To the biggies out here

[idzone]

Hi all,

This question is to the real traffic pullers in here. What hosting solutions have you adopted for your website?

A dedicated server or more than 1?
Or a load balanced pair?
or an unmetered server?

1 server won't give you that reliability of 100% uptime. So what do you do?

Thanks

[Ted Hat]

Thats like asking I just inherited 10 millions dollars..what swiss bank account should I put it in? Lol I wish I had that problem.

[Fishfinger]

One unmetered biggie with IP failover functions and a back up server configured for IP failover.


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[PGZ]

I run all mine on 3 servers as of now. If one fails the sites are also on the other 2 in case I will have a long downtime. Hasnt never happened but if it ever does Im ready for it if it would.

[rob]

Unmetered servers still have limits..

[Fishfinger]

Unmetered servers still have limits..

Who said they didn't?

[fryman]

I have a server with 8 gigs of ram and 3 tb of bandwidth

[rob]

Who said they didn't?
Why put 'dedicated server' and 'unmetered server' into two categories then? An unmetered server is a dedicated server.

[dzerv]

I have asked some companies for the unmetered solutions that they provide..
In most cases they said that in a 100 port you can tranfer 5-8tb/month.... until they start to complain for the traffic...

[Fishfinger]

Why put 'dedicated server' and 'unmetered server' into two categories then? An unmetered server is a dedicated server.

An unmetered servers limit is dictated by your hardware/connexion not set the host.

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[idzone]

Thank you all for your inputs.

A)
How important would be RAM in this case? Should one increase RAM in proportion to increase in traffic? I mean, when does one know, it is time to increase RAM?

B)
PGZ - How have you configured the DNS, so that in case your 1st server goes down, the second comes up immediately?

C)
Apart from a load-balanced pair, how do you balance the load? I mean can you have 3-4 servers running simultaneously serving the same site? It is possible else big sites won't work. I wish to know how the traffic is diverted to each server.

Thanks again

[PGZ]

Thank you all for your inputs.

A)
How important would be RAM in this case? Should one increase RAM in proportion to increase in traffic? I mean, when does one know, it is time to increase RAM?

Once your server starts to slow cause of traffic you need to get more RAM in there

B)
PGZ - How have you configured the DNS, so that in case your 1st server goes down, the second comes up immediately?

My DNS is just the same as yours. Even if a server goes down it still takes time for the DNS to resolve to new server. Once its known that the server has major issues the DNS is changed to the new server if its known it will take days to get back up. There are more complex ways of doing this but I choose to be involved with decisions like this and I pull the switch and not a machine.

C)
Apart from a load-balanced pair, how do you balance the load? I mean can you have 3-4 servers running simultaneously serving the same site? It is possible else big sites won't work. I wish to know how the traffic is diverted to each server.

Some load balancing just puts different parts of the site on different servers thus causing less of a load on one server. Some load balancing actually switches back and forth between 2 different servers that maintain the exact same site. Problem with that is you have to update both sites when doing anything and not just one. There are other examples but the ones I described above are the most common in my opinion.

Thanks again


I hope what I said above helps alittle bit.

[idzone]

Thank you for your time and patience. I appreciate your detailed response. PGZ - I will PM you in case I need any more info. Thanks again