Posted by RKopacz on February 14, 2013 at 9:31pm
I am looking to migrate a client with 10,000 page views per month (which is quiclky moving toward a 15,000 to 20,000 page view / month traffic profile) to a HostGator dedicated server. I have had good experiences with HostGator shared hosting and very good interactions with their sales professionals and tech support.
Anybody have any guidance as HostGator dedicated servers or VPSs, and does anybody have any alternatively recommendations? Client is currently experiencing high CPU load on current server (quad core and 4 Gig of RAM) and feels the need to upgrade, but the current supplier does not offer a lot of extras on the server (such as opcode caching, etc.).
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Comments
10k or 50k of pageviews on
10k or 50k of pageviews on month, that should work without problem on 4GB ram and quad core?
One site which i have build with > 200k unique users on month, runs on VPS (2GB RAM / 2 core ), and now we are upgrading to 4GB ram.
What type of cache are using? Do he have ability for Memcache ? (i see that opcode caching is not option?)
You should use VPS with 2-4GB RAM, 2CPU cores, memcache + APC, and should work great. How much addon modules is there? What kind of site is in question?
I agree. I have 2 sites
I agree. I have 2 sites running on a small Linode (512) and combined they get 10,000 pv per month. I had one month where one of the sites got over 30,000 pvs in a 24 hour period and never had a problem. The sites are rather lightweight as far as modules go, plus I'm running APC and Varnish, but it works great.
I would try and determine what is making the site use so much processing power. Usually checking queries is a good place to start.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
Thank you
Thank you for your responses. The specific problem is that current VPS provider does not offer APC or Memchache. That was a big surprise, and caused a big problem. We were getting daily crashes because of CPU overload. Boost helped take the heat off, but I would like to have at least APC for boot and suspenders protection.
I think we are getting dedicated server for price of current 4 core 4 Gig, VPS. shows you the wide difference between providers.
APC would be the big boost.
APC would be the big boost. Actually on a single server, you don't even need Memcache. You can use APC's user caching instead, which is much faster than Memcache.
My only experience with HostGator for dedicated wasn't that great. It's been about 7 years ago, but their dedicated server (can't remember the specs) couldn't handle a 30,000 pv/day Wordpress blog.
I tend to go more towards vanilla dedicated servers. Give me the OS and let me install and configure what I want, how I want it. On that front I recommend Internap (which bought Voxel, who I always recommended). They give you the server and just their monitoring software is installed. That and you also get free use of their CDN. They aren't the cheapest, but their service is great.
I would still look into the Drupal installation to see if there's anything using excessive CPU. If the database is on the same server, there's a chance you got some view or something in there doing a heavy query that isn't indexed well.
Something else to check is that the query cache is turned on in MySQL. It's very common for it not to be turned on, unless you changed the config to have it on. It depends on how your current VPS is set up and what you have access to (which doesn't seem like much).
Instead of Boost, I would go with Varnish on the new server. There's threads in this group on setting that up. It is one of the best performance boosters you can get for anonymous visitors.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
Thanks
Thanks for your rec. first I need to clarify that we are getting 10,000 per day, not month, and yes, the problem is that Varnish, APC memcache, none of those tools are available with the current provider, which caught me by surprise. This is a client VPS, but even my dinky, personal VPS will provide APC on request at no charge.
Query cache in MySQL is an interesting idea. Is that a config on the Drupal side or the server side? If you could give me a link with tuts / guidelines I would be very appreciative.
Incidentally, all views are cached, and the main hits are to the front page and single node displays.
It makes a little more sense
It makes a little more sense to run into problems at 10,000/per day.
The query cache is enabled in the MySQL configuration file. You can check if it is there by running this query:
SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Qcache%';
That will give inserts, hits, etc. If it isn't on, then you'll probably have to contact the host to get them to switch it on, since that does require root level permissions.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
It's 10,000 per day, not per month
apologies to all, it is not 10,000 per month but 10,000 per day. Moving to fast we are having continual problems with the hosting company and I am getting wiped out by all this.
I agree with Jamie's
I agree with Jamie's suggestions above. Not having APC requires CPU use on every request to parse PHP files into PHP opcodes.
Lots of hosting providers out there offer managed packages with Varnish and APC on them:
I would suggest that you look
I would suggest that you look at BOA
groups.drupal.org/boa
it is a optimised, multi-site drupal hosting with all the caching already done. Easy to install. Easy to maintain. Easy to update. With backups built in.
My second suggestion is to run with a VPS - rather than a full dedicated server. As you need more resources, you can just upgrade the underlying power without need to reinstall.
I always check out this
I always check out this website before buying hosting - www.url-store.com - My personal favourite is godaddy because they're the simplest and usually the cheapest for new hosting packages.
I always check out this
I always check out this website before buying hosting - www.url-store.com - My personal favourite is godaddy because they're the simplest and usually the cheapest for new hosting packages.
I have my own servers
After my own servers I like BlueHost/Hypermart/bizland/ipowerweb/ipage (they are one company).
Note some bias as I had a business relationship and they also sponsor events.
Hostgator Dedi
I run an ecommerce store on Hostgators dedi running magento. Theyre pretty good servers I have never had an issue with em. Especially if you can save a little money on a dedi http://www.webhostingquery.com/hostgator-9-94-off-hosting-packages/
There support is pretty damn good too.
All of our sites run on
All of our sites run on HostGator dedicated server (basic plan). There's one that was built using Ruby on Rails, 1 in KohanaPHP and three others running Drupal. All this in just one dedicated server. I requested them to install APC (which comes at $75 installation fee) but the problem is they need to change the PHP handler to DSO since using fastCGI with Apache and APC doesn't help much. See this thread right here where I seek for help configuring my then slow website : http://groups.drupal.org/node/202328
The sites are all using Drupal 6 (i know, d7 is still in beta stage when we developed the sites) so i have to apply the performance-related patches found here :
http://groups.drupal.org/node/187209
I would have wanted to use Nginx but they said they don't really support.