A while ago, I had a Drupal install with a lot of authenticated concurrent users (sometimes 30+, which was a big drain) and getting about 2 million pageviews a month. I did a fairly significant server upgrade via Liquidweb (which have offered great service btw). Server details are below:
» Processor: Intel Q6600 QUAD CORE
» Memory: 2GB DDR SDRAM
» Hd1: 250GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
» Hd2: 120GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
» RemoteBackup: No Remote Backup Needed
» OS: Linux - CentOS 5 (+32 Bit)
» ControlPanel: CPanel / Web Host Manager (+ServerSecure)
(+Fantastico/XController)
» SetupFee: $0 Setup Fee
» Monthly Fee: $189 /mon
The web sites I'm running now are only getting about 300k pageviews a month and don't have nearly as many authenticated concurrent users. I want to switch to a more economical solution.
I don't want to jump to something that is just going to slow down the sites though. Any advice on the best hosting package for my needs? Thanks.
Comments
You could go with a cloud
You could go with a cloud solution which would allow you scale up or down as need. I would recommend Softlayer.
And the VPS solution from Hostgator is also pretty nice.
Both of them should be cheaper than Liquidweb with no problem in performance, reliability and customer support.
Thanks Seanray for the
Thanks Seanray for the response. I ended up talking with Liquidweb about its VPS offerings. They have one option with auto-migration so I'll be able to move up and down in server strength as needed. For future projects, I'm going to check out Softlayer as well.
Linode would fit your needs
Linode would fit your needs as well I think.
Looks like you know about Linux administration, so it would be perfect. I've found them reliable, fast and I haven't experienced any downtime. The support forum is very helpful as well. And there are tons of guides if you want to figure something out. I never did any real Linux administration and I'm pretty satisfied so far. Mine is a Linode 1024, but I don't have any authenticated users so maybe you'd have to go a bit higher..
Linode is also a good option.
Linode is also a good option. The main different between Linode and Liquidweb might be Linode is unmanaged, and Liquidweb offer managed service for their web hosts.
They technically don't
They technically don't provide any superior support as they advertise as only really provide support for cpanel and the server which is only basic operations. Even unmanaged provider provide some sort of support for cpanel and servers or vps. Now, you need to have cpanel with your vps or Liquidweb officially states they do not provide any support so that will cause a bit of an overhead.
Also if you call and ask if they provide third party scripts or whatever usually they will say no but sometimes if you will hear something else. I had a mysql problem that they would not provide support for and it turned out to be a cpanel upgrade problem that they performed from my request. Luckily I was at that time heavily into working on servers so I was able to recover pretty quickly but for someone else it probably end up having long term problems.
I used Liquidweb for several years, gone through downtimes when there whole datacenter had a power loss and there UPS backups failed so which is the reason I left as they stated at that time on their site and over the phone that they do weekly testings of there backup power generators but after that I hardly believed their weekly checkup was planned by anyone that could actually tell beyond the green or red light blinking if there is something wrong.
They do though have a very cherry customer service which I will say has been the most cheerful compared to theplanet, softlayer, hostgator, and even Level3 ( I only used dedicated so can't comment on vps).
Liquidweb is probably fine for you as well as any other popular hosting company but I thought I should just inform you about what to expect out of support.
I will tell you I am currently on softlayer's network and it's been ok but there support is pretty good but you have to pay $3 bucks but they will takes days if needed to solve a problem and it's only 3 bucks.
To close the loop on this for
To close the loop on this for anybody curious in the future, Liquidweb's smart servers have been doing the trick so far. Relatively painless to get more or less power (at more or less cost of course) as my projects scale up or down. Very solid customer service as usual through these guys.
Happy Hosting would help. Ask
Happy Hosting would help. Ask for customized and optimized solution. That will provide better stability.
With a bunch of authenticated
With a bunch of authenticated users, you will want plenty of memory with a good memcache setup. For a very busy site, a cloud solution with separate servers for web, database, memcache, search, etc, would be a good setup.