By avocado on

Hello,

My company is redesigning a client's site and will be moving them to Drupal. The site currently gets up to 3,000 page views a day, and we anticipate that the new site will get closer to 5,000. Can shared hosting handle this with a little bit of room to grow, or should we plan on putting them on a VPS?

Thanks!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

themegarden.org’s picture

themegarden.org commented

There is no simple answer to your question.
It depends on installed modules, setup and another things.
Take look at Drupal Hosting Article.

If you need guaranteed performances and resources, consider VPS.
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Drupal Theme Garden

www.eukhost.com’s picture

www.eukhost.com commented

A large hosting account may be able to handle your website, however I would recommend you to look for a hosting company which will allow you to upgrade at any point of time without any hassles.

avocado’s picture

avocado commented

Thank you. I know the answer isn't simple, but isn't there somewhere to start? That hosting article is great, but doesn't give any information on *how* to estimate what resources you'll need.

bryansd’s picture

bryansd commented

It's been my experience that if you go through shared hosting with the kind of traffic you're looking at, you need to be sure that a "localhost" database is being offered. In other words, a lot of Drupal users seem to have problems with shared hosting when the database is on a separate (remote) server than the server your Website is being hosted on.

The biggest problem these days for shared hosting and Drupal isn't with storage space or bandwidth...but CPU usage and database performance. Most likely you won't be able to make any sense about the CPU usage constraints a hosting company uses but you should be able to get information how how they configure the darn database. Some hosting companies seem to provide a MySQL database as if it's an "extra" and not really essential.

Over the past two years, I've gone from shared hosting to VPS, back to shared hosting, and now currently back on a VPS. I've found that with a VPS or dedicated server...I understand exactly how to fix a problem and have less hassles. While tech support at a shared hosting account may be "nice people"...they are usually not knowledgeable enough about Drupal (or any specific CMS) to help you in a timely manner. If you are comfortable enough with a server...I'd recommend that you look at a VPS and not shared hosting. If you do go the shared hosting route, I would be sure that they have a way for you to export/import your files/database to a VPS or dedicated server. For example CPanel and Plesk are usually good control panels for providing methods for backing up your site.

A couple other URLs you may want to look at for futher discussion: http://www.sysarchitects.com/node/50 and http://cmsreport.com/taxonomy/term/610,2 . The second link is to my own site (be sure to read from oldest to latest post). I keep promising myself and others that I'll compile all my notes/posts together to better help people like you answer whether shared hosting or VPS is the answer. One of these days...

Bryan
CMSReport

avocado’s picture

avocado commented

Thanks, Bryan -- that's helpful.

I find what you say about clustering (i.e. a separate DB server) interesting. Are you discussing instances where the MySQL server is a third-party server, or a clustered solution like H-Sphere (for example) provides? I certainly wouldn't pick up separate web and DB servers from different providers, but I always thought the latter option was supposed to be able to handle higher load because the CPU and RAM burden is shared between two machines. I suppose that under lighter load, I/O might become the bottleneck there?

I notice that the link you provided discussed Dreamhost. Their MySQL performance is dreadful, but they also oversell massively, and we've been with hosts that cluster and have extremely snappy database performance, too (usually the ones that also have FTP performance 100 times faster than Dreamhost ;-).

The three options we're looking at right now are a good shared account with a non-overselling provider; a semi-dedicated account (i.e. shared with a small number of accounts per box); and a fully-managed VPS. The price difference is significant, so I'm still trying to figure out how to guess resource usage -- even just within a factor of 10.

Drupal is a CMS, and not a lightweight one either. I can estimate where a static site or a lightweight PHP site will start running into resource ceilings, but without any experience, it's really difficult to guess the equivalents.

Thanks again for your help!

vm’s picture

vm commented

so many variables with a dynamic site that is db driven.

how many logged in users? (anon users are always cached)
how many modules? (The more modules installed and enabled, the more resources that get used)
what modules? (not all modules are created equal)
page set on? agressive? (this can impair some modules for logged in users)
other caching scripts being used? (ie: eAccelerator)

_____________________________________________________________________
Confucius says:
"Those who seek drupal answers should use drupal search!" : )

andrewjj’s picture

andrewjj commented

Here's a list of good value managed vps plans starting at just $35
http://www.hostingdiary.com/2007/09/best-vps-hostin.html

Andrew

crookednumber’s picture

crookednumber commented

Thanks, but these would all seem to be affiliate links. Yes?

http://CrookedNumber.com

Markwebuk’s picture

Markwebuk commented

Initially it would be good to start with a low end VPS and as the requirement increase you may upgrade to a higher vps and later upgrade to a dedicated server. Opt for a host offering easy upgrade options from vps to vps or from vps to a dedicated server.

Web Hosting UK

jsimonis’s picture

jsimonis commented

That's what I did. After fighting with Site5 for some time, I finally bit the bullet and went to a VPS. I'm loving it so far. I get full control of everything, but there are knowledgeable people there to help me when I need it.

I went with the lower end plan, which was more than enough since there is a special going on for the next week or so that gives you a bunch of free upgrades (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=646975).

If I need to, I always have the ability to move up to the higher tier VPS or later to a dedicated server.

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