Should I get Dedicated Hosting

21 replies
I run quite a few websites. One of them is really starting to get some good traffic (about 3-5k visits per day). But the main thing is I am running several cron jobs that are performing almost constantly making Facebook and Twitter API calls. Also, my MySQL database has a table that is approaching 100 million rows and is accessed possibly up to millions of times per day.

Should I get a dedicated server to run this to speed things up? My site is growing but I am starting to worry about how much it can scale with a shared host.

Would a dedicated server be a good option for me? I've never had one and don't know much about the benefits versus shared hosting and when you should move to it. But I am making quite a bit from my sites and am willing to fork over the roughly $150/month namecheap wants to charge me for it.

Any thoughts/advice/experience with this?

Thanks warriors!
#dedicated #hosting
  • Profile picture of the author bhnath
    Dedicated hosting would help your site perform much better as it is not using shared hosting.
    I found this: When Should I Move to a VPS or a Dedicated Server?
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    • Profile picture of the author mike719
      Originally Posted by bhnath View Post

      Dedicated hosting would help your site perform much better as it is not using shared hosting.
      I found this: When Should I Move to a VPS or a Dedicated Server?
      Good article, thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author sunray
      Originally Posted by bhnath View Post

      Dedicated hosting would help your site perform much better as it is not using shared hosting.
      I found this: When Should I Move to a VPS or a Dedicated Server?
      To be honest this article is nonsense. You need VPS or a dedicated server based on what are your website's needs, not how much money you earn online. If your host (or yourself) does regular backups, you are always safe. Even more, having VPS or dedicated partly managed or not managed at all exposes most marketers to huge risks since they simply do not have the required knowledge of how to run their own server.

      Shared hosting can handle huge amounts of traffic, provided that you have it all cached or static. With good hosts you can have up to a million visitors a month on shared plans. Of course, no scripts, just plain html (or cached and optimized) content then. You need VPS (or dedicated) if your site cannot use caching. Membership sites with logged in visitors, search based websites (dictionaries for example), forums - these need powerful hosting. Simple IM websites mostly don't.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Blades
    I'd say it's about that time to get a dedicated server
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    • Profile picture of the author radhika
      I personally prefer VPS rather than dedicated server. Why?

      1. VPS comes with tech support. Your host does all upgrades.
      2. Cheap compared to dedicated server.
      3. Same performance like dedicated server.
      4. Easy to move upscale plans.

      But remember with your traffic you need minimum of 2 GB RAM.

      .
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      • Profile picture of the author sonas
        With the daily site visits, api calls and mysql database records you outline to which I assume all are probably increasing daily, were it me I'd be more comfortable off shared hosting and on a dedicated server or even a VPS at this point.
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        • Profile picture of the author BeechHill
          Yes, you want to get at least a managed VPS. There are also managed dedicated server options available too, but obviously for cost reasons I think you could start with a high end VPS.
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  • Profile picture of the author MartinPlatt
    Do you have reason to believe that the server is starting to struggle? Are you seeing poor performance on your pages loading, when accessed concurrently?

    Is there a smarter way to do those twitter API calls? Do you really need to be that up to date? Could you cut them to once every ten minutes, or something like that?? Is that going to make a big difference to your visitors?

    If things are starting to noticeably slow down, or you add in more background processing then it might be time to look at a dedicated server, one that can grow with your requirements.

    I guess it also depends on who the host is, as to how bad it will get. Some would be fine, as they are careful with the number of domains per machine, whilst others are ridiculous...
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  • Profile picture of the author submitinme
    Originally Posted by mike719 View Post

    I run quite a few websites. One of them is really starting to get some good traffic (about 3-5k visits per day). But the main thing is I am running several cron jobs that are performing almost constantly making Facebook and Twitter API calls. Also, my MySQL database has a table that is approaching 100 million rows and is accessed possibly up to millions of times per day.

    Should I get a dedicated server to run this to speed things up? My site is growing but I am starting to worry about how much it can scale with a shared host.

    Would a dedicated server be a good option for me? I've never had one and don't know much about the benefits versus shared hosting and when you should move to it. But I am making quite a bit from my sites and am willing to fork over the roughly $150/month namecheap wants to charge me for it.

    Any thoughts/advice/experience with this?

    Thanks warriors!
    If your current hosting sever performs slow then you can move to the dedicated server it will works fine. In the mean time you may concentrate on the api in your website check the available option to reduce the process but not compromising the speed.
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  • Profile picture of the author StephenR
    Nice post.Thanks for the share.Dedicated hosting can be the best option for the website hosting purpose.
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    • Profile picture of the author sunray
      Originally Posted by StephenR View Post

      Nice post.Thanks for the share.Dedicated hosting can be the best option for the website hosting purpose.
      So, why not buy your OWN server and server software? Then you can find a colocation service near by where you would pay around $300 a month just for bandwidth and electricity. That's even more powerful way to spend money. You'd also learn an awful lot about servers and their management.
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  • Profile picture of the author howtogurus
    I have used a VPS for years with no issues. The real questions are: is your site performing poorly? If not, why change. If it is then upgrading for more space/bandwidth is usually a good idea. Make sure you get something where the hosting provider handles all upgrades/maintenance.
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  • Profile picture of the author jade69
    You can try a VPS at first, it's cheaper and then you can more to a dedicated server.

    But if you can afford it, you can also try cloud hosting.
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    • Profile picture of the author joehobot
      I ran sites with 1.5 mil visitors a month on $60-$80 on cloud linux servers without any problem. I do see people paying $200+ for dedicated servers but if you have knowledge on linux and how to set webserver up with mysql I don't see a benefit of having managed dedicated server vs your own full blown server... sure you can get hacked but then again.. if u have knowledge on how to secure stuff I recommend going cloud...
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  • Profile picture of the author run
    You only have issue with the DB performances; it's better to use managed VPS at this fraction of cost. You will get managed high end VPS with more resources and more performances than Dedicated Server. SSD for DB is the best choice, and of course will perform with no problem!

    I don't think it is good to choose domain registrar as hosting provider.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mogly
    Yes you should mate.

    Shaving 1 second off your pageload time has been proven to increase conversion rates like 7%.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Monciardini
      I like Dedicated because it gives you room to grow. Even with a small website, you will see an increase in loading and response time. This has been my experience.
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  • Profile picture of the author winagain
    By what you are saying, it is pretty clear that you shouldn't depend on a shared hosting for your sites.
    If you are worried about the costs of a dedicated server, get a VPS first (liquidweb has the best support ever! you can't go wrong with them).
    That way you can test how if you really need to upgrade to a dedicated server or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author AlwaysAwa
    Just a suggestion why not go for cloud server? It said to a good solution from what I read.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
    For a lot of SQL queries you should be looking at something with at least RAID 10 with a lot of spindles. You don't necessarily need a physical server. Most people think the term "dedicated" means more power. This simply isn't always the case despite what people will tell you because they heard someone else say it.

    I'd look at a VPS that's on a node with at least RAID 10, maybe SAS/SSD drives & a proc of something along the lines of an E3-1270.

    For $150, I'd be willing to bet that server is using a "i" series processor like an i3/i5 or something. That's a desktop processor, not server grade.

    Have you optimized SQL yet? Are you using any caching? What type of content is being served?

    For a quality, "real" server, you're looking at at least $200/mo. Now, you need to add management, licensing, backups etc etc on top of that price.

    We've found better performance, disaster recovery/portability & reliability of using virtual machines vs running directly on the hardware. In fact, ALL of our shared & reseller hosting is run on virtual servers with at least 24GB RAM on the host node.

    The term "cloud", a lot of times is just for marketing. Each company has their own definition of what a "cloud" is. Some will have a VPS and call it cloud because it's virtualized. A true cloud would utilize less powered nodes clustered together for high availability. Because the nodes a bit smaller in resources than the typical dedicated server, you may find that the performance is sub-par. This would also include the ability to be self healing should one node go down. You have 2 types of storage - local & SAN storage. Local storage will however in most cases provide faster r/w times.

    It honestly depends on what type of content is being served before I could give you a better idea on what solution you'd require.
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