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  1. #1

    Hosting needed for busy forum

    Hello,
    I am looking for new hosting for my vBulleting forum habboxhosting.com . It is quite busy with 200 users online every evening uk time. The hosting I use now has a lot of lag and is often down at peak hours.
    Does anybody know a hosting company that offers enough resources to handle a busy vBulletin forum for an affordable price?
    For the rest I am looking for linux hosting, cpanel and to pay by paypal.
    Thanks

  2. #2
    Around 150gb bandwidth a month is more than enough, the problem really is that I need servers that can handle the 200 users online without getting laggy. I know there are tons of offers, but none of those offers would say: we get laggy when there are 200 users online. Also the company I have now said they can easily handle it, while they cant. So I hope somebody can recommend a good hosting company from their own experience with a busy forum.
    Thanks

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    what is your budget? For 150 gb bandwidth it'll have to be fairly high. You may want to look into getting a VPS with 256mb+ of ram.
    GeeksGather - Undergoing redevelopment. Stand by.

  4. #4
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    yeah, what is your budget?

  5. #5
    At the moment i pay over $400 per month, so it would be nice if it was something like that or cheaper, as long as it doesn't get laggy for a busy forum.

  6. #6
    Join Date
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    For that much you could easily get a fully managed dedicated server from rackspace or another reliable provider. Liquidweb, steadfast, etc.

    For that budget, if you run cpanel, check out liquidweb they are a great provider. And a server you could get for that budget would easily handle that many users.
    GeeksGather - Undergoing redevelopment. Stand by.

  7. #7
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    400 $ per month ?

  8. #8
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    From liquidweb for exactly $399 a month you could get an
    Dual opteron246
    2000 GB bandwidth
    2 GB of ECC reg'ed ram
    2 x 36GB scsi drives running raid1
    120 GB backup drive
    and cpanel with fantastico

    http://www.liquidweb.com/dedicated/c...lan2/index.cgi

    That server will most definitely power your forum and if you have other clients (i noticed on your site you offered hosting).
    GeeksGather - Undergoing redevelopment. Stand by.

  9. #9
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    OK - you need your own server, nothing shared.

    It all depends if you want a UK based or US based server ... you'll get more for your money in the US but it's up to you.

    What is the site currently hosted on?

    For that price you could very easily grab a managed cluster with one server to do the web site, and another to handle the MySQL. I always find clusters handle the task better than a larger machine, because of the complete physical seperation between machines.

    Dan
    Last edited by westcan; 03-21-2006 at 06:19 PM.

  10. #10
    Join Date
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    I would go with Valuenoc.com, I've went with them and there support is awesome.

    Intel P4 3.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM

    2x160 IDE Hard Drives

    10 Mbps Unmetered Monthly

    249/M

    Very good price in my Opinion

  11. #11
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    I've had experience with a few hosting companies. I'd have to say probably some of the best experience I’ve had is with oxeo.com and zymhosting.com. About 4 months ago I signed up with zymhosting.com, and so far those guys have been great with me (great support, uptime, reasonable prices, and just very cool guys), basically I’m very happy and satisfied with their service. I’ve been hosting with oxeo.com for about a year now, and they also have been great, awesome uptime. Those are basically the two companies I'd highly recommend.

    I'd definitely recommend getting a dedicated server, and for the price you pay each month you shouldn't have a problem finding a dedicated server with the spec's that you're looking for. Good Luck!!

    Last edited by pierre75; 03-06-2006 at 05:57 PM.

  12. #12
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    For less than $400 per month, if you are willing to host in the U.S. you should easily be able to get a 15k SCSI drive, dual CPU >=2GB server with either a large allotment of bandwidth, or simply unmetered at a fixed throughput (1mbps, 5mpbs, etc...)

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by PixelManual
    what is your budget? For 150 gb bandwidth it'll have to be fairly high. You may want to look into getting a VPS with 256mb+ of ram.
    Probably OP already found a provider, but just a note: a VPS with 256 MB of RAM won't be able to handle a forum with 200 simultaneous forum users online.

    Regards,

    Jaime
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  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Apolo
    Probably OP already found a provider, but just a note: a VPS with 256 MB of RAM won't be able to handle a forum with 200 simultaneous forum users online.

    Regards,

    Jaime
    Jamie,

    Do not say that. We have a server that is running on part of a xen cluster that has a backend db to it and it has ran up to 1200 users at one time. The frontend server only has 128MB ram on it. The key is to get everything dialed in correctly. Also this is using a xen vps solution.

    -Linn

  15. #15
    I know you are looking at the 'provider' being laggy, but it looks more likely that your lag is related to the cpu/server being overloaded. What exactly are you running? Some good options above, i'd recomend a dual processor box with lots of ram (needed for forums) - and to get your best 'performance vs cost' you could host it on the east coast (NY) in the US, and still have fast ping/response time to the UK and enjoy lower costs (NO 17% vat, and costs seem lower to host in the US vs UK in general). So you could basicaly get a much bigger box, or even 2, for your same $400, and keep it 'fast'. Really depends on what hardware you have 'now' though to answer what is best for you.

    Long term, you really need to look at a provider flexable to let you bring up 2, 3, or more boxes together (cluster, or private ethernet switches) as you will likely outgrow a single server at some point (though right now you should be fine on 1 big dual processor box).
    Colohouse | P: 877-539-4638 | E: hello@colohouse.com
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  16. #16
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    Why should he pay $400 per month on a new host like everybody here suggests?

    There is absolutely no need for such an expensive server. There are _lots_ of reliable companies that can offer you a fast server with 200GB traffic for maybe even less than $100. Say $150 to be safe.

    For $150 you should be able to get a fast P4 with 1GB ram and that amount of bandwidth. And that should be more than enough to power such a forum.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheDingy
    Jamie,

    Do not say that. We have a server that is running on part of a xen cluster that has a backend db to it and it has ran up to 1200 users at one time. The frontend server only has 128MB ram on it. The key is to get everything dialed in correctly. Also this is using a xen vps solution.

    -Linn
    Hi Linn,

    You said it yourself: part of a cluster and no data base running on it.

    A 256 MB RAM VPS won't be able to withstand a whole vBulletin forum with data base, web server, mail server and all services, plus 200+ online simultaneous users, and if it does, its performance would be quite horrible. But, hey, don't believe me. Just ask any of the WHT average providers, like PowerVPS, LiquidWeb, ServInt, etc.

    Regards,

    Jaime

  18. #18
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by Siet
    Why should he pay $400 per month on a new host like everybody here suggests?

    There is absolutely no need for such an expensive server. There are _lots_ of reliable companies that can offer you a fast server with 200GB traffic for maybe even less than $100. Say $150 to be safe.

    For $150 you should be able to get a fast P4 with 1GB ram and that amount of bandwidth. And that should be more than enough to power such a forum.
    Thats what I've been thinking this whole thread. 200gb bandwidth? Thats crazy low for a metred offering.
    You could get a fully capable p4 / 1gb/ tb bandwidth (cheap/middle mix) for under $100 / month i fyou don't need managment.

    =\
    200 users online at one time doesn't warrent 15k scsi drives or 7gb ram or whatever.

    Just my .02, but I think you're all crazy :-p

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Apolo
    Hi Linn,

    You said it yourself: part of a cluster and no data base running on it.

    A 256 MB RAM VPS won't be able to withstand a whole vBulletin forum with data base, web server, mail server and all services, plus 200+ online simultaneous users, and if it does, its performance would be quite horrible. But, hey, don't believe me. Just ask any of the WHT average providers, like PowerVPS, LiquidWeb, ServInt, etc.

    Regards,

    Jaime
    Jaime, your comment is 100% accurate.

  20. #20
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    The setup of that is as follows, it is two VPS servers, one is a db server with 256MB ram dedicated to it. The front end is a vb forum. The server sees an average load of 1250 clients the front end(web server) has 128MB ram dedicated to it. The reason for the splitting of the two systems was not because of performance, but we wanted one virtual machine that is behind a firewall for all of the databse transactions. I think that I could have gotten it to run on one machine. With this setup over the christmas season we saw 1500-2100 concurent users almost every day during peek, currently we are only seeing 1600 or so.

    All of the systems are running through VPS, not for cost, but so that we can do hot hardware upgrades and some other things. If a VPS is done correctly and you keep an eye on it, they can run a massive amount of systems. I do not know how the farm is currently set, but for a long time the domU's ran on the same physical dom0. Along with quite a few other sites. The cluster does not allow for domU process splitting amond the dom0's.

    -Linn
    Last edited by Linn_Boyd; 03-23-2006 at 03:47 PM.
    Linn Boyd

  21. #21
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    Sorry I was off on the numbers it is running a lot mroe than what i thought.
    Linn Boyd

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