Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Managed Hosting and Services : what should be good enuff for me?

[chillax]

i am not here to look for prospective host.. rather i just want to know what would it cost me to have one so atleast i can plan for future (i wish to change host soon)...

i run 4 forums with a total of 500-550 users online at peak time and an average of 400 users at any given time.
In addition i also run an imagehosting site with 'more than just decent' traffic... 400,000 raw hits a day..

I can guess that the above should be memory and CPU intensive but i am not sure exactly what fits the bill.
The questions:

> What hardware specs would yu people recommend to me considering i want to run it all from one single dedicated server?

> What is the LEAST that i would have to spend?

> Since i need a FULLY MANAGED server(where i just login to CPanel/WebMin/Plesk and worry about nothing else), would it be better to go for an unmanaged dedicated server and use managing services of a 3rd party like platinumservermanagement.com, acunett etc?

Thanks for reading

[guyellis1988]

Depending what your currently paying you may well be better sticking at what youve got froma price perspective point of view.

the forums will be very cpu intensive, as will the image hosting.

You will be looking at atleast a dual machine, possible one front end machine (P4 or similar) and a second database machine - which runs all the sql/cpu intensive scripts (dual Opteron or Xeon)
as for management, you will find both do the same thing, sometimes its better not to keep all your eggs in one basket so to speak, PSM have many good reviews on here and they are a reasonable price - some "managed servers" are only semi managed even though they are advertised as fully.

You will want to look for a company which pro-actively updates the server for you.

Hope this helped abit.

EDIT: Just read the post again, the minimum your looking to spend including management i would say is aroun the $300/month mark

(LT Dual CPU machine and PSM management) but again until you have tried it it may be you need a higher spec machine.

[chillax]

hmmm if i dont put all my eggs in one basket.. i might go broke renting two 'baskets' lol...

i am getting a deal for - Dual Opteron 242
- 2GB RAM
- 2x 80GB HD
- 1000GB Bandwidth
$229/month

which i think is good option for me...

i did understand what you meant by "a dual machine, possible one front end machine (P4 or similar) and a second database machine - which runs all the sql/cpu intensive scripts (dual Opteron or Xeon)"
but i dont know how to implement it...

can i expect the 'management' that i get to do this for me?
say platinumservermgmt (i read at their site, they are willing for additional help at no extra cost )

[HostPing]

I would also recommend a dual processer machine. You are looking at around $300-$400 a month. What are you running on now?

[chillax]

right now i am on a dual xeon, 2 gb ram .. which also hosts a number of other sites apart from mine..
my host tells me that around 60-70 percent resources are for me...
lately i have started having a lot of mysql problems which from the sounds of it seem like a server overload issue...

what do you people say for the deal someone offered me (posted above)?

[Vonuts]

Hello,

We are now hosting a site that has over 16,000 users active at peak times on a Dual Opteron 242 with 4GB RAM and two 36GB SCSI drives. If you are currently using 60-70% of your current server capacity with forums that have that little amount of visitors, then your host is doing something wrong.

We use InterWorx control panel, additionally. It makes it easy to cluster, should we need it. I should also say, that we are indeed NOT clustering this server, and we only have one site on it. It uses less than 50% of CPU time during the more idle hours, and a little under 80% during peak hours.

Based on mySQL and PHP.

-Vonuts

[Cyrus255]

You could be easily spending $200-$500 on this. Better make sure you're making some profits or getting donations.

[chillax]

Hello,

We are now hosting a site that has over 16,000 users active at peak times on a Dual Opteron 242 with 4GB RAM and two 36GB SCSI drives. If you are currently using 60-70% of your current server capacity with forums that have that little amount of visitors, then your host is doing something wrong.

We use InterWorx control panel, additionally. It makes it easy to cluster, should we need it. I should also say, that we are indeed NOT clustering this server, and we only have one site on it. It uses less than 50% of CPU time during the more idle hours, and a little under 80% during peak hours.

Based on mySQL and PHP.

-Vonuts

interesting piece of information this (atleast for me)
i shall communicate the same to my host..

so does this mean that i MIGHT do fine on a P4 3.2 with HT as well? lots of ram to complement it

You could be easily spending $200-$500 on this. Better make sure you're making some profits or getting donations.

thats another concern... i think i just might be able to break even for now and profits later .. maybe .. but thats another story...

PS: anyone can offer me a deal??... my current host seems hell bent to lose business

[relichost]

I run an image hosting site, pushing around 1 million hits a day, so would 1tb bandwidth be enough? we push 7tb a month... excluding any of the forums. So, processing power alone may not be enough

[Vonuts]

It's not a fair comparison there. Extra bandwidth can easily be purchased. Processing power is difficult to add even if you use a control panel like InterWorx, built to do it automatically.

7TB of bandwidth? That's over $2,500 in bandwidth. Pretty amazing what we spend on computers, eh?

[chillax]

thanx to all who replied here

your comments have me pretty much zeroing in on the following specs (which i am currently getting a deal on from a host):
# 2 x AMD Opteron 242 w/1MB L2 cache
# 2 x 80GB IDE Hard Drive
# 2048MB ECC DDR RAM
# Bandwidth: 1000GB
# Private VLAN
# FULLY Managed
# CentOS4 64bit
# InterWorx Control Panel

All this for a pretty reasonable price... Hosts that can match the EXACTLY same configuration PLEASE contact me... I am still on the look-out for a better deal.. atleast for next 2 days, after which it may be too late