Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Separate your VPS website and database

[markpringle]

One of my websites is a well-established, eight year old community that has good traffic with 4+GB of bandwidth (no video – just data) a day, 8-9000 visits, and 110,000 page views a day (and growing). Just recently I purchased two VPS accounts for this website: one to host my very active MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Web Edition database, and another for my website. My new hosting provider (I’ll review them after a few months) created a private network for me between the two so that speed was not diminished.

By hosting your database on a different server you prevent your website from having to share its bandwidth, input/output, and other CPU resources. Also, you can keep the database server lean and mean (minimize the Windows junk services, control panels, etc) so the power is dedicated to SQL Server. There’s also a security benefit. If the website server is hacked, the database is not immediately in danger.

Now there is a drawback. Cost! You are paying for two VPS accounts. However, if the VPS hosting provider is good, they will consolidate some of the costs and setup fees, etc. For instance, if there is a management fee per VPS, they may only charge for one VPS while maintaining two.

Now, this is the first time I’ve taken this approach with a VPS (Shared hosting providers do this all the time). So, if you have any other insights, benefits, or drawbacks with this approach, I’d be interesting in hearing what they are.

[raindog308]

Originally Posted by markpringle

By hosting your database on a different server you prevent your website from having to share its bandwidth, input/output, and other CPU resources. Also, you can keep the database server lean and mean (minimize the Windows junk services, control panels, etc) so the power is dedicated to SQL Server. There’s also a security benefit. If the website server is hacked, the database is not immediately in danger.

Now there is a drawback. Cost!

This is commonly done. But there are other drawbacks:

• now you have two VPSes to patch, backup, administer, etc.
• in the case of Windows, you now have to pay for more licenses
• you may need a big box for your database VPS box, and so you buy a same-sized or bigger package, but you don't need the bandwidth that goes with it (since that's all going out through your web server). That bandwidth goes to waste.

This is not to say it's a bad idea. Not at all. In larger environments it's very common to have a couple DB servers (which are kept in sync) and an array of web servers in front of them.

[markpringle]

Originally Posted by raindog308

• now you have two VPSes to patch, backup, administer, etc.
• in the case of Windows, you now have to pay for more licenses
• you may need a big box for your database VPS box, and so you buy a same-sized or bigger package, but you don't need the bandwidth that goes with it (since that's all going out through your web server). That bandwidth goes to waste.

Yeah, you do have to administer two boxes. As far as the "waste", this is an issue since many things that you are NOT going to use on the database box are usually already built into the price of the VPS; things like disk space, bandwidth, a web server, etc. I wish VPS providers would consider that and price database only boxes accordingly.

[kpmedia]

Cost should be relative to the site.
A small blog is worth $5.
A huge site is worth $50 or even $500, if you're doing things properly.

[markpringle]

Originally Posted by kpmedia

Cost should be relative to the site.
A small blog is worth $5.
A huge site is worth $50 or even $500, if you're doing things properly.

It is.
Small blog goes with shared hosting = $5 - 30
Big site goes with VPS = $90 - 200
Huge site goes with dedicated server = $300+

[gate2vn]

Yes, I see that all the time. Usually, a database server uses less space than a web server. However, a database server should have better disk speed than a normal web server. So, if you go that route, you might want to work out a customized plan with your provider (that we do for our customers when needed), not just ordering 2 VPS, then connect them together.

For management charge, even database vps is using less space, even no bandwidth, cause it's connected private only, your host still needs to manage 2 separate systems. Even with different tasks. Optimizing a web server is not the same with optimizing a database server

Originally Posted by markpringle

Yeah, you do have to administer two boxes. As far as the "waste", this is an issue since many things that you are NOT going to use on the database box are usually already built into the price of the VPS; things like disk space, bandwidth, a web server, etc. I wish VPS providers would consider that and price database only boxes accordingly.

[prim3geek]

i am very much interested in this setup, but i have a question. I have my own dedicated server.

1) Is it a good idea to create a vps for database only on the same server or its much better if its hosted on a different server.

2) Will it affect performance?

3) What about the resources, should it be equal to the website vps resources? lets say vps of my website is 100gb space, 2gb ram, 1000gb bandwidth how much should i put on the database only vps?

4) Do i need a panel for this database only vps? like lets say cpanel for easier installation and file management or i can do the installation of the mysql software via SSH alone?

5) Is it hard to setuo this database vps?

thanks i would be so much happier if someone could help me.

[gate2vn]

1. It depends on your server hardware. Is it strong enough for VPS?
2. Again, depends on your server hardware
3. As stated above, database vps is usually using less space than web, you can create smaller space
4. I prefer no-control panel model, but it depends on your skills
5. Not hard

[prim3geek]

@gate2vn

1) My server is xeon 8gb ram, what if its lower specs? is it a good idea if its in the same server or better if its in a separate server?

[gate2vn]

How many disk drives do you have? Any sort of raid? Depends on your websites, but 8GB is in low-side for VPS node. I usually create web, db vps on separate hardware, not on the same one.

[prim3geek]

i have 2x500gb raid 1 for data redundancy.

what do you mean by "8GB is in low-side for VPS node"

i only create 7 VPS on my server. 7 VPS is my maximum number.

[gate2vn]

raid1 will be not strong enough. For our VPS nodes, we use 8 HDDs in raid10. In your case, it would be better to install everything on it as a standalone server, not separating to multiple vps.

[Motiv]

Originally Posted by markpringle

One of my websites is a well-established, eight year old community that has good traffic with 4+GB of bandwidth (no video – just data) a day, 8-9000 visits, and 110,000 page views a day (and growing). Just recently I purchased two VPS accounts for this website: one to host my very active MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Web Edition database, and another for my website. My new hosting provider (I’ll review them after a few months) created a private network for me between the two so that speed was not diminished.

By hosting your database on a different server you prevent your website from having to share its bandwidth, input/output, and other CPU resources. Also, you can keep the database server lean and mean (minimize the Windows junk services, control panels, etc) so the power is dedicated to SQL Server. There’s also a security benefit. If the website server is hacked, the database is not immediately in danger.

Now there is a drawback. Cost! You are paying for two VPS accounts. However, if the VPS hosting provider is good, they will consolidate some of the costs and setup fees, etc. For instance, if there is a management fee per VPS, they may only charge for one VPS while maintaining two.

Now, this is the first time I’ve taken this approach with a VPS (Shared hosting providers do this all the time). So, if you have any other insights, benefits, or drawbacks with this approach, I’d be interesting in hearing what they are.

This is a very standard approach in the Windows (and even Linux) hosting world. What you are doing is a cookie cutter type setup, but until your application grows more it will suit.

Your next step would be to introduce another web VM and then network load balancing to balance the load over those two VMs. Then you could also consider MS SQL replication or even an MS SQL cluster for redundancy on that end.

[Flapadar]

It's a common route for ensuring your data is kept online. For example, if the front-end VPS fails (Gets attacked, exploited, etc) you can simply hot-swap the frontend.

[Ivraatiems]

I run a small gaming group, and we've always kept our VPS/gameservers separate from our webhosting, which is just your standard reseller webhosting. I think it's definitely a good idea, because while we've had VPS issues in the past (and "slashdotted" effects from being linked to by websites more prominent than ours which have brought one or the other service down), we rarely go completely offline.

However, we don't have dedicated hardware - we just split services. Our overall costs per month are still pretty low, generally, though.