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  1. #1

    Need Server Solution for a Traffic Heavy Website

    Hello,

    I'm looking for a solution to a website that I am currently working on. The site is based around affiliate marketing. I anticipate that it will be a very popular website, so what I'm trying to get right now is an idea of what kind of specs I should look for in a dedicated server to keep it running properly, what I'm not looking for is a cheap starter solution that can be scaled over a few months. It's very important to me that from the launch day the server be down as little as possible, and when it's up, I want it to have optimum performance speeds.

    The sites extensive features are roughly the following:

    Membership database
    Deep Statistics database
    Product Database with hundreds and eventually thousands of products
    Relatively large Forum (estimated anywhere from 50-200 users on at any given time)
    Needs as little downtime as possible
    Budget of around $300-$600 a month.
    Mainly US based traffic, but will reach an international audience

    A good comparison site to what I'll be working with is paydotcom.com

    A few solutions I've looked at so far include:

    softlayer.com <- Initially I was sold on them, but I heard they experience frequent downtime, which is unacceptable

    rackforce.com

    netdepot.com <- My current pick, I've heard they have good servers, low downtime, but they are overseas, is this something I should be concerned about?
    liquidweb.com <- Heard they had good solutions, but customer service is terrible.

    Can anyone give me some recommendations as to what kind of server specifications I should be looking into?

    Things such as:

    Ram
    Processors (Dual Cores, Quad Cores, AMD, Intel)
    Connection (10MBPS Unmetered, metered plan?)
    RAID Hard Drives ?

    Thanks to all who help.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    80
    Voxrox.com, Layeredtech, Steadfast, Alphared

  3. #3
    softlayer.com <- Initially I was sold on them, but I heard they experience frequent downtime, which is unacceptable

    liquidweb.com <- Heard they had good solutions, but customer service is terrible.
    I'm guessing you only read all the bad reviews about them which are not really that numerous, I've heard mostly good things from both, plus liquidweb's support has some pretty interesting guarantees such as the 2hour SLAs and 24/7 phone support.
    478east
    High Bandwidth Servers
    Custom Hosting Solutions

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by cristibighea View Post
    I'm guessing you only read all the bad reviews about them which are not really that numerous, I've heard mostly good things from both, plus liquidweb's support has some pretty interesting guarantees such as the 2hour SLAs and 24/7 phone support.
    I used liquidweb in the past. Support is not good. Their phone support 90% will tell you to open a ticket from my experience. There guarantees are interesting but they don't follow through.

    I called once for shoutcast to be installed and then the support said that don't install 3rd party script.

    Later on someone said in this forum that he gave great reviews to liquidweb and that they installed all this crap on this server so after I read that I called them again about another server.

    This time I was told if one of the tech's was not busy they'd get around to it but I need to open a ticket. After he said that I just moved everything to theplanet and left liquidweb.

    I used Steadfast and they are fine.

  5. #5
    You probably should have asked before you bought a server if they support third party installations, as not all of them do.
    478east
    High Bandwidth Servers
    Custom Hosting Solutions

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    California
    Posts
    20
    I use steadfast.net and they're always up... the few times my server does have issues I get support almost immediately (email responses within 5-10 minutes). So if up time is your main concern then you should consider Steadfast.net

  7. #7
    Thanks a lot for the recommendations.

    What kind of specifications should I look for which would provide me with a server that would run fast with hundreds of users on at once?

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    Philadelphia, PA
    Posts
    612
    Netdepot isn't overseas :p, they are located in the AtlantaNAP in Atlanta.

  9. #9
    You have not mentioned in you tread if you want the server to be managed to you will manage it yourself?

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    62
    Softlayer is very good, and I haven't noticed any downtime for 3 months.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by MG2K View Post
    Thanks a lot for the recommendations.

    What kind of specifications should I look for which would provide me with a server that would run fast with hundreds of users on at once?
    I would also highly recommend SteadFast Networks. We have servers with them for over 6+ months without any downtime. Also support tickets are always answered within 20 minutes(From our experience).

    You may want to consider using Quad Core CPUs, with 15K RPM SAS drives and RAID technology.

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