Dedicated Server Advantages

[See Interiors]

We currently use shared hosting through Heart Internet but I am getting fed up of their downtime due to other sites hosted on our server, we are getting an increasing level of downtime and mainly 503 errors due to overcapacity.

Will it be beneficial for us to switch to a dedicated server to firstly remove the downtime issue and secondly to speed up our website load time. The downtime is now getting to a point where it is losing us business.

Is there visible difference in load speeds between shared hosting and dedicated servers?

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Normally you would notice a significant difference between shared hosting & a dedicated server. That said, you may actually find that a dedicated server is a bit overkill and actually creates more work through maintenance etc.

You may be better considering a better shared hosting environment, or perhaps a VPS as a middle ground.

A dedicated server or VPS will require a bit more "management" than a shared hosting, but may be worth it depending on the site and any growth you may be expecting.

Do you know what sort of bandwidth & space usage you have at the moment?

 

[See Interiors]

Web Space is currently 8.3GB
Bandwidth 6GB

Site speed is the main concern of ours at the moment as our website is incredibly slow at times www.sointeriors.co.uk if you want to test it for yourself.

 

[FIZIX Agency]

I too would raise VPS as an option before shared hosting. Or better shared hosting is VPS is overkill.

In fairness Heart Internet are not the host they once were, there used to be praising sung for them and now there are less favorable statements. Shame when that happens really.

Anyway, a dedicated server would of course help with overcapacity due to other sites on the server taking up resources.

In theory you'll get more space, bandwidth, greater stability, a more secure server, a faster server and greater control; because it is your box and you are the only one using resources on it. Of course the cost is higher and you will have (in general) a greater administration burden as it's generally up to you to configure, setup and install stuff on it (depends on the host whether they will do this for you).

You can still have nightmares and problems with a dedicated server. Just as with using a poor shared host, a poor dedicated host will also give you headaches.


There is a middle ground in the form of virtual private servers (VPS) which is similar in setup to a dedicated server but is shared amongst other sites. You are in general sharing the server with fewer people (so more resources) and the architecture is different to shared hosting.

So it makes a logical stepping stone: Shared -> VPS -> Dedicated.

 

[See Interiors]

So we should see a decrease in site load times moving to a VPS also?

 

[FIZIX Agency]

On the speed issue; I notice you are running magento.

I know some people will disagree with me on this, but Magento is a pretty load bearing application and in general I and many others wouldn't recommend Magento on a shared host; unless its a very good host with favorable allowances and a low number of other sites per box (relative to server specs).

You can also optimise Magento, so it might be worth running through an optimisation checklist. I had a client once who was complaining that their Magento store was going slow and causing server drops (on a lower cost VPS in fact).

It turned out it was they who were causing the problem because the Magento cache and database had became knackered and it was unoptimised (it also had a few crappy extensions installed). Fixing the DB, clearing the cache and performing some optimisations fixed the problem never to return.

So it's worth running through a checklist anyway; to rule yourself out of the equation and you'll benefit from it anyway.

So we should see a decrease in site load times moving to a VPS also?

In theory, but if you use 1&1 for example; you'll expect problems. You need a solid, reliable host to back up the specs.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

As Fizix has said, Magento can be quite resource heavy - justifiably really as it does a lot.

But there are certain steps you can take which will optimise you platform you are using to make your site faster. There are specialist hosts that have platforms specifically designed for Magento. Or you could go down the VPS route which would give you the control to optimise your setup yourself (or someone you get to do it for you).

Having had a look at the site, I certainly don't think looking at the option of a VPS would be a bad choice.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

We currently use shared hosting through Heart Internet but I am getting fed up of their downtime due to other sites hosted on our server, we are getting an increasing level of downtime and mainly 503 errors due to overcapacity.

Will it be beneficial for us to switch to a dedicated server to firstly remove the downtime issue and secondly to speed up our website load time. The downtime is now getting to a point where it is losing us business.

Is there visible difference in load speeds between shared hosting and dedicated servers?

You have several options:

- Better shared hosting. Yes, it does exist but as others have said, choose a company comfortable with Magento and with lower loaded servers so you don't run into any resource issues. Resource issues could be caused by your site too so it's worth checking TOS/AUP documents for an idea of the limits

- VPS. You probably want management services if you are inexperienced at running a server (updating it, securing it, troubleshooting it etc). You should also choose a credible platform for your VPS as plenty of the ultra-cheap ones will also have resource issues as the underlying hardware will be heavily overloaded

- Dedicated server. Again, the same applies on the management side. On the hardware itself side, a server costing £39/month is probably going to be desktop grade and not server grade and you may run into future issues. Yes, those 5400 RPM drives might be cheaper than a 7200 RPM RE4 but are designed/warrantied for the constant use that the server grade drives are.

On a VPS/Dedicated you can fine tune Apache/the web server purely for Magento and see some significant performance gains.

HTH

Matt

 

[RedEvo]

Hosting is a right royal PITA. Today's great provider is tomorrows pariah. The only rock solid solution is to go with the true industry leaders but they come at a premium but may in the long run prove cost effective.

The issue is a hosting company generally only ensure the box is on and connected to the Internet - whatever their SLA says.

We run a combo of managed dedicated (£300/m) and shared reseller (£49/month). These costs are what we pay, not what we charge.

For what it's worth I wouldn't be without our dedicated box but find 'spreading the load' with the reseller account makes for fewer sleepless nights

d

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Hosting is a right royal PITA. Today's great provider is tomorrows pariah. The only rock solid solution is to go with the true industry leaders but they come at a premium but may in the long run prove cost effective.

The issue is a hosting company generally only ensure the box is on and connected to the Internet - whatever their SLA says.

We run a combo of managed dedicated (£300/m) and shared reseller (£49/month). These costs are what we pay, not what we charge.

For what it's worth I wouldn't be without our dedicated box but find 'spreading the load' with the reseller account makes for fewer sleepless nights

d

I see the point you're trying to make but don't wholeheartedly agree. The issue is that today's "great" host is more just a flavour of the month host on a specific forum or community, where someone has setup a 'hosting company' on a reseller account / crappy low end server or something similar and declares themselves to be a web host. They'll get a few of their friends to post in support of their operation and they'll talk of providing better support than anyone else. And in 3 months they'll have disappeared with the few grand they made through Paypal. Probably not declared income too.

Unfortunately this gives the industry a bad name and hurts the real hosts like ourselves that invest heavily into our operation. I do agree that choosing an established provider is a must but this isn't a hard and fast rule to live by. Just look at what is happening to 2e2 and all of the people left high and dry in their datacentre. So in this case, big doesn't = better.

Like you say, it's a good idea to to mitigate risk by spreading some of the load and not having all of your eggs in one basket. Whether that is done through using a provider's multiple locations, using multiple providers or other, it's good business practice for any site producing some degree of revenue.

And do have failover and failsafes in place. Do have a contingency plan for if the datacentre blows up. And do challenge a provider to put their money where their mouth is and offer you a good SLA.

Matt

 

[ukinsurance]

Well dedicated server offers sure and solid advantages as compared to shared hosting, there you have an entire server computer reserved for you, you are not sharing it with any body. So RAM, hard disk and processor is entirely yours for all the tasks.

So naturally this is a much quicker, efficient but expensive option. Moreover, it is easy to scale up, if your requirements increase.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Agree with everyone else that shared hosting + Magento are often not a great combo

It is possible to do all kinds of things to make Magento run faster however in terms of cost/benefit I would definitely splash some more cash on your hosting package first.

Jumping all the way to dedicated might be overkill initially. Better shared hosting is an option however some of the optimisations you can do to Magento are only really possible on some kind of dedicated (virtual dedicated or otherwise) hosting so a VPS is a realistic next step, perhaps with a host that are willing to move you to fully dedicated in the future should that be necessary

 

[linux]

In general VPS or dedicated server is a better option over shared hosting, but this is not always the case. Be aware of hardware and network limitations when shopping for a VPS or dedicated server.
There are many things to take in consideration, however to find a good ratio between specs/price you might want to have a look at Eastern EU providers.

 

[Ola1]

In my experience , the answer was yes, however, as others have said, you might be best off paying for a managed server. The number of things that could and do go wrong is interesting

VPS i am not a fan off, anymore. mine sufferred the same performance issue as shared hosting, in fact it became a joke when side by side testing showed that the shared hosting regularly beat vps for speed. Furthermore, my host improved the shared servers and I got rid of vps.

 

[cocodude]

One point bearing in mind is that there's always some point in any of these setups where there could be congestion. Moving up the shared hosting -> VPS -> dedicated route extracts you one layer at a time.

For instance:

• Shared hosting: People hosting sites on the same server are likely to affect you.
• VPS hosting: Other VPS customers could affect you (although I believe that a good virtualisation technology can shield you from most of this)
• Dedicated server hosting: Issues on adjacent servers or possibly others on the network (e.g. DDOS attacks) can affect you.

For your one site, which doesn't seem to require that much in the way of resources, you're probably better off finding a truly decent shared hosting provider. If you go down the VPS route, you have a lot more work to do in terms of server management, but if you have the skills then go for it!

 

[double_compute]

Taking into consideration your current usage (which is very small) best option will be to find better host. Server either virtual or dedicated will be waste of time and money.

 

[webstore]

Find a shared hosting provider who uses http://cloudlinux.com/whycl/

Each tenant is assigned a definitive resource limit CPU; No. Cores; RAM; I/O; etc that prevents sudden resource spikes from taking down the entire server.

 

[astutiumRob]

Each tenant is assigned a definitive resource limit CPU; No. Cores; RAM; I/O; etc

Which for Magento could the the worst possible thing to do!

 

[MartinD]

Which for Magento could the the worst possible thing to do!

^ This.

Far too many people jump on the "CloudLinux" bandwagon without realising it can do a lot more harm than good in many situations.

 

[webstore]

^ This.
Far too many people jump on the "CloudLinux" bandwagon without realising it can do a lot more harm than good in many situations.

We find CloudLinux most excellent when used in conjunction with cPanel.

When server loading is high we are quickly able to view sites using % CPU, % RAM, I/O etc and if a given site is being consistently 'processing resource greedy' we can quickly apply limits to that site so as to protect the other share hosted sites and likewise possibly suggest to the offending party that they might need to consider a dedicated server/ VPS.

We only apply such limits on a temporary basis and generally allow all sites access to full available resources.