user: today 15, in 3 months expected 45
- activity per user: high - the dont read or write long texts, but use db ressource consuming search, etc algorythms all the time
- visits per day: today 3000, in 3 months expected 10000

Our vps, where IIS is sitting on performs well by the way - that is not the bottleneck, all statements are executed very fast when db is delivering in time ...

So our problem is really the sql server which should have a continous fast and reliable performance 24/7 - and all of that for max 200 $ monthly (including license cost)

Any ideas? :-)

Thanks in advance,
Georg

Georg,

Few hosts manage SQL resources on shared server pretty well and hence you can expect decent performance from it - however, shared is shared and yo never know when one of the db wakes up and consumes much resources to slow down other databases. Your budget is pretty good and with regards to licensing, I'll recommend SQL Server 2008 Web edition which costs somewhere around $25-$30 per month. I'll also recommend you to consider Hyper-V based VPS since it provides guaranteed dedicated RAM and its not possible to oversell it. You can consider getting 2 VPS':

1) Web server - Hosts IIS w/ 2GB RAM and any other web components
2) Database server - Dedicated SQL Server VPS w/ 2-4 GB RAM for optimal performance

This should be pretty stable and scalable as well whereby you can just increase your VPS resources when your requirements expand in future.

Good luck!

Hi Softsys,

thanks for you reply! That's really valuable information for me - i did not know about the sql web edition before.
Do you think it is also possible and meaningful to run both the IIS as well as the database on one Hyper V Server? That would reduce the cost once more, lets say i take a quad core 6 GIG machine. What do you think? And it would ruduce the connection time of the db to .NET (ok, only some milliseconds..)

Best,
Georg

Hi Softsys,

thanks for you reply! That's really valuable information for me - i did not know about the sql web edition before.
Do you think it is also possible and meaningful to run both the IIS as well as the database on one Hyper V Server? That would reduce the cost once more, lets say i take a quad core 6 GIG machine. What do you think? And it would ruduce the connection time of the db to .NET (ok, only some milliseconds..)

Best,
Georg

Hi Georg

Well, that could be an option. You can start with single Hyper-V server and if performance is not acceptable, you can split services and move SQL Server on separate Hyper-V VM.

Thanks!

Hi Softsys,

thanks! I think i will do that, sounds reasonable!

Georg

The problem is now, that the database was always the bottelneck for the past 3 months. Sometimes SQL server response times are just way to slow (up to 5 seconds, until statements are executed, most of the times between 0 and 2 seconds) - however this is too slow for our needs.
Sounds like SQL server is overloaded. The server does not have enough RAM.
Cost saving & easy solution: ask kickaskvps to move your database to a better server.
Your website is growing so this solution is not flexible for future.
With $200/month budget, you can get a dedicated server running Windows 2008 & SQL web edition.
VPS will be cheaper. The idea of split up 2 VPS for database and web is ok but if database usage is intensive you may run into issue with disk IO.

It is simply impossible to predict how a shared database server will perform. No one can predict the quality of the code that is being uploaded by others. Most of it is pretty bad to begin with. Some of it is worse.

Now, how can you count on stable performance when someone can upload and run garbage on the server at any time without warning?

@PremiumHost: Yea, that was also my idea - overlaod. However as @plumsauce said i guess it's true that you never know what happens on a shared db. We could move to a plain new sql server with just one other client on it and if he runs garbage code it will still influnce our performance.

So i decided for running our own sql server, however i am not sure about the details. You said, running on 2 seperate vps might cause disk i/o problems? I don't quite understand that. If i run nothing else but MSSQL server on a virtual machine, then the whole dedicated disc bandwidth (i guess it's also shared, SAN/NAS ?) will be available for sql server only. Or is there no such thing as dedicated disk i/o on a VPS host server / attached storage unit?

Another question i have: If we take a single server, how much RAM will we need? Will 4 GB be enough? Or do we need to take 6 or even 8?
Would a hyper v server do nearly the same job as a real dedicated one?

so many questions .. :-)
thanks for helping btw !!

Best,
Georg

There are two things that MSSQL loves.

memory and iops, with iops being the more important one.

it's not disk *bandwidth* that is important, but rather the iops.

You actually might be better off on a VPS that has good io as opposed to a physical box for the simple reason that most budget boxes do not have the iops that are required. From the tone of the discussion, you just are not in the market for a custom hardware accelerated array with say, 14 spindles or quad ssd's. That's what it takes to do thousands of inserts per second on a sustained basis. It might be possible in bursts with enough caching, but not if you have to do it 24x7.

There is usually no problem with IIS and MSSQL coexisting on a box as long as there are sufficient resources. They tend to beat up different resources. On the other hand, coexisting with unknown strangers on the same box is usually a problem. You cannot control your destiny if strangers are sneaking bad code onto the same server day in and day out.

Do you have any idea?