| Posted by stanj, 02-21-2008, 10:41 AM | | I have a small ecommerce business with a couple domains running on a shared reseller account using Windows on one server and FreeBSD on the other. It has been running for a few years but the performance, up time and response time has gone steadily downhill.
I need to host our company mail server, MySQL 5.xx, PHP 5.xx and the web server plus a good Control Panel (using H-sphere now and like it) that is not compromised by other accounts in a shared environment.
All I want is a fast response to modest SQL queries and currently, half the time during parts of the day, queries time out, other times the same simple queries against a 8mb database are normal. Once a day our Windows server is rebooted and unavailable for a period by the host techs. one site returns "Service Unavailable" for as long as it takes for me to contact the techs who say the "Application pool needs to be reset." This can be hours during our busiest sales time of day.
The site gets about 500-1000 unique visitors a day, mostly browsing but 15-20 orders a day through the shopping cart.
Our email gets blocked regularly by Spamhaus on the current shared host. We use one dedicated IP for the cart(for SSL) and that one never gets blocked.
So my assumption is a dedicated server, VPS or dedicated box with management of everything but the web sites.
I know it is overkill for such a small resource drain but I need reliability and fast response primarily, not a bargain price, just a good value.
Which type of serve do you suggest? The customer base is primarily in the US, it is very seasonal peaking early spring through mid summer(booking our shore excursions for cruise ship passengers)so having it housed in the US would be preferred. Our main office is in the Baltic region and our place of incorporation is Florida.
Any ball park estimate of what I should budget. We prefer to pay a year in advance so billing is not needed when we are busy with our booking season. Our current host is a bargain and has lots of features, I just wish it was not degrading so much as it gets too big and too heavily loaded boxes.
Thanks
Stan
St Petersburg Russia
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| Posted by gate2vn, 02-21-2008, 11:50 AM | | If you are happy with H-Sphere, why not try with another H-Sphere vendor. Cartikahosting runs a large H-Sphere cluster system in Colo4Dallas. You can check them out
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| Posted by DanL, 02-21-2008, 09:24 PM | | Hi Stanj
You have of course a lot of options. Ask your current hosting provider for a clean dedicated IP would be one option to help with part of things but the resources they have available is what they have. Considering you amounts of traffic, most shared setups should work fine.
Considering the problems you have had, I would suggest a Managed VPS account. VPS could be the best solution for your business since you can get resources allocated for you. Be sure you know the resources you are being promised when selecting one. Considering you sound like a busy person be sure you look for a managed VPS. Some might make it sound simple to manage a server and it can be for some people, VPS is managed like a dedicated server, so it can be well worth a few extra dollars to have someone else manage it for you so you can spend your time growing your business. At least using a VPS you can upgrade easy when you need more resources instead of be left to fight with the masses for resources.
And of course you could move to a fully Managed Dedicated server.
Good Luck
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| Posted by stanj, 02-22-2008, 04:55 AM | | Thank you for the responses.
I checked out Cartika and looked for reviews; all seemed to be positive.
The problem with my curent host is every server is running on the ragged edge of cpu and disk space and i/o %, each of their machines in their gigantic H-Sphere cluster is overloaded. Theoretically, a shared environment ought to be enough but in practice I find theory and practice are far apart because it does not account for the bad behavior of some of the scripts on other sites the shared servers. The only reason I think I need more dedicated services is because my site's performance is determined by the worst offenders of resources and email that compete for resources on the same machine. I have no idea of how many thousands of accounts are on each of the servers where I am but whatever the total is, it is too many for reliable service when CPU usage average 99.2% and diskspace is averaging 96% on hundreds of servers in the cluster according to Nagios,I can guess where the problem is. I like the idea of a VPS but it will have to be managed because, although I code, my primary tasks are running the business and staff, and I am not an expert in OS, Apache, email or MySQL configuration and maintenance. I have a test server in the office I use for development and it has been up 100% for 2 years and never a problem.
Thanks for the suggestions
Stan
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| Posted by cartika-andrew, 02-23-2008, 06:43 PM | | Hello Stan,
the problems you have outlined are very typical in the shared hosting market. However, they do not need to exist and do not tend to exist in properly maintained shared environments. Allocating ANY environment to a point where CPU and Disk is almost 100% utilized will always result in problems. Many companies (including us), practice the excess capacity model - where rather then selling every ounce of excess capacity, then trying to hard limit resource usages on a per account basis - companies will allow users to utilize those excess resources. Whether those resources are required to handle a temporary large burst in traffic, or whether those excess resources are required for a script that has been compromised or run amock is irrelavent - the key point to consider is that by having excess capacity in an environment, the environment becomes resilient to various situations. For example, if a script gets compromised, the CPU baseline may go from 50% to 80% - but, the environment remains stable. Technicians have time to identify and resolve the problem and all the while, those sharing that environment are blissfully ignorant of the fact that there was even an issue.
Having said all of this, if your site generates enough revenue and you are even more risk adverse, you can certainly begin to look at dedicated solutions. But, I am not sure this is needed quite yet with your requirements - and something tells me you would not even consider a dedicated or a VPS at this point if you had reliable, shared services.
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| Posted by ZeroPing, 02-24-2008, 04:17 PM | | Having spent a long time on these forums reading and learning from the opinions of others, its time to help out a bit.
Looking at your situation, it does not seem to be an issue with the -kind- of hosting you have. Seems definitely to be an issue with the host in question. We handle atleast the load you do, via shared hosting, and have no issues.
However, since we are wrestling with the same question ourselves - how do we handle the situation once resources become an issue - I would not give you a pat answer.
My advice would simply be, get a very good host (on the lines of ones that Andrew describes above). Start off with shared hosting...and if that starts giving you issues, then move to managed/VPS - quality managed hosting seems to me less likely to be overstretched resource-wise - again choose a top class host here.
If you have further stats on your requirements load wise, feel free to post so we can take a look.
PS: We have no issues with mysql queries (throughout the day, with a 100 user load at any given time, intermittent polling); no issues with spam either, a few mail failures, but not too many; no dedicated IP.
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