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  1. #1

    Do I need a dedicated sever?

    I hope Im in the right place for some advice.

    I run a rather busy vbulletin server soapchat and I'm looking at moving hosts.

    I have been advised so many different solutions that Im at a loss now of what I should be looking at or what questions I should ask.

    I was hoping a VPS would suffice as we are non profit and some have told me thats the case and others have stated I should have a dedicated server.

    We max at 90GB bandwidth each month. Disc usage is 3549.77

    What other other things will determine the best solution for me?

    Thanks for your time

  2. #2
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    There's no reason for you to get a dedi in my opinion.

    Even a budget VPS will suit your needs. Just make sure that the provider has a decent reputation by doing a search about them on google and WHT.
    Last edited by e-Sensibility; 11-19-2009 at 10:03 PM.
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by PamelaE View Post
    I hope Im in the right place for some advice.

    I run a rather busy vbulletin server soapchat and I'm looking at moving hosts.

    I have been advised so many different solutions that Im at a loss now of what I should be looking at or what questions I should ask.

    I was hoping a VPS would suffice as we are non profit and some have told me thats the case and others have stated I should have a dedicated server.

    We max at 90GB bandwidth each month. Disc usage is 3549.77

    What other other things will determine the best solution for me?

    Thanks for your time
    A VPS would suite you perfect. do you have any preference when it comes to Xen or OpenVZ?

    Cheers

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by PamelaE View Post
    I hope Im in the right place for some advice.

    I run a rather busy vbulletin server soapchat and I'm looking at moving hosts.

    I have been advised so many different solutions that Im at a loss now of what I should be looking at or what questions I should ask.

    I was hoping a VPS would suffice as we are non profit and some have told me thats the case and others have stated I should have a dedicated server.

    We max at 90GB bandwidth each month. Disc usage is 3549.77

    What other other things will determine the best solution for me?

    Thanks for your time
    I wouldn't recommend upgrading to a dedicated server just yet. Have a look around the VPS offers forum -- that will be easier on your wallet.

  5. #5
    Thank you. I have seen one I am interested in, actually from here but can't find a great deal about them.

  6. #6
    Hi!

    I just "started" with a dedicated server, it is a dual-atom, US$39/mo, 1GB RAM, 250GB DD, 2000GB transfer on 100Mbps port. It is pretty close to what a decent VPS costs, and you get *total control*.

    It is not the fastest system in the world, but this dual core runs something like an Athlon 64 2GHz (single core), more or less, except that, due that Atoms hasn't been in the market for long: you are sure you have new hardware.

    I hope this helps,

    Ildefonso Camargo

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    A nice Managed VPS would do great for you and your site.

  8. #8
    Ditto, a vps would suit your needs. However, since you are running Vbulletin, its going to be very MySQL intensive, so you'll need to make sure you have a vps with enough CPU, depending on the amount of traffic your site / forum gets. No need for a dedicated server just yet.
    Keith Mitchell,Dedicated & Virtual Server Engineer,Hosting.com
    Check out my Technical Blog - Keithdmitchell.com

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by kdmitchell View Post
    Ditto, a vps would suit your needs. However, since you are running Vbulletin, its going to be very MySQL intensive, so you'll need to make sure you have a vps with enough CPU, depending on the amount of traffic your site / forum gets. No need for a dedicated server just yet.
    To expand on this: if you purchase a VPS with cPanel, I'd make sure that the server had at least 512MB RAM. But I would feel better with 1GB.

  10. #10
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    What no-one else seems to have asked is - what are you currently hosting on? Is it shared hosting that your current host is saying isn't enough for your site?

    If it is, then the natural progresion is to go for a modest VPS (managed if you don't feel you can manage it yourself). Don't forget that memory and CPU share is easily upgradeable on Linux VPS's so if your site struggles, request more and its a simple job.
    Regards,
    Leigh

    Host High - reliable UK hosting

  11. #11
    VPS is diffrent to VPS and I suppose you need to go in the deep search
    IMO you do not need dedicated server at all. You may use FIND a HOST option on this forum to find out what subscribed web hosts can offer for you.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by SiberForum View Post
    VPS is diffrent to VPS and I suppose you need to go in the deep search
    I definitly agree with you. There's plenty of provider running VPS on just one server with poor disk performance and other that use clustered system with Optic Fiber Storage.

    I've seen many very popular websites a and ungry of resource running on VPS.

    I think you can just ask to provider to let you test the VPS so you cna compare the performance.
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  13. #13
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    If I was you I would go for a VPS first
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  14. #14
    A VPS is a very good solution to take your website - probably being hosted on a shared device until now - to the next level. However, you should consider that, if you don't have too much experience in administrating a server operating system, you need a managed vps so the most important security updates are done by the hosting provider. The security risks are similar to those you have on a dedicated machine.

    Moreover, what is an disadvantage of a vps, is the fact that you never know exactly how the hardware is shared amongst the other users, e.g. how the hosting provider oversubscribes things like CPU, RAM etc. - this is not always obvious!

    Thus, I'd like to suggest to you to use a dedicated server if you need a very reliable, stable system anytime, though it might cost a little bit more. If you're fine with a "middle-class", but cheap solution, a vps is the right choice for you.

    Have fun and success!
    Best regards from Germany
    Constantin

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by midnightsoftware View Post
    What no-one else seems to have asked is - what are you currently hosting on? Is it shared hosting that your current host is saying isn't enough for your site?

    If it is, then the natural progresion is to go for a modest VPS (managed if you don't feel you can manage it yourself). Don't forget that memory and CPU share is easily upgradeable on Linux VPS's so if your site struggles, request more and its a simple job.
    I assume he is currently on a shared server -- the original post stated that he hoped a VPS would suffice, but someone told him to get a dedicated server.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by PamelaE View Post
    I hope Im in the right place for some advice.

    I run a rather busy vbulletin server soapchat and I'm looking at moving hosts.

    I have been advised so many different solutions that Im at a loss now of what I should be looking at or what questions I should ask.

    I was hoping a VPS would suffice as we are non profit and some have told me thats the case and others have stated I should have a dedicated server.

    We max at 90GB bandwidth each month. Disc usage is 3549.77

    What other other things will determine the best solution for me?

    Thanks for your time
    If it were me, I would ask Vbulletin for their advice. I would also ask specialist Vbulletin hosting services, if you are not using one already.

    It seems to be that a noticeable proportion of posts about web server performance are related to Vbulletin forums.

    As I understand it, Vbulletin uses SQL databases to store its data. And it can also generate some long-running SQL transactions.

    SQL transactions can generate very heavy I/O loads, and also use whatever memory is available. Quite often, the more memory is available, the faster SQL transactions will run.

    As your forum grows:

    1) there will be more SQL queries per minute, because there are more users executing them
    2) some SQL queries will take longer to execute, because there is more data for the queries to process

    So I don't think anyone can answer the question for you. But I do think you may find that a VPS or dedicated server may run your forum *slower* than shared hosting does. That could happen if the shared hosting provider has a powerful SQL server, so SQL queries on shared hosting run much faster than on a VPS or low-cost dedicated server.

    I do think that if there are performance issues, it will be easier to identify the cause on a dedicated server than on a VPS.

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