When should I upgrade to Amazon S3 or dedicated server?

13 years ago

My opinion: Get a dedicated server as soon as you can afford it.

The traffic that you are getting is not the problem - the problem is you are selling stuff and getting help from affiliates. In a shared environment the server can easily be down several times a day.

Now, this can happen with a dedicated server too but with your traffic levels it is very unlikely. $50 to $150 per month for a dedicated box are well invested.

Just imagine: This one super affiliate checks out your offer and ... the server is down because your neighbor decided to run his video ripper...

HP

PS:
I am not in the hosting business. I do not collect $200...

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Gregg

13 years ago

Originally Posted by hpgoodboy

My opinion: Get a dedicated server as soon as you can afford it.

The traffic that you are getting is not the problem - the problem is you are selling stuff and getting help from affiliates. In a shared environment the server can easily be down several times a day.

Now, this can happen with a dedicated server too but with your traffic levels it is very unlikely. $50 to $150 per month for a dedicated box are well invested.

Just imagine: This one super affiliate checks out your offer and ... the server is down because your neighbor decided to run his video ripper...

HP

PS:
I am not in the hosting business. I do not collect $200...

Move to Amazon S3. I will cost you a couple bucks per month and is much more dependable.

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KabanaSoft 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Gregg

Move to Amazon S3. I will cost you a couple bucks per month and is much more dependable.

I second Amazon S3...its easy, cheap, and dependable...took me < 5 minutes to have my uploaded files public
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- bretski 13 years ago
  
  I just created an account and am using S3 and it's amazing! A lot more simple than I thought it would be. 140 Mbs of video uploaded and the setup and upload only took about 20 minutes or so. Sure a whole lot simpler than getting another hosting account and much less expensive.
  
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  TheWebGuy 13 years ago
  
  Thanks a lot for the responses you guys. I really appreciate it.
  
  But excuse my ignorance for a second and let me ask...why should I upload my video to an Amazon S3 account?
  
  My shared bluehost hosting account can host unlimited file sizes they say? And since I'm already paying for this, why should I pay to host my video (or anything else) elsewhere?
  
  Will it make my site load faster if bluehost has to load my sales page and Amazon s3 loads my video? Or is there other reasons too?
  
  Thanks so much!
  
  p.s. should I host anything else at amazon s3 (headers, pictures on my sales page)?
  
  Thanks
  
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JudeS

13 years ago

EC2 is awesome from the point of scalability and S3 can be effective if cached well. Beware bandwidth pricing goes through the roof as your traffic increases and there is pay per request as well- a sure drainer if caching is not deployed.

2000 pageviews per day can easily be handled from a Virtual Private Server/ Dedicated Server 'The Planet' used to have awesome deals on 'The Marketplace' wonder if those are still offered post acquisition.

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anthony2

13 years ago

I agree with moving your video to amazon s3.

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Sam England 13 years ago

I have 4 servers...3 shared and 1 dedicated...

None of them can handle the traffic that Amazons3 does for me...

Seriously worth the few bucks that they charge you...

Amazons3 ROCKS...
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Ben_R

13 years ago

i have 3 servers too

hostgator just take your site offline when you have too much server load - which is v bad - i get 1000 uniques a day which isnt much at all really - vps is also an option - virtual private host - $40 a month - amazon3 sounds very good amazon are an extremely trustworthy company

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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

Thanks again guys,

But I'm still not sure why I'd pay Amazon to host my video when I'm already paying Bluehost to host unlimited files for me?

Is it for speed? Does it take bluehost longer to load everything if it has to load my video and also my sales page? ...so is that why it's better to get Amazon to load the video and bluehost to load my sales page?

Or another reason?

I'm still a little confused. Thanks a lot.

Thanks
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bretski

13 years ago

Has Bluehost throttled you at all? You can check this out in your cpanel and view how often and for how long they've throttled you.

Yes, Bluehost says unlimited bandwidth and unlimited everything but there are clauses. I've had my account shut down twice at about 3 or 4 AM because of one site I have on my account. They didn't just shut down the one site, they took my entire account down... about 20 domains.

I'm not faulting them. The site in question gets a lot of traffic and is sql intensive. Just saying, that if you're starting to get limited it might be wise to explore options before you wake up one Sunday morning at 11 to find out that everything has been down for 8 hours.

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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

Originally Posted by bretski

Has Bluehost throttled you at all? You can check this out in your cpanel and view how often and for how long they've throttled you.

Yes, Bluehost says unlimited bandwidth and unlimited everything but there are clauses. I've had my account shut down twice at about 3 or 4 AM because of one site I have on my account. They didn't just shut down the one site, they took my entire account down... about 20 domains.

I'm not faulting them. The site in question gets a lot of traffic and is sql intensive. Just saying, that if you're starting to get limited it might be wise to explore options before you wake up one Sunday morning at 11 to find out that everything has been down for 8 hours.

Thanks for this. Very helpful. However, how do I check in my cpanel if I've been throttled? thanks

Thanks
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bretski 13 years ago

Originally Posted by TheWebGuy

Thanks for this. Very helpful. However, how do I check in my cpanel if I've been throttled? thanks

If you have a Bluehost account, in your cpanel in the section that says "Logs" there is a yellow icon that looks like a stack of gold coins or something that says "Throttling". It will show you how many seconds you have been throttled over the past 24 hours. From there you can change the report to show you by the minute and also 15 minute intervals.

Hope this helps!
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luckyshah290

13 years ago

dedicated is better ...if you wanna go to handle maximum traffic in a day

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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

I just learned how to check the logs and in the past 24 hours I've been throttled about 900 seconds!

What should I do?

Thanks
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bretski

13 years ago

If you have a lot of Wordpress blogs you can try installing a caching plugin which will reduce the number of sql queries and cpu usage. Does the time match up with when you were doing things with your sites or anything like that?

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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

Originally Posted by bretski

If you have a lot of Wordpress blogs you can try installing a caching plugin which will reduce the number of sql queries and cpu usage. Does the time match up with when you were doing things with your sites or anything like that?

Ya I am using a wordpress blog (with the optimizepress theme) ...and I am using WP Super Cache plugin as well as WP Minify

Thanks

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TheWebGuy 13 years ago

The guys at bluehost said it has something to do with something running on my account and I will need to find out what that is and turn it off (they also said it likely doesn't have to do with my visitor amounts)...

So basically they couldn't really help with anything...

So basically I'm guessing this has to do with my Clickbank product (b/c it gets the most traffic of all my websites). This site is an addon account with bluehost and it's basically a few sales pages (with video) and membership pages.

So do you think the file they are saying is problematic is the video (since that's the biggest file)?

Also, I have lots of other "dormant" files that aren't being used. Other test sales videos, pages, files, etc that are not used anymore so would these affect this and should I delete them? Or do these not really matter since nobody sees them and they basically just sit in my hosting account (or should I go through and delete all unused videos, pictures, pages, etc)?

Thanks a lot for any help you can provide. I really appreciate it.
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~kev~

13 years ago

Static content = AS3

Dynamic content = dedicated server

If your running a dynamic (lots of updates) database driver content management system, go with a decicated server.

If you do go with a dedicated server for your databases, you can use AS3 for file and image storage.

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bretski

13 years ago

Originally Posted by ~kev~

Static content = AS3

Dynamic content = dedicated server

If your running a dynamic (lots of updates) database driver content management system, go with a decicated server.

If you do go with a dedicated server for your databases, you can use AS3 for file and image storage.

I was thinking the same thing, Kev... if he has an html site with a lot of heavy graphics he could store the graphics on S3, right? Or if his product had downloadable vidoes or streaming videos. That might help.

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PluginGuy

13 years ago

As per previous advice - get your video onto S3 (preferably Cloudfront).

You might also consider using something like HDDN where you pay a fixed monthly fee.

For the rest of your site, get W3 Total Cache installed - that should speed things up quite a lot.

You can check the before and after speed via the speed test tool at iwebtools (of just google "website speed test" to find one.

One final option is to consider wordpress optimised hosting. I shifted to wphost dot co a few months ago when load times on my site at bluehost got unacceptable.

You don't necessarily need a dedicated server - they put you on servers with at most 3 or 4 other sites with complementary loads. The configuration is set up for high speed wordpress performance.

After I switched my site load time wend down from 2-3s to <0.5s

Ian

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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

Originally Posted by PluginGuy

As per previous advice - get your video onto S3 (preferably Cloudfront).

You might also consider using something like HDDN where you pay a fixed monthly fee.

For the rest of your site, get W3 Total Cache installed - that should speed things up quite a lot.

You can check the before and after speed via the speed test tool at iwebtools (of just google "website speed test" to find one.

One final option is to consider wordpress optimised hosting. I shifted to wphost dot co a few months ago when load times on my site at bluehost got unacceptable.

You don't necessarily need a dedicated server - they put you on servers with at most 3 or 4 other sites with complementary loads. The configuration is set up for high speed wordpress performance.

After I switched my site load time wend down from 2-3s to <0.5s

Ian

Thanks a lot Ian, Great advice. Should I disable Wp super cache or wp minify if I use w3 total cache?

Also, what's the difference between Amazon Cloudfront and Amazon S3? it appears as though Cloudfront is a little cheaper (not totally sure though)...

Thanks

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bretski 13 years ago

PluginGuy sounds pretty spot on
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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

Ok thanks for the help guys. I really appreciate this...

So I'm assuming I should only use one caching plugin. So if I switch to w3 total cache should I disable wp super cache (or wp minify)?

And why would I choose amazon cloudfront over amazon s3? I don't really know the difference (and it appears cloudfront is cheaper)? Any advice?

Thank you very much!

Thanks
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PluginGuy

13 years ago

Yes - only one caching plugin. WP Super Cache used to be the way to go. I'd say W3 Total Cache is a better option now. They've got some industrial strength stuff coming out soon i hear too.

Cloudfront just means that S3 serves your files from local servers - so it makes it faster. It means you can't do fancy stuff like buffering on load (before they press play) though. But I;d go for it.

Ian

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TheWebGuy

13 years ago

Originally Posted by PluginGuy

Yes - only one caching plugin. WP Super Cache used to be the way to go. I'd say W3 Total Cache is a better option now. They've got some industrial strength stuff coming out soon i hear too.

Cloudfront just means that S3 serves your files from local servers - so it makes it faster. It means you can't do fancy stuff like buffering on load (before they press play) though. But I;d go for it.

Ian

Thanks again Ian (and everyone else).

I installed w3 total cache and noticed that the only option enabled is the page cache.

Everything else seems to be disabled by default so should I enable these aspects of the plugin too:

minify, database cache, object cache, varnish cache purging, browser cache?

thank you so much. Your help is very appreciated.

Thanks

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DireStraits

13 years ago

Dedicated servers, if unmanaged (self-managed), require ongoing software and kernel/OS updates, security hardening and auditing, etc, if they're to run smoothly and reliably.

And professional server management doesn't come cheap. So unless you want a lot of hassle and expense, I'd have to vote wholeheartedly in favour of Amazon.

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rickfrazier1

13 years ago

I'd also vote for using Amazon S3. It is a great solution for things that you keep public. However, once you start using Amazon S3 to host your product files, you want to make sure you are using it in a manner that doesn't reveal the files to casual downloaders...

You work hard enough to get the sales, you shouldn't give the product away without intending to. Sales webinars, videos and other files are great to have available to all, but it's a different story when it comes to things you charge for.

As it turns out, I have a WSO that specifically deals with protecting your files from the bad guys, both on your own server or on cloud servers like Amazon S3. It's pretty inexpensive to buy, and if it gets you one more sale, it is more than worth it.

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Gregg

13 years ago

To be open… when I first signed up to Amazon S3 (because I saw all the big guys streaming video from there) it was way over my head so I found out that a lot of them used eZs3.com so I signed up for that. They pretty much make uploading, creating video players, and protecting content easy and it is $20 per month.

Here is the link if you need it (no affiliate link): eZs3.com - Making Media Easy by Unleashing the Power of Amazon S3 Hosting

Someone else might be able to show you how to use Flowplayer or something else but this just made it easy for me.

Thanks

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When should I upgrade to Amazon S3 or dedicated server?

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