Looking for hosting that can handle big traffic

By iraszl on 10 Jan 2006 at 22:47 UTC

I'm currently using Dreamhost dedicated server on my Drupal sites, but the server constantly dies down. I only have about 30K pageloads in average a day. I do have a lot of bandwidth usage because of videos and images. At least 3GB a day. I want a Drupal friendly and reliable hosting co. Please recommend!

Comments

site5

jasonwhat commented 10 January 2006 at 23:55

Site5 is great. They have great redundancy and if your site is overloaded they automatically add more support to your site to keep it moving fast. For example, they will move a shared site to dedicated space if there is a traffic spike at no charge. I think it lasts for 60 days. They have all the perl modules that drupal needs and a good interface for site management.

I agree

Alan_C commented 11 January 2006 at 01:11

I agree with jasonwhat.
I moved a lot of domains to Site5 4 months ago and all works fine!
When I needed support they answered in 15-20 min and solved my problems. Great.

And also the servers are fast: my previous hosting was in the middle of europe (Frankfurt, Germany) and had no warranty for down-time.
Obviously it happened a lot of times. :-((((

I was getting crazy and I searched a new provider.

Now with site5 the uptime is wonderfull and in any case they have a money-back warranty for it.
Now that my sites are hosted in Usa, the page loading is a little slower but I see very small differences. (I'm italian and live in Italy!)

I don't know how much traffic do you suppose to have and my sites are not so visited (from 200 to 500 visits/day) to assure you the they can handle a lot of traffic, but with a dedicated server or more I think it's possible.

Give Highland Webhosting a look.

chameleonwebhosting commented 11 January 2006 at 12:14

Highland Webhosting have the kind of bandwidth that you're looking for. We offer 2 packages that have 300 and 400Gb bandwidth, but we also offer tailored hosting solutions to match your exact requirements. There's also a lot of space available in the packages as well (15 and 25Gb respectively)

The link is www.highlandwebhosting.com

Servage.net is worth a look

wellsy commented 11 January 2006 at 04:33

they have an amazing 17GB/day allowance and 99.98% Server Uptime.

Please consider using my referrer coupon if you take them up on the offer.

wellsy

orchidsonline.com.au

I don't suggest Servage

sangamreddi commented 11 January 2006 at 10:03

It's good and 99.98% Uptime. The otherside- U can't run the cron for every 5 or 10 mins, minimum time 1 hr and no shell access. I have problem with e-mail too. While drupal user registration and other drupal mails are taking couple of hours to reach to mailbox.

Apart from this everything is good. The bandwidth , uptime, custoemr support, etc is great.

Sunny
www.gleez.com

He said DEDICATED

kbahey commented 12 January 2006 at 19:28

Guys

Please note that Ivan, the original poster, has asked for DEDICATED HOSTING.

He already has one, and looking for a better one. Shared hosting is NOT AN OPTION.
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

Please re-read his post kbahey

chameleonwebhosting commented 13 January 2006 at 11:56

He mentioned that he is currently using a dedicated server. I fail to notice anywhere in his post where it states that he is looking for a purely dedicated server. He asked for a reliable host that can handle the bandwidth.

No

kbahey commented 14 January 2006 at 01:42

He is not considering shared hosting at all. His problem is not bandwidth. He has lots of that.

He has one site with lots of videos on it, as well as images, and another with lots of images.

The problem is the server dies every now and then under the load, and HE IS ALREADY ON A DEDICATED SERVER.
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

I am hosting on siteground,

abqaria commented 15 November 2006 at 07:57

I am hosting on siteground, i got an error 500, due to exceeding limits, what host do u recommended, and how can I optimize my server

http://www.SmartTowns.com
http://www.independentbloggers.com
http://www.i-bloggers.com
http://www.abqaria.com

hosting

Dublin Drupaller commented 13 January 2006 at 13:46

Hi Ira,

I have a music industry client that has about 4 times that bandwidth demand per day at peaks.

if the content is not protected, you could try http://www.archive.org and http://www.ourmedia.org

Ourmedia is a Drupal driven site that allows free hosting.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

UK hosting for Drupal sites

Minty commented 30 March 2006 at 17:24

Hi Dub

I'm looking for a good UK host, and some time ago you wrote "we found a gem of a hosting company in the UK called Xeriom networks"

Can you give any more information about them. Their website seems very cryptic.

Minty

nice guys..

Dublin Drupaller commented 2 April 2006 at 10:15

Hi Minty,

Yeah, the xeriom company is a small setup and really nice guys.

I had to move away from them recently to a new host because they didn't do backups and I didn't know that. assumed it was a standard host thing and lost a lot of work because of it.

Pity really, because they are nice guys and the support line was the fastest I have ever experienced from a host. It was a luxury not being shunted half way around the globe to a call centre, after being on hold for half an hour. You knew you could just ring and get an answer straight away.

If it wasn't for the backups thing..I'd be still with them.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Thank you all for the

iraszl commented 14 January 2006 at 00:23

Thank you all for the comments. I'll look into the posted links. For the time I've updgraded the dedicated server to have 2GB RAM from 512MB and it seems to work fine.

---
http://raszl.net

Dedicated MySQL Server

sami_k commented 17 January 2006 at 09:52

It might be advisable to have a dedicated MySQL server which is separate from the server which is serving the pages. The larger RAM is definitely a good idea!

--
Please read the handbook, search the forums, then ask...
http://drupal.etopian.net (Drupal Support) | http://www.drupalshowcase.com

It might be advisable to

venkat-rk commented 11 May 2006 at 01:24

It might be advisable to have a dedicated MySQL server which is separate from the server which is serving the pages.

The only hosting company I know that has separate servers for MySQL is Pair Networks.

I don't have any relationship with them, either as an affiliate or as a customer (used to be one until I moved to Site5 for cheaper prices and more space/bandwidth), just pointing out.

I've been with pair.com for

cvining commented 29 May 2006 at 01:10

I've been with pair.com for 10 years, and intend on keepking some stuff there. Not bleading edge, but rock solid stable and you won't find better people to do business with.

But when I tried to install drupal I found a few limitations. To use some features, you'll need to go with a php-cgi, since pairs mod_php doesn't have imap compiled in. You can compile your own php-cgi, but I still hit a resource (memory) limit. Pair monitors cgis and when they go over some memory limit, they reap (kill) the process. When the catch it. Best I could sort out, after talking to pair support, is that my heavy php-cgi apps like drupal will get reaped about 1 in 70 times. That means your users get a "Server 500" error every 70 pages or so. If there is a solution to this at pair, I couldn't find it. It is just a business decision for pair to limit resource use this way, and I don't have a problem with that.

I'd be very interested if anyone has drupal running at pair.com and ALSO uses imap (required by several drupal modules).

If you can use pair.com's stock mod_php, then pair.com would be a great choice. I've gone with a VPS, which is another story!

- Cronin

vps

edrupalec commented 31 May 2006 at 20:02

Cronin,
thank you for your useful summary. I'd be interested in hearing your story about the VPS as we are also looking for that.

Thank you.

Drupal ecommerce, at http://www.drupalecommerce.com
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/troubleshooting
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/modulesexplained
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/47vs46
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/howto

vps

cvining commented 7 June 2006 at 04:55

edrupalec,

You are largely on your own with a VPS of course, but you have all the flexibility you could ever want. I've set up enough linux & FreeBSD sandboxes to have some feel for what I wanted. I liked the Xen approach, where each VPS really is isolated with it's own memory, CPU and disk quotas. So I've tried accounts with unixshell.com and vpsland.com. Both use Xen, with similar pricing and OS offerings. unixshell has several things vpsland does not: a public support forum, a control panel (load new OS images, start/stop, backup). I like those features a lot. But unixshell was (as of a week ago) suffering from some fairly serious and distracting rebooting problems. My experience was that support was responsive enough, but I didn't like the idea that they couldn't seem to get the rebooting under control. I expect they will, but I couldn't see much reason to wait them out. Half a day and you can move everything to another host!

So, I'm with vpsland.com now. Ask again in 6 months! Connectivity and uptime have been perfect, so I have NO experience with their customer support to speak of.

On the whole, I'm quite pleased with the VPS exerience. I've settled on a 128M VPS (192M or 256M might be better, to entirely avoid disk swaps), Debian-Sarge (seems quite stable) and am using apache2 with fastcgi for the php. Seems to have a smaller memory footprint than mod_php, fitting in the VPS environement well. Pages are generally generated in under 1s, even with CiviCRM which eats resources! One thing I really like is keeping an offline sandbox with essentially identical configuration, for use in testing & development. My sandbox runs under VMWARE. I found this sort of high-fidelity replication hard to do with a shared host, since you can't know all the details of their configuration (understandably!).

Once I get a membership management system together I'l be a happy camper! But ... that's yet another story.

- Cronin

thanks

edrupalec commented 7 June 2006 at 19:12

thank you.

do you mean the paid membership module that we are trying to have coded?

Drifting off thread now, but

cvining commented 7 June 2006 at 23:56

Drifting off thread now, but yes: either that or CiviMember or something similar. With all the non-profits and associations out there it amazes me how little there is today to manage memberships.

Civimember sounds just what I need, but I need it now, not TBD!
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviMember+-+Phase+1+Spec...

The paid membership module (which I guess you are involved in)
http://drupal.org/node/62069

does many|most of the things I'm looking for and I'd be happy to use that. Or I may roll my own! My coding isn't elegant, but generally I can get the job done!

- Cronin

great!

edrupalec commented 8 June 2006 at 01:36

cronin,
if you start coding, please do post here
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/node/734

and do use the ecommerce developers list.
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/drupal_ecommerce

thanks for helping out.

I can recommend you

capmex commented 22 April 2006 at 01:16

iraszl, I can recommend you dwhs.com. They have lots of websites hosted serving video streams. The prices are similar than dreamhost, but your server won't die easily.

Here are their dedicated plans:
http://www.dwhs.com/dedicated-plans.htm

Server specs:
http://www.dwhs.com/dedicated-plans-specs.htm

And finally a post from someone at dwhs on another thread:
http://drupal.org/node/55586#comment-106605

--
Webmaster Resources | Canadian Directory

Getting your site "slashed"

solipsist commented 26 April 2006 at 12:23

Getting your site "slashed" is the greatest risk so either get a shared host that actually does what it promises or get a virtual private or dedicated server.

I'm looking at site5.com, will see about moving my site, it's a major hassle so I'd rather not but I'd pay half of what I do now so...

Jakob Persson
web design and usability consulting
http://www.jakob-persson.com

--
Jakob Persson - blog
Leancept – Digital effect and innovation agency

Further to my previous post,

chameleonwebhosting commented 26 April 2006 at 17:26

Further to my previous post, we have aded a couple of new plans, and revamped the pricing, which is all generally lower. Even the upgrades prices have been revamped.

Highland Webhosting

Dedicated Hosting

Katherine Lawrence commented 28 April 2006 at 23:26

But not dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting - I just went to the on-line chat and found out.

It seems to me that there is a huge niche that is currently underserved - pun fully intended. The cases we are seeing is that if the site has lots of traffic, especially spikes, and the client demands site up-time (not server up-time), shared hosting is not as attractive an option. On the other hand, having an in-house server and staff is overkill and cost prohibitive.

The virtual-dedicate hosting seems to be a middle-of-the-road way to go and I am reading up on this alternative.

The way our clients see it, a slightly higher cost for assured site-up time off-sets the down-time penalty. This is especially important for e-commerce oriented clients. Being down for even half an hour on an e-commerce site might mean losing a big order.

Kate

100

edrupalec commented 28 April 2006 at 23:49

site5 has a limit of 200 simul mysql connections. memory is 4GB shared.
at westhost vps, default is 100, you can set it higher, but your memory is 512mb

which would you rather have?

Drupal ecommerce, at http://www.drupalecommerce.com
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/troubleshooting
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/modulegroupings
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/47vs46
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/compared

Site5: lots of promises

jasonwhat commented 29 April 2006 at 21:22

I've had mixed experience with Site5. At first I was excited for their "RapidReflex" system that was supposed to auto-upgrade your plan to prevent your site from going down if usage spiked. All this was supposed to happen with no charge until a few weeks passed and it was clear the site needed to be permanently upgraded. I later found out that despite advertising this service, they didn't roll it out and were unable to get it working in a stable way. No refunds were offered and no email went out to clients explaining that a major feature of the host didn't exist. I only found out when one of my sites was yanked with no warning and no contact from support.

I decided to give them a second chance after some talk with their management and I was impressed by their new "Flashback" service that makes it easy to roll back your site to a previous state. Once I got on this plan, I found out that this is still in beta and not available on many servers. However, once again they are advertising it as a major feature. It seems unprofessional at best, and "bait and switch" at worst to advertise features that aren't available, and if RapidReflex is any indication, may never be available.

that's bad

edrupalec commented 2 May 2006 at 23:35

Jasonwhat,
thanks for posting back with the update about what happened with rapidreflex. It was a good idea. I guess they couldn't get it to work. sounds like the same thing with Flashback. I was told they took it offline to fix some stuff. They said management will send out an email in a few days (some days ago) about when it will be restored. It's true that they shouldn't be advertising a service that's not available.

Yanking sites

jasonwhat commented 3 May 2006 at 00:55

It's also unfortunate that they would pull down a site, and thus all related sites and not inform the site owner. Luckily for me this was mostly some development stuff. I have several sites hosted on one codebase though. However, if any was an ecommerce site I would have been quite upset. I think this happens often with Drupal because a new module could have a problem and eat up server resources. However, that's a good time for them to warn you of a probelm not pull a site off with no warning or follow up. My favorite was how after I contacted them they told me I needed to fix the script causing the error, of course they'd pulled everything and left me with no access so this was impossible. It was one module that could have been disabled in a minute if they had just communicated with me. Great prices though.

you are right

edrupalec commented 3 May 2006 at 05:06

Jasonwhat,
you are completely right. That is atrocious, and certainly would have been disastrous if it had been an ecommerce site. It is good to warn people thinking about site5 about this problem.

I'm hosting with doreo.com

solipsist commented 4 June 2006 at 20:29

I'm hosting with doreo.com right now and it works great. I know the owner, he helped me move so I just moved my site to my old reseller account there. Doreo aren't as cheap as some other hosts mentioned here but support is top-notch and they have the server resources to host the kind of sites most of us Drupal people run. Having a stable working business relationship with my hosting company is extremely important to me, and it's worth the extra money.

--
Jakob Persson
web design and usability consulting
http://www.jakob-persson.com

--
Jakob Persson - blog
Leancept – Digital effect and innovation agency

doreo

edrupalec commented 5 June 2006 at 16:20

Interesting. I took a quick look
*. didn't see dedicated
*. first server says only 1 outage in 2005
*. hosting for 3 years
*. hosts phpbb.

Jakob, how heavy is your traffic? It's an interesting option. I've never heard of it but they do seem familiar with php.

I don't have nearly as much

solipsist commented 18 June 2006 at 12:49

I don't have nearly as much traffic as I wish I had LOL! I estimate it's somewhere about 50 000 PVs per month, which is nothing compared to what some sites get but it was enough for siteground to shut the site down.

I'm not sure if Doreo offers dedicated yet, but I believe they're working on it. I suggest you contact them and check with them, they're very flexible and helpful.

Doreo used to host phpbb.com until they, like drupal.org, turned to osuosl.org for hosting. They got some of the best experience when it comes to dealing with phpBB sites considering security and server load.

--
Jakob Persson
web design and usability consulting
http://www.jakob-persson.com

--
Jakob Persson - blog
Leancept – Digital effect and innovation agency

thank you

edrupalec commented 19 June 2006 at 17:25

Jakob,
thank you. the bit about phpbb is useful to know.

no automatic upgrade

edrupalec commented 27 April 2006 at 23:32

When I spoke with site5 2 days ago, they said they do not do automatic upgrades if you are slashdotted, etc. In fact, the maximum number of simultaneous mysql connections is 200. that doesn't sound like a lot of users.

Don't use Servage for busy site

jmrukkers commented 11 May 2006 at 08:41

Servage has one big problem: I keep getting Fatal error: User 'Syndicator' has exceeded the 'max_questions' resource (current value: 50000) errors on a moderately busy site (Tech news) - Drupal is rather db intensive, and limiting the number of queries per hour is not a good thing in that context.

-- John

Servage: It gets worse

wellsy commented 13 May 2006 at 12:53

From some old correspondence from servage staff
***************************************************************
You are allowed to make 72000 selects and 30000 updates/inserts per hour.
This some very fair limits and most other hosts will not allow half of this.

If you is well designed it is allow for more than 1,000,000 pageviews per day.
***************************************************************
(does anyone care to comment on that statement who knows the reality of that?)

Now I am being told

***************************************************************
20000 currently limit users to 20000 SELECT queries, per hour, per user
***************************************************************

This new lower limit will most likely profoundly affect drupal site operation and most likely rules out servage as a host for any drupal site likely to be at all busy.

In fact, right now, I cannot even import my data to do development work.

They have also suddenly become very unresponsive to calls for either help or a refund of my remaining prepaid subs.

Last help request May 13 - 10:50 GMT
Issue opened May 12 - 01:20 GMT

For the communities information I'll post again if this is resolved OR gets even worse.

For the time being...my advice...avoid servage.net as a host for drupal.

PS: sorry about the initial good rap I gave them. As a development area they were good for quite some time.

wellsy

orchidsonline.com.au

MediaTemple?

iraszl commented 1 June 2006 at 07:19

How about MediaTemple's virtual dedicated? Is MediaTemple worth a try? Is it working well with Drupal 4.6 and 4.7? Anybody has experience? Thanks!
Ivan

--
Creativine: Brands coming alive as Drupal themes

Chrono Hosting

kopf1988 commented 3 January 2007 at 20:09

Have you tried Chrono Hosting? They've got shared, Dedicated, and simple web hosting as well. I think you can get Windows OS, instead of Linux, if you ask... (it's like $20 more or something each year?)

http://www.cmuscatine.com/hosting/
Dedicated Hosting Plan 1
-120GB hard drive
-1GB RAM
-500GB bandwidth
-absolutely dedicated to you alone
-Celeron 2.0Ghz Processor
-Red Hat OS (Windows optional, I think)
$110/month... not bad at all I'd say. I host a couple of videogames with them.

33Link China Dedicated Web

funks commented 31 January 2007 at 01:58

33Link China Dedicated Web Hosting has a number of good options for high bandwidth. It is run by an IT Service Company, Mirkin Group

www.maximumasp.com

Ariana78 commented 21 July 2008 at 23:15

I have been using MaximumASP services for a few years now and suggested it to many of my friends and as far as i know they have customers all over the world. We all use from their virtual dedicated, shared up to dedicated farms and have been so happy with the level of support and service. If you guys are looking for one of those "you get what you pay for" Maximum is for you. Check them out you will not regret

Looking for hosting that can handle big traffic

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