Would you consider VPS as an upgrade over Shared Hosting?

[The_Big_K]

Hello,

I'm stuck. I recently upgraded my forum to VPS hosting after being on the shared hosting for a long time. The forums are getting popular every day and attracting lot of visitors. I was approaching limits setup by the shared hosting environment and needed an upgrade.

I got 800 GB bandwidth and about 50GB of hard-disk space. The site went down for 50 simultaneous connections from an IP. My web host says

"Typically if a shared account has to be moved off a shared server due to high resource usage we do not recommend a VPS."


I moved to VPS thinking that VPS would be an upgrade over shared hosting. Now I'm thinking I was far more happy with shared hosting [provided by the same web host].


What's your take on this? Do you think a VPS is an upgrade over shared hosting environment? Or I should have directly moved to Dedicated Server?


Thanks.

[Wayne Luke]

A Virtualized VPS is typically an upgrade from Shared Hosting. This is because resources are allocated through the virtualization software. When you hit your limits, it affects your site but you can't steal from your neighbors. Beware of companies selling VPS packages that are really glorified shared hosting or semi-dedicated packages. If they don't give you root access to your own shard, than it isn't a VPS.

Your particular hosting provider wants you to upgrade to a dedicated because it is more profitable for them or they overload their VPS servers as well.

[Jedito]

A Virtualized VPS is typically an upgrade from Shared Hosting. This is because resources are allocated through the virtualization software.

This usually depend a lot of how much you pay, also, a VPS could be considered a "tiny" dedicated server, once you reach your limits of CPU/RAM you can't go over unless the VPS have another burstable limit, however, you can't use that limit all the time.
I do not necessarily consider a VPS as an upgrade of a shared account, I would consider more a VPS for people who want to enjoy the power of being root without the costs and needs of a full dedicated server.

[Abomination]

This particular topic is of great interest to me at the moment. Based on everything I've read I'm not sure there is any point to a VPS for our application. Seems shared hosting is working well at the moment because it can get additional (steal) resources when needed, dedicated might be the next step (for us).

I do not necessarily consider a VPS as an upgrade of a shared account, I would consider more a VPS for people who want to enjoy the power of being root without the costs and needs of a full dedicated server.

When you hit your limits, it affects your site but you can't steal from your neighbors.

So for us, no VPS would not be an upgrade over shared.

[The_Big_K]

Thanks a ton for your responses, guys!

I realized what you're saying after I made an upgrade. My shared hosting account would work fine even for ~600 simultaneous visitors.

After upgrade to VPS, I got about 400-450 simultaneous visitors and the site was shut off for some time [the RAM touched 512 MB].

[bigwater]

50 simultaneous connections from the same IP? Hmmm....

[The_Big_K]

50 simultaneous connections from the same IP? Hmmm....

Right. Could be a bunch of students logging in from college or professionals from a company.

...that's possible, right? Or not?

[Abomination]

"Typically if a shared account has to be moved off a shared server due to high resource usage we do not recommend a VPS."

My question is when does your host recommend VPS over shared?

[The_Big_K]

My question is when does your host recommend VPS over shared?

I don't know. I never asked them; I guess I should have!

I guess VPS would be recommended when the site demands more disk-space and bandwidth but not high CPU/RAM. I'm guessing wordpress doesn't consume lot of RAM/CPU.

But one may need lot of space to store video/images/files/backups. In that case, VPS is the ideal choice.

What say you?

[Wayne Luke]

After upgrade to VPS, I got about 400-450 simultaneous visitors and the site was shut off for some time [the RAM touched 512 MB].

I would consider 518 Megabytes a little low. Mine is currently at 768 MB which I still consider low but burstable to 1.5 GB which is acceptable. As traffic increases, I'll increase the memory and bandwidth through the hosting company's upgrade process. I only have their basic VPS now but it is what I need for the sites. I can upgrade my VPS to the point where I have 2 guaranteed CPU cores and 8 GB of RAM before I need to go dedicated. Since I have managed hosting, Dedicated is quite pricy compared to unmanaged.

[Abomination]

I don't know. I never asked them; I guess I should have!

I guess VPS would be recommended when the site demands more disk-space and bandwidth but not high CPU/RAM. I'm guessing wordpress doesn't consume lot of RAM/CPU.

But one may need lot of space to store video/images/files/backups. In that case, VPS is the ideal choice.

What say you?

I say send them an email and ask, because I am curious

Right. Could be a bunch of students logging in from college or professionals from a company.

...that's possible, right? Or not?

That is my take, a whole lot of people hammering your site from 1 ip address, it could be benign or malicious (if it was a computer program). I thought yahoo used to send many spiders all at once to sites a while ago as an example, I'm not sure if they still do that.

As you can tell by the way I type, I'm not an expert.

edit: if you are getting many visitors from 1 IP then they could be human, if you are getting 50 actual connects which open and close quite quickly then that almost certainly means it is automated (non-human).

[The_Big_K]

I would consider 518 Megabytes a little low. Mine is currently at 768 MB which I still consider low but burstable to 1.5 GB which is acceptable. As traffic increases, I'll increase the memory and bandwidth through the hosting company's upgrade process. I only have their basic VPS now but it is what I need for the sites. I can upgrade my VPS to the point where I have 2 guaranteed CPU cores and 8 GB of RAM before I need to go dedicated. Since I have managed hosting, Dedicated is quite pricy compared to unmanaged.

768 MB for basic VPS is quite good. I'm sticking with my host because I quite like them for their support. They charge bit more but it's worth considering their support.

I'm not sure what should be my next step. Whether I should upgrade to VPS with 1GB RAM; but I'm not sure if the CPU would handle the load. VPS with 1GB costs me about $90/month. I don't want to go for dedicated right away.

[bigwater]

My flippant response seems unwarranted now, but still, there's no reason you should be getting hammerd by 50 simultaneous connections from the same IP. This is a server management issue. Is your VPS host managed or self managed? Either way, somebody needs to sharpen their pencil.

[Ray Morgan]

I would consider 518 Megabytes a little low. Mine is currently at 768 MB which I still consider low but burstable to 1.5 GB which is acceptable. As traffic increases, I'll increase the memory and bandwidth through the hosting company's upgrade process. I only have their basic VPS now but it is what I need for the sites. I can upgrade my VPS to the point where I have 2 guaranteed CPU cores and 8 GB of RAM before I need to go dedicated. Since I have managed hosting, Dedicated is quite pricy compared to unmanaged.

Asking specifically about RAM is a good suggestion, as it's one corner that's frequently cut on VPSs and not published as visibly as factors like storage and bandwidth.

[bigwater]

Agreed, but 518 MB of ram should be able to handle your average traffic for 50 (and a lot mre) connections easy. Your average connection grabs a k or two, keeps it for a few milliseconds, and releases it IF the server is managed properly. This sounds like a server optimization question.