At what stage would shared hosting be insufficient for a Website

pwd

At what point would you need to move a Website to VPS or a dedicated server?
I'm talking about bandwidth/resource usage only; not referring to needing direct server access for development tasks or configuration etc.

TouchingVirus

Without sounding smart, wouldn't it be when the bandwidth/resource usage doesn't meet your needs and an increase to the shared resources becomes uneconomical given that the VPS/Dedicated server options are cheaper?

Webmonkey

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Without sounding smart, wouldn't it be when the bandwidth/resource usage doesn't meet your needs and an increase to the shared resources becomes uneconomical given that the VPS/Dedicated server options are cheaper?

Yeah, you'll know when shared isn't enough. Just wait until then.

pwd

I need to project costs.
Would it be as straightforward as just staying on shared hosting until your traffic reaches the limit?
Or would you run into issues, such as throttled bandwidth/cpu at busy times, before that point?

techguy

I suppose it depends on the other sites you are sharing the server with.

Are the other sites very hard on system resources and so they reach peak traffic at the same time as yours.

While you may never reach your storage/bandwidth quotas your site may become unusable if it gets high traffic and or the other sites on server are getting high traffic..

If you can project traffic/hits to your site (tough one) it will make projecting costs a breeze..

What does your site entail?

pwd

Silverlight applications, calling webservices on server; web application running on server, connects to sql server database running on server. Can't go into any detail as I am under an NDA. Runs fine on the shared hosting when there are only a few people accessing it at a time.

Boskonay

It might be worth testing the app on the shared hosting platform to give you a feel for what kind of user concurrency you need to start noticing slowdowns or problems?

The other side of shared hosting of course is the lack of SLAs (Service level agreements) meaning you've no come back if there are issues, downtime or problems.

If the site is generating money, or critical to a business, VOS/Dedicated options are the way to go.

pwd

Doubt it will be possible to organise enough users to test concurrency until it is made generally available (which will be too late really), as access needs to be restricted for the time being. Probably need to just switch to VPS before that point to avoid unnecessary risks.

Boskonay

One benefit of a VPS/Cloud option is that you can start small (around the price of shared hosting) but then grow resources up to dedicated server levels without having to move the site again...

I use http://dediserve.com for my own sites.

amen

Doubt it will be possible to organise enough users to test concurrency

you don't need to. You could write code to simulate the users or I believe MS have a tool for doing this.


you can also thottle bandwidth

stvincent

or you could use "The Grinder" or JMeter. I'd use the former. Only way you can know the load you can support, for sure, is through load/stress testing.

CuLT

Boskonay wrote: »

One benefit of a VPS/Cloud option is that you can start small (around the price of shared hosting) but then grow resources up to dedicated server levels without having to move the site again...

I use http://dediserve.com for my own sites.

You've only a few posts, and two of them are recommending Dediserve (including this one); don't suppose you could clear up whether you have any connection to the company?

Evil Phil

Yes, Boskonay, I'm going to need some clarification on your recommendations of dediserve too. Do you work for them?

jimmycrackcorm

I don't see how dediserve are anything other than another virtual server provider. I didn't see anything on their site that explains how to manage cloud scalability. You might as well stick to using Amazon cloud for scalability