dedicated or VPS?

[barcodeunit]

Ok here's the deal. I have been looking around for a week now, and i don't know even know what i'm looking for.

I started my site about 3 months ago... we are using 1and1 shared hosting.. We are currently at 13K UV daily and using about 40-50GB of bandwidth per day. I need to get out of shared hosting because during peak hours, my php scripts are crashing and it returns too many error messages. Besides, it could be any minute that 1and1 may pull the plug on us...

My Questions :

1) At my growth rate, do you guys recommend VPS hosting? Or should i jump right to dedicated?

2) I have no idea how to manage a server, so i'm looking for something managed. Also, i am looking for something over 2000GB of bandwidth that most of these people offer. What is the best deal out there?

3) I looked at nethostspace.com, and they got some nice plans with unmetered.. I know there is no such thing as "unmetered" bandwidth, but they specifically claim they will not charge for any overrages. But they have so many hardware options. Do i need the fancy power of a Dual Xeon or AMD Opteron? Or would a simple Pentium 4 Processor work for me?

If the people who have experience with getting over 20K uniques and use a dedicated or VPS hosting can respond to this and tell me who they host with and give me a ballpark figure on how much they pay, that would be really great. Thanks!

[Happy]

Barcode,

Congrats on reaching 13K. I think it's a no brainer to go with a dedicated server. From what I'm guessing your taking a bulk of those hits on your server. You **might** be able to get away with a VPS if your hosting your images on Photobucket perhaps (Let me know if you need an intro).

Otherwise I'd recommend a dedicated server. You'll be good with a mid-range server. I'd recommend Surpass hosting since you mentioned you know nothing about servers. Also, if your using Cpanel it's pretty easy to port a website. If you need help I can help.

Hope this helps.
-Happy

Disclaimer: I do not work with Surpass or Photobucket but have good friends there. :)

[MaxS]

Dedicated, without a doubt...

[rob]

1) At my growth rate, do you guys recommend VPS hosting? Or should i jump right to dedicated?

2) I have no idea how to manage a server, so i'm looking for something managed. Also, i am looking for something over 2000GB of bandwidth that most of these people offer. What is the best deal out there?

3) I looked at nethostspace.com, and they got some nice plans with unmetered.. I know there is no such thing as "unmetered" bandwidth, but they specifically claim they will not charge for any overrages. But they have so many hardware options. Do i need the fancy power of a Dual Xeon or AMD Opteron? Or would a simple Pentium 4 Processor work for me?

We talked a little bit about this in PM, but I'll give you some more advice... :)

1) I'd go straight to a dedicated server - a VPS is usually limited in RAM and I would imagine if you have a major/busy website, you'll be using quite a bit of resources as well. Since a VPS is basically a dedicated server split into 4 or so "parts", you'll be "sharing" it with other clients as well which means the server could be prone to issues relating to hard drives and other things...

2) People here will try to tell you that it's "easy" to manage your server and a managed one is not required and give you a link to a tutorial at GoDaddy or something, but those usually just tell you how to use whatever control panel (if any) your server comes with, such as cPanel. These "control panels" aren't a substitute for server administration, so unless you know what you're doing, I'd still go with managed hosting. If it was so "easy", companies wouldn't pay $50,000+/year for system administrators and there wouldn't be any server management companies around :)

As far as bandwidth goes - many companies you see offering 2000GB will most likely let you purchase additional bandwidth as well for extra money. We host our images ourselves instead of using a third party like Photobucket, because we don't feel comfortable knowing images that make up 99% of our website are hosted somewhere where they can be deleted at anytime or suspend our account. Not to mention I don't think it's easy to make backups with Photobucket (we backup our server files every 4 hours automatically).

If you send me a PM with your price range and how much you want to pay, I'll get you some more specific recommendations on companies :) Make sure to check out www.webhostingtalk.com as well.

Hope this helps - we decided to go with a dedicated right off the bat so we don't have to worry about scaling in the future. We're already seeing huge growth, so it's worth it.

Rob

[Greg-J]

Although we use dedicated servers ourselves, I recommend giving mediatemple a go with their grid servers. The model is absolutely the future of hosting, it just hasn't caught on mainstream yet.

[barcodeunit]

Thanks for the advice guys,

Rob advised that i should go with wiredtree... I went to their site and they have reasonable prices, and they have a $150.00 upgrade if you want unmetered bandwidth. Futhermore, they are located in the Chicagoland area, which is where i am located. :)

Anyone here use Wiredtree? How is there service?

Thanks!

[MyspaceGeeks]

Dedictaed for sure, theplanet.com :)

[minnseoelite]

If you have the money I would recommend to anyone to use a dedicated server

[minnseoelite]

Although we use dedicated servers ourselves, I recommend giving mediatemple a go with their grid servers. The model is absolutely the future of hosting, it just hasn't caught on mainstream yet.

Wow they seem like they are onto something for sure. I might have to switch my 5 smaller sites to them once they grow a little more

[NYCBORN]

Although we use dedicated servers ourselves, I recommend giving mediatemple a go with their grid servers. The model is absolutely the future of hosting, it just hasn't caught on mainstream yet.

I was going to open an account today and saw on their page that activation was frozen until Wednesday. Grid servers rock.

[Kasami2k4]

So is dedicated better?

[PGZ]

So is dedicated better?

Yeah...................

[ladyborg]

Although we use dedicated servers ourselves, I recommend giving mediatemple a go with their grid servers. The model is absolutely the future of hosting, it just hasn't caught on mainstream yet.


I think I'm going to try them out. It sounds interesting.

[agoldfinger]

I went for a dedicated server, installed linux on my PC, bought a book, learnt all the basics and a little bit optimization stuff, and saved on a managed account.

Today it doesn't take any of my time to maintain the server, backing up and everything is done on auto-pilot. Software updates are easy to do with installers like 'yum' and you don't need them that often at all.

If you have the time to do so - you can save too and learn some interesting stuff while doing so.

[webtracker]

Dedicated!

I was in your exact predicament a few months ago. I went the VPS route and a few weeks later outgrew THAT server and had to migrate everything (pain in the a**) over to a dedicated server. Save time now and go straight to dedicated with assisted support at least for a few months. You'll be able to call them whenever you have a question and will end up learning quite a bit.

Good luck!

[myspacering-net]

with all that traffic you need a ded. server

[steveAR]

dedi for sure.