Which hosting for this vbulletin

[magnaromagna]

Hallo,
I have a big forum with theese stats:
Threads: 34,322, Posts: 151,606, Members: 29,669, Active Members: 1,884
Users online:
media: over 200
peak: 4/500

with some plugins installed: vbseo, gars article, photopost, vb directory, vb arcade, vb blog. Except for vbseo, the others are not used so much.

Now is on a dedicated with another website of mine (a blog with 10.000 users/day), and have some problems, and have to buy another dedicated.

How to understand which hosting "is enough"? I was looking at http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated.shtml : do you think that a "basic" dedicated (or another server in another company with same performance) is ok?

Thank for help!

[VAYC]

www.timihosting.com (http://www.timihosting.com). Fast servers, and for a very cheap price. They can move your forum for you too.

[magnaromagna]

yes but... from which type of hosting I need to start with?

[eUKhost.com]

IMO, At this stage even a managed VPS would meet your requirements. VPS can handle 500-600 users online at a time.You can upgrade to a Dedicated Server as per your requirements.

[VAYC]

yes but... from which type of hosting I need to start with?

Start with a simple dedicated server so you can have all the resources to yourself. Pick cPanel as your control panel so you can easily manage your basic settings on your server. The rest, leave it to the hosting company to keep everything up for you.

[ChrisLM2001]

Questions for you are...

1. How comfortable are you working with *nix?
2. How comfortable are you with modding your server to get the most out of it.

If you're not comfortable with 1# or too busy to maintain a site, you'll need a managed solution. Costs more, but your server will be maintained by someone who is comfortable working on a *nix box, and they'll patch it and keep it online.

If you're comfortable with #2: pick up an average dedicated (C2D/2GB RAM/2x120GB RAID 1 SATA HDD/100mbps uplink) and rip Apache 2 out of the server and install another web server (that alone will help save you from going the $$$ cluster route too fast, as Apache is a resource hog).

One of the problems with forums is that as the connections increases, so do your resources needed to keep up, more so than static page serving websites. Forums are powered by a resource intensive database, and it will suck whatever you can throw at it. Add the common webserver Apache, and your up and coming forum will be begging for more CPU/Memory. Keep in mind, conventional treatments are profitable for webhosts, and they'll encourage you to keep adding frontends/load-balancers all around a fat dataserver. The alternative is to tweak what resources you have to make the most of your $$$/$$$$, all understanding that the other web server alternatives are still experimental (well at least in production environments).

This is what makes it so difficult to really chose your path. There's plenty of out-of-the-box solutions, just the ready-made solutions cost a boatload of money, even for *nix to scale.

So you have to decide your comfort level; finances; and time to achieve your goals. If you have the money, and want the best-of-the-best host, find a managed server host (i.e., Rackspace type). If you can maintain your own or need a little sys admin help, goto a unmanaged server host (i.e., The Planet). If you have a lot of time but little money, get an unmanaged server with the above average specs, and tweak it to squeesh every drop of performance out of it.

[forohosting]

www.timihosting.com (http://www.timihosting.com). Fast servers, and for a very cheap price. They can move your forum for you too.
Link dead :confused:

[VAYC]

It's fine on my end.

[DrinkOrDie]

it doesnt work here either.

[express]

If you are thinking about a P4 at least go with a 3.0 GHz not a 2.4 and 2 gig of ram that is upgradeable. Some P4's even though the motherboard specs shows 4 gig capable usually ends up with 3.2 to 3.8 gig of ram after 4 gig is installed. Maybe you should like at AMD's also which manage the ram better with socket 939, 940, or AM2 cpus.

Joey

[alemcherry]

With up to 500 users online, you may need a medium dedicated server. Hostgator is good, but doesnt seems to have too many options for dedicated hosting. I would recommend Liquidweb.