Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Hosting needed for busy forum

[sierk]

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

[sierk]

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

[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.

[jacknoc]

yeah, what is your budget?

[sierk]

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.

[PixelManual]

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.

[DjMiX]

400 $ per month ?

[PixelManual]

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).

[dkitchen]

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

[Anthonizzle]

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

[pierre75]

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!!

[James5mith]

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...)

[Apolo]

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

[Linn_Boyd]

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

[turnkeyinternet]

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).