Which VPS - What am I looking for? Suggested providers?

[Canal World]

Hi,

What are peoples suggestions for a VPS for a medium/large site?

As of last week we where running trouble free on an (increasingly large) shared hosting package, when our hosts then upgraded their software allowing them to better manage (and hence, throttle) resources! We have therefore now been rudely awakened to the need to move on, and as we are already on there largest shared package, are now looking at VPS options.

Currently we have about 120 users online fairly often, today have reset the counter we apparently peaked at 850 online at once. Creating around 600posts and 25topics per day, and eating through around 120gb a month bandwidth. 1,022,556 total posts, 14,926 total members, total size size 2.6gb including gallery.

Currently we are with UK Web Soutions Direct on there 'Host4' package paying a prehaps bargin £7.50/month and are fairly frequently topping out on the provided 1gb of ram, and hitting 100% CPU usage, although I'm waiting confirmation of what 100% CPU is in raw terms.

They have suggested moving onto the VPS-1M managed package, which they expect will meet our needs, but is a huge price hike to £65/month.

Can anyone in laymans terms explain the reason for the almost 10 fold price hike and or suggest an alternative host.

I'm technically able and not stupid, but equally, am an mechanical engineer not a software/web person and hence to a certain extent am willing to pay more to make my life simpler and keep the site running easy, and suitable stable and available.

Our forum index : http://www.canalworld.net/forums

UKWDS website : http://ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk/managed-vps-hosting.php

Daniel

[skizzerz]

Well, the price hike is partially due to the fact that they are offering a "Managed" VPS service, which means that they have support staff on-hand to perform tasks on your server upon your request, such as software installation/configuration and anything else covered in their managed service. If you are technically competent when it comes to setting up, configuring, and maintaining servers or have staff that are, you would be able to save a large chunk of money by looking for an "Unmanaged" VPS service.

Beyond that, when comparing VPS services between hosts, I'd advise looking at the following items:
1. The server specifications. See how much disk space, bandwidth, uplink speed, RAM, and CPU is dedicated to your VPS. Some hosting companies will give you two numbers for RAM and CPU, a "dedicated" and a "burst." What this means is that your VPS is guaranteed to have at least the dedicated amount available to it, but is allowed to use up to the burst amount (but the resources between the dedicated and burst amounts are often shared between multiple clients, so it is not necessarily guaranteed that the burst amount is available to you).
2. The Service Level Agreement. From my experience, a guaranteed 99.9% uptime is pretty standard. Make sure that the host has an SLA and that you understand under what terms the items guaranteed by the SLA are bound by.
3. Automated backups. How often, how far back are they kept, and if there is any cost associated with restoring from them. I always recommend taking your own offsite backups, but having your host also taking backups adds an extra layer of defense.
4. The Terms of Service/Acceptable Use Policy. Make sure nothing out of the ordinary is in there. When you purchase a service, you are agreeing to be bound by those terms so reading through them is always a good idea. For example, some hosts block IRC-related services so if you were planning on running an IRC server that is something to look for.
5. Support. What ways do you have of contacting their support (ticket, phone)? What are the hours and response times? How courteous/knowledgeable are the support staff?
6. Customer Reviews. Look beyond the host's website as their Testimonials section will only include positive reviews. Check out sites like WebHostingTalk and the internet at large to see generally what people think of that host. Do however keep in mind that the people with negative experiences are often more vocal than those with positive experiences.

Beyond that, I cannot really suggest any webhosts as I am not familiar with UK-based hosts. You might want to look at the WebHostingTalk forums for special offers and other information, or take the advice of others posting on this thread. I wish you the best of luck in your host search!

[Dylan Riggs]

I switched to Knownhost and they've been amazing for me, I'd recommend them if you need recommendations

[Grumpy]

65 gbp is definitely on the pricy side for what they offer even with managed services.

Knownhost as above mentioned is a well-reviewed managed vps provider in Texas. Liquidweb (another in US, forget where specific, probably texas as well) is also quite good and has option for SSD VPS.

If you're looking for one in the UK, I know VPSLatch has one in the UK. They used to be pretty decent and well-reviewed in the past but I haven't used them in a long time and can't say much for quality as of now.

You can also try searching for offers here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104

Personally would recommend a SSD based VPS, but with the requirement of management, I think you'll be working with a short list already anyway.

[Canal World]

Ok, I mean, presumably the shared hosting was also managed? no? Obviously in terms of managing the invision software that is mainly covered by invision, but I guess you have all the mySQL and Cpanal side of it? As you may be able to tell I'm on the edge of being out of my depth technically.

Another option I'm looking into is to find a member willing to be our technical member and manage the server side of it, I had hoped one of our moderators would take up that side of it but due to charge of circumstance he is now no longer reliability available.

Daniel

[Canal World]

Location wise although I have a mild preference to remain uk based if we can find a more suitable package elsewhere I'm not against that assuming their support is available during compatible hours.

The forum is run as a not for profit exercise funded by member donations, and as said, we could and would raise any funds required, however I obviously have a duty as the site owner to ensure we are getting a reasonable deal in return.

Daniel

[IveLeft...]

I think you may (not 100% sure ***prepares to be shot down***) that with your stats that a 1G VPS that they have offered you will soon be having issues - I dont know IPB that well yet but we moved from a 2Gb VPS on vBulletin and had major VPS headaches (VPS not powerful enough - memory errors - crashes) and the vB forum had lower stats than you have by around 20-40% - We switched to IPB and also now run on a 4GB KVM VPS and its working very nicely at present.

There are a couple of hosts over at the link above that are sharks and completely useless so make sure you do your research very well before you choose a new VPS provider.

The other option if your willing to learn (or hire a system admin) is to co-locate your own equipment in a data center local to you - or rent a dedicated from a data centre and set this up on linux with cpanel etc yourself (or with a system admin)

The shared hosting your on with respect to costs (depending how the host runs his shared host in) will just be a VPS or a Dedicated server that runs 200,300,400 websites from it - that the main reason for the cost difference.

The shared solutions are normally fully managed.

[Rick L]

Just to give you something to go by media temple is a reliable and worldwide VPS solution.

[Canal World]

I think you may (not 100% sure) that with your stats that a 1G VPS that they have offered you will soon be having issues - I dont know IPB that well yet but we moved from a 2Gb VPS on vBulletin and had major VPS headaches (VPS not powerful enough - memory errors - crashes) and the vB forum had lower stats than you have by around 20-40% - We switched to IPB and also now run on a 4GB KVM VPS and its working very nicely at present.

I'm also very slightly concerned that may be the case, although am prepared to be proved wrong.

Attached below are our resource graphs from the last hour and 24hours for reference. I dont know if that helps at all?

My current plan is to have them move us onto the VPS-1M package and see how that goes, its the easiest option as they will handle the move, but will also for the sake of £65 give us a better indication of where we stand with resource use, and allow us time to look in more depth at other options as well as to upgrade to the latest version the Invision software.

Daniel

[Canal World]

Well apparently they cant move us until next week anyway as 'their vps guy is away' smooth.

Peoples thoughts on eukhost?

http://www.eukhost.com/vps-hosting.php

Webfusion?

http://www.webfusion.co.uk/virtual-private-servers/linux-vps-hosting/

Hetzner?

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_vserver/vq12

Daniel

[Grimace`]

Well apparently they cant move us until next week anyway as 'their vps guy is away' smooth.

Hetzner?

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_vserver/vq12

Daniel

If their 'VPS guy is away' then personally I wouldn't choose to host with them as it sounds like they are under staffed or a two person business.

As for Hetzner, I've never used them but all my friends have and recommended them. I've heard nothing but good things.

[Tom Wright]

I've always used Hudson Valley Host. When I had a site about as big yours I used there $30 un-managed VPS. If you don't mind using a un-managed VPS get it. If you need any help they'll either do it for you or tell you how to do it. http://hudsonvalleyhost.com/vps.php

[Grumpy]

To the question asked earlier:

Shared hosting is ALWAYS managed.

What managed means is that they take care of making sure the server runs as expected. So, things like making sure that web server runs, ssh server runs, security and network. Managing IPB itself is your job and is not included under the standard definition of "managed hosting".

Unmanaged means they only take care of hardware and network. Everything else if your problem. If the hardware is running fine and there's internet as it should be, they did their job.

The cost of managed is minimal in shared hosting because you only need to make sure of those things for ONE server. And then hundreds of clients use that one server, so the cost is divided by 100~1000.

A VPS or a dedi requires the management to take care of that one and there's less to no sharing of that setting or tweak. So, the cost of management skyrockets comparatively. A VPS management included with hosting will typically net you a twice higher price than unmanaged. A dedi management typically costs an extra 100~1000 more per month (though personally find the "1000" by guys like rackspace highly overpriced -- but they do actually do more...).

Whether or not you will need more than 1GB of ram is non-trivial. You can optimize to be more ram efficient. For example, I can optimize for ram on my dedi server to use less than 1GB even with greater traffic, though not recommended. How much ram you will use actively without fine tweaking will vary due to cpu and disk. If you get more requests (the rate of incoming) than you can handle (the rate of output), your resource consumption will increase. Conversely, if you get less than you can serve, your consumption will decrease. It is the point of maximum resource where you are purchasing for. So, if you have infinitely great cpu and disk, your ram requirement will only be as large as the size it needs to process a maximum single request, which by IPB recommendation is 128MB. On average, more like 10MB.

This is one of the reasons to why I'm such a strong proponent for getting SSDs for pretty much everything. Disk is almost always the bottleneck in software like IPB. So when your disk performs extraordinarily good, you can get away with getting smaller systems (in terms of ram) and still be faster to respond reliably. That is, how many pages you can serve per second is more important than how many pages you can handle simultaneously.

[Canal World]

If their 'VPS guy is away' then personally I wouldn't choose to host with them as it sounds like they are under staffed or a two person business.

Yeah, they have been great previously, but the last few days they have left a trail of chaos and not decided to sort it out till Monday, which if im honest, isnt ideal!

[Canal World]

Interesting point about about SSD's i had noticed people where advertising that sometimes but others and did wonder if it was a gimmick or advantage.

I have spoken to the webmaster of another forum I use, who I know make a bit of a living out of something (apprnetly he 'owns and operates a tier 2 ISP and operates hosting servers for the forum in question and various other sites' ) and he stated he was not a fan of VPS options and offered to host our forum along side his. He did also say that although he has no direct experience the ukwsd offering should be a good on, but was talking about charging around the £50 mark initially, reviewing after the first week or so with the possibility of reducing the cost he was are using less resource than that.

On one level this sounds like a good option, and the site in question is fast running and pretty steady, but I would say, not quite a steady as our has been, and he is obviously just a one-man-band as such as I have had issues with these arrangements in the past, fine while it works, but when it goes down they may or may not be available.


Daniel

[IveLeft...]

To the question asked earlier:

Shared hosting is ALWAYS managed.

What managed means is that they take care of making sure the server runs as expected. So, things like making sure that web server runs, ssh server runs, security and network. Managing IPB itself is your job and is not included under the standard definition of "managed hosting".

Unmanaged means they only take care of hardware and network. Everything else if your problem. If the hardware is running fine and there's internet as it should be, they did their job.

The cost of managed is minimal in shared hosting because you only need to make sure of those things for ONE server. And then hundreds of clients use that one server, so the cost is divided by 100~1000.

A VPS or a dedi requires the management to take care of that one and there's less to no sharing of that setting or tweak. So, the cost of management skyrockets comparatively. A VPS management included with hosting will typically net you a twice higher price than unmanaged. A dedi management typically costs an extra 100~1000 more per month (though personally find the "1000" by guys like rackspace highly overpriced -- but they do actually do more...).

Whether or not you will need more than 1GB of ram is non-trivial. You can optimize to be more ram efficient. For example, I can optimize for ram on my dedi server to use less than 1GB even with greater traffic, though not recommended. How much ram you will use actively without fine tweaking will vary due to cpu and disk. If you get more requests (the rate of incoming) than you can handle (the rate of output), your resource consumption will increase. Conversely, if you get less than you can serve, your consumption will decrease. It is the point of maximum resource where you are purchasing for. So, if you have infinitely great cpu and disk, your ram requirement will only be as large as the size it needs to process a maximum single request, which by IPB recommendation is 128MB. On average, more like 10MB.

This is one of the reasons to why I'm such a strong proponent for getting SSDs for pretty much everything. Disk is almost always the bottleneck in software like IPB. So when your disk performs extraordinarily good, you can get away with getting smaller systems (in terms of ram) and still be faster to respond reliably. That is, how many pages you can serve per second is more important than how many pages you can handle simultaneously.

Agree that disks are almost always the bottle necks and ssd's are the way to go, just make sure you have an hourly backup set up for when the ssd dies

We run on 15K SAS disks at present and when the server is at end of life for us (the 3 year dell warranty expires) we will be going the ssd route with sas disks also

[IveLeft...]

Yeah, they have been great previously, but the last few days they have left a trail of chaos and not decided to sort it out till Monday, which if im honest, isnt ideal!

They may have been good but if no-one can set a VPS up whilst he is away then what happens when hes away, asleep or off sick and you have VPS problems ?

[bynot]

Try looking at ovh.co.uk they offer everything from vps to dedicated servers at very reasonable costs.

Personally I go for their dedicated servers and have been using them for all my forum software for over 10 years now.

Tech support has always been very good and their price range is very affordable.

[Canal World]

They may have been good but if no-one can set a VPS up whilst he is away then what happens when hes away, asleep or off sick and you have VPS problems ?

Oh, for sure, which is my biggest hesitation with going in with this other forum or any other small organisation as they obviously can't provide true 24h support if there isn't the man power.

[AlexJ]

SSD or SSD Cache VPS is the way to go.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104

[Millipede]

I've been with UKWSD for about 10 yrs, on their reseller 1 package (£21 pm +VAT), also 1gb RAM. I initially got the reseller package not because I wanted to resell but as I was running a number of domains and as their normal hosting (like you're on) didn't allow at the time for more than 3 domains (if any, I don't now remember). I've usually found them great and fast to respond to support tickets 24/7.

I've got 2 forums and 1 CMS (Joomla) plus test sites for those, and a couple of small static sites. I've got nothing like anything near the amount of members or posts or bandwidth usuage that you have, Daniel, but my CPU usage is similar on both my main sites (those with the forums). The resource usage viewer often tells me my site has been limited for anything between 10 and 35 times in the past 24 hrs (that I've seen as I don't check it that often). I've been experiencing occasional very slow loading of pages or even messages saying the site's unavailable due to excess resource usage. I'm not on one of the servers that they've recently upgraded.

I can't pretend to understand the resource usage stuff but these are my resource stats, where there's a high CPU usage for the past 24 hrs (left) and past week (right).

These tend to be the same for both sites with forums/CMS. If I've not got busy sites/forums, I don't understand why the CPU usage so frequently hits 100%?

What more recently irked me a bit was that IPB suggests having 128mb memory limit. UKWSD raised it at my request after an IPB upgrade, then lowered it to 96mb and wouldn't then again raise it above 96mb, saying I should consider a dedicated server or VPS instead. I don't consider my relatively low traffic sites and forums (compared to yours) to need a VPS?

Like you, if I were in a situation where I'd have to go to a VPS, it would have to be managed as I haven't the first clue about running it myself, but £65 pm (plus more for some extras which are included in the normal hosting) is a bit too much for me.

If ever I were to change host, I'd want good support for someone like me who's not that tech savvy in these things, good security (which UKWSD give, as far as I know, with suPHP and mod security which is at times too tight!) and everything else one would expect from a good host.

[RogEnk]

+1 for Hetzner, never used their VPS only Dedi.

+1 for OVH, currently have a Dedi with them that I carved into several VPS running IPB.

I would go for a dedicated solution, a learning curve for sure but with Virtualmin you can be up and running in a few hours, ready to migrate and test.

Managing it from that point on is relatively trivial, there is some very good documentation available.

I did this a way back moving from shared hosting, never looked back :)

Linode also are very good VPS providers, and have UK based servers too.

[Grumpy]

Hetzner, OVH, and Linode are all unmanaged providers. They're not relevant to this thread.

[Canal World]

For what its worth, we have purchased the 1gb managed VPS package from eUKhost and intend to move onto it at the end of the weekend. I will keep you posted.



Daniel

[bynot]

Have to agree that a dedicated server would be the way to go, even though I have said it before.

The options of have a dedicated server mean you have full control over the product plus there are many free and paid for control panel for the server.

It looks like that you will have enough technical know how to come to grips with server and frankly there is a lot of support out there.

When it comes down to be managed or unmanaged it depends on how involved you want the hosting company. To be honest I find that a good technical hardware support is much better than software support.

But at the end of the day it comes down to how much work you want to do.

And which panel you are using.

A good option in a way would be to get a test dedicated server for a month and play around with it and see how you get on, which you can get for as little as £10.

If you need any help I and sure many others would always willing to give you some good guides and so on.