vBulletin Hosting Upgrades and Advice

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  • The_Hawk
    Member
    • Aug 2008
    • 54
    • 4.0.0

    vBulletin Hosting Upgrades and Advice

    I'm looking at my current installation and am wondering when it's time to move to bigger and better hosting but am at a point where I'm starting to get lost when looking at the variou options I might have available.

    Shared vs VPS/VDS vs Dedicated vs ????
    Managed vs Not?

    I'd love to get in contact with someone local (in Australia) who understand not only vBulletin but also has some idea of the local hosting market and would be willing to play 20 questions with me to help work out the best solution. If anyone is interested in lending a hand shoot me a PM.
  • wave-rice
    Senior Member
    • Feb 2011
    • 445
    • 5.5.x

    #2
    Think of it like this, Shared hosting is for people starting out who don't expect a massive amount of traffic straight off the bat. VPS is a few steps above that and are usually faster and more efficent but they carry a higher price tag than Shared hosting. This is for people who have fairly medium amounts of traffic, users, posts and other things. Dedicated is for people who have large websites and are looking for performance.

    Managed or unmanaged depends on your knowledge of servers. If you know how to install packages, manipulate databases and other techniques, then unmanaged may be for you. However, if you've never done anything like that, then managed would be the way to go.
    Aakif Nazir

    Comment

    • The_Hawk
      Member
      • Aug 2008
      • 54
      • 4.0.0

      #3
      Thanks Aakif. As a concept I understand everything you have said, but where is the line in the sand? And even then, what resources are recommended for a given install.

      To start with the easy one, managed vs not, while I'm comfortable installing/upgrading packages and can tinker with the DB I'm by no means an expert and the management option is something I would likely take up. Even just from a security stand point I'd prefer someone who does that sort of thing for a living to ensure that any holes in the underlying system and patched leaving me less things to worry about.

      As for hosting options themselves...

      I currently have two SQL databases totaling about 1.5GB or so (wordpress + VB);
      ~22M or so hits a month (~150k unique);
      >200GB of traffic;
      With only a handful of email addresses and a total foot print under 3GB storage isn't an issue, although daily backup then requires at least 25GB if I limit myself to a 7 day rolling backup set.

      Of course the system is slowing growing, at the moment due to system storage limits we have images turned off and require users to use a third part system like Photobucket to host images, something I would like to change. (PS would be awesome if vBulletin would accept large files then auto resize them down to a configured max size on the fly giving the user the ability to use them within a post but also keep them in a gallery of some kind... but I digress).

      I assume that I'm in well and truly in the VPS space and possibly heading towards fully dedicated. Assuming VPS for the sake of discussion, what sort of specs should I be looking at? 2 Cores? 4? 1GB RAM, 2GB, 4GB?

      Comment

      • acwatts
        Senior Member
        • Aug 2005
        • 739
        • 3.8.x

        #4
        What are you on at the moment with those figures, I'm surprised you're not already on a dedicated server.

        Comment

        • GregUURL
          Member
          • May 2010
          • 62
          • 4.0.x

          #5
          T-Hawk, I think the issue is that the "line in sand" is not only different with every host, it's different with every site. Your site may be blazing fast on shared hosting with 175 concurrent users, in a non modded configuration.....However, that same site loaded with mods and being forced to re-size a MB or 2 of images with every page load, may not have the same zip.

          A vps is easy to "right size...just keep in mind that bringing images to your server could increase disk space requirements in short order. Band width shouldn't be an issue as a vps will come with a TB or 2.
          Greg
          www.urljet.com

          Comment

          • The_Hawk
            Member
            • Aug 2008
            • 54
            • 4.0.0

            #6
            Originally posted by acwatts
            What are you on at the moment with those figures, I'm surprised you're not already on a dedicated server.
            I'm currently on a shared setup, but it's a bit of a unique situation with hosting provided by an ISP who doesn't really do hosting so while it's shared I believe there isn't too much load on there (except of course for me). Whenever I talk to them they don't seem to worried about the load I cause. I believe I *should* move, but since I'm not hitting any real issues there hasn't been a "push"... yet :P

            Originally posted by GregUURL
            T-Hawk, I think the issue is that the "line in sand" is not only different with every host...
            I'll grant that it will differ, but even then some guidelines would be great to see even if they have little * at the end saying additional mods will slow things down etc etc.

            What I'd love to see is that 1/2/4/8 cores with 1/2/4/8GB RAM are recommended to run a vBulletin instance with xxxxx stats.


            Originally posted by GregUURL
            Band width shouldn't be an issue as a vps will come with a TB or 2.
            Except of course if you are in Australia and looking for local hosting :P
            I am really starting to wonder if local really makes that much of a difference. Support hours may be a pain (if not 24/7) but then the cost differential can be pretty big.



            Like I said in the OP, would be great to find a knowledgeable local Australian person who could give appropriate local advice.
            Last edited by The_Hawk; Mon 10 Sep '12, 2:59am.

            Comment

            • George L
              Former vBulletin Support
              • May 2000
              • 32996
              • 3.8.x

              #7
              Unfortunately, despite being an Aussie, web hosting is expensive here.

              I personally use wiredtree.com for my VPS/servers for my forums. But if you're really needing an Australian based web host expect to pay more per month compared to USA based web hosts as you may know everything is more expensive in Australia

              You might want to check out http://www.serversaustralia.com.au/virtualservers.php - haven't personally used them myself but only realised recently a long time fellow forum member on a hardware enthuiast forum i also frequent is the owner of http://www.serversaustralia.com.au so decided to see their offerings and for Australian based web host prices and offerings seem relatively decent. Of course we Aussies pay alot more for our bandwidth

              They currently have 20% off discount http://www.serversaustralia.com.au/s...ial-offers.php special ends today !

              i.e. E5 2 cpu, 1GB, 25GB storage + 10GB backup space and 200GB bandwidth for AUD$36.76/month

              As to recommendations, you may want to head over to Server Configuration forum https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/foru...-Configuration. Start a new thread in that forum with info asked at https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...sts-13-07-2011. If you have CentOS/RHEL or Debian OS based server you can also use mysqlmymonlite.sh to gather all info required. With the info, we can probably give you more educated guestimate as to what type of hosting server and configuration you would require or what optimisations are needed on server end. How to install and use mysqlmymonlite.sh video http://mysqlmymon.com/#video

              If you want to regularly monitor stats, in the mysqlmymonlite.zip file there's a readme.txt file which explains how to setup a regular cron job to schedule gathering and saving stats to timestamped text files, i.e. every 1hr logging so you can see how your server stats are every 1hr throughout the day
              :: Always Back Up Forum Database + Attachments BEFORE upgrading !
              :: Nginx SPDY SSL - World Flags Demo [video results]
              :: vBulletin hacked forums: Clean Up Guide for VPS/Dedicated hosting users [ vbulletin.com blog summary ]

              Comment

              • alemcherry
                Senior Member
                • Jun 2006
                • 415

                #8
                22M or so hits a month is a lot. Are you sure you are talking about page views or hits (which could me misleading and could be 10-20 or more times the page views, as every page calls many images / css files etc). One of the better ways to come up with a reasonable estimate is from number of online users at peak time. If you have something more than 250-300, you will need a dedicated server (that is from my experience, each site could be different). You will also have to consider the load from the WP part of your site as well.

                My feeling is that you will need a dedicated server, VPS may not be enough. If you are okay with hosts from outside your country, try URLjet. They are expensive, but should be able to help you find the right solution.

                For VPS, I think the most popular option here is Wiredtree. If you are getting VPS / Dedicated server, I strongly recommend a managed server, unless you have the time and skills to manage a server. Most webmasters would prefer spending their time managing the community.
                Hosting Coupons: Hostmonster @ $3.95 and 20% off Mediatemple

                Comment

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