I am currently hosted with Godaddy's shared hosting packages, and I administrate 76 websites (some being my own, some being my fathers and the rest being friends that pay me to do it for them).

 

However I am honestly starting to get sick of their horrible support, bloated and slow website, and their overcrowded servers.

 

I think I am going to turn around and go for a Virtual private server (VPS) so I can manage all 76 websites in one place easily and still have speed.

 

I'm looking for a UK based VPS with cPanel/WHM, let me know if you have any suggestions. The host must include free transfers because when it comes to hosting I am not the best. I'm looking to have a host by tomorrow as my Godaddy expires in about 4 days.

 

I appreciate any suggestions, why must it be so hard to find a host

 

~ John

Edited March 6, 201115 yr by JJ Johnson

why must it be so hard to find a host

Because there are so many around?!

 

Bear in mind that with your own server (VPS or dedicated), you are going to be responsible for maintaining that server - even though it may come installed with cPanel for daily administration. If something locks up (including cPanel itself), almost no providers will fix it for you - for the low prices, almost all VPSs you'll find are unmanaged, and expect to pay considerably more for managed. Don't forget a regular backup schedule too - don't expect your host to backup your VPS at all, or at least as regularly as you may require.

 

You also need to know what specifications of server you need, particularly with respect to CPU and RAM (disk space and bandwidth should be easy for you, taken from your existing hosting). If you get a VPS with too little RAM, expect your Web server and/or control panel to seriously struggle. Too little CPU, and your processor intensive/database sites will load slowly. Incidentally, this is rarely a problem on a dedicated server because of all the resources at your disposal, but obviously this is more costly.

 

My preference is for Xen or KVM virtual machines, and not Virtuozzo or OpenVZ - reason being that the latter impose awkward artificial constraints on number of open files, sockets, kernel memory and virtual memory. I've had Web and mail servers terminated inside OpenVZ containers before under heavy unexpected load - the same has never been true in Xen or KVM.

 

Those are just a few thoughts to bear in mind since you say "when it comes to hosting I am not the best", particularly since you want a quick fix. Either you need to find a company willing to assist you on a personal level (none of the big names will), or perhaps look at a more managed alternative like reseller shared hosting from a decent host?

 

Do you have a budget / what are you paying now for everything?

Edited March 6, 201115 yr by Connetu_C

Because there are so many around?!

 

Bear in mind that with your own server (VPS or dedicated), you are going to be responsible for maintaining that server - even though it may come installed with cPanel for daily administration. If something locks up (including cPanel itself), almost no providers will fix it for you - for the low prices, almost all VPSs you'll find are unmanaged, and expect to pay considerably more for managed. Don't forget a regular backup schedule too - don't expect your host to backup your VPS at all, or at least as regularly as you may require.

 

You also need to know what specifications of server you need, particularly with respect to CPU and RAM (disk space and bandwidth should be easy for you, taken from your existing hosting). If you get a VPS with too little RAM, expect your Web server and/or control panel to seriously struggle. Too little CPU, and your processor intensive/database sites will load slowly. Incidentally, this is rarely a problem on a dedicated server because of all the resources at your disposal, but obviously this is more costly.

 

My preference is for Xen or KVM virtual machines, and not Virtuozzo or OpenVZ - reason being that the latter impose awkward artificial constraints on number of open files, sockets, kernel memory and virtual memory. I've had Web and mail servers terminated inside OpenVZ containers before under heavy unexpected load - the same has never been true in Xen or KVM.

 

Those are just a few thoughts to bear in mind since you say "when it comes to hosting I am not the best", particularly since you want a quick fix. Either you need to find a company willing to assist you on a personal level (none of the big names will), or perhaps look at a more managed alternative like reseller shared hosting from a decent host?

 

Do you have a budget / what are you paying now for everything?

 

 

Great post +1'd

 

This is definitely my worry with regards to a VPS/Dedicated setup - The management side of things.

 

They're quite a few members on here that have a VPS setup right?

Who are you hosted with, and what are they like?

Price info would be great also.

Hey Guys

 

76 Websites + VPS definately will never = Speed... A VPS isnt designed to deliver content quickly, is a fraction of a real server, and as such, the weakest link is the disk input/output, so even if it had a million hard drives, that data still has to get through the BUS on the systemboard, and with multiple operating systems and control panels fighting for it, things will not be as fast as a normal (non-oversold)

 

I think what might be better for you is NOT a VPS at all, with 76 websites, you have enough to do already, but maybe just use a host that doesnt oversell anything, who you can reach on the phone or in person and actually talk to, then you will see what speed is all about :-)

 

Take a look at our shared plans for example, you can put 11 websites on 1 shared account too :-)

76 Websites + VPS definately will never = Speed... A VPS isnt designed to deliver content quickly, is a fraction of a real server, and as such, the weakest link is the disk input/output

In my opinion, it depends. Example: we run most of our internal services virtualised (in a "cloud" as it were). Each VM is assigned its own 2GHz+ core and at least 1GB RAM. Aside from CPU cache misses, this works very well - better guaranteed resources for each application than on a shared server, and we ensure enough is available. We benefit from consolidation of hardware, power, wasted CPU cycles and RAM segments, improving efficiency.

 

In addition, files are cached by Linux in RAM - so it doesn't matter that the underlying hard drives are shared between VMs, as most static resources are being buffered in the VM RAM anyway, so are fast (much faster than dedicated hard drive in fact). Intensive disk I/O (usually very busy databases) is where VMs will bottleneck - for everything else they're usually as good, if not better (due to superior hardware), than a budget dedicated solution. Obviously if you're not paying for larger RAM allocations, that will decrease performance - RAM is basically the most important factor for a VPS with decent performance.

 

It's all highly dependent. To say VMs will never be speedy is relative as technology progresses: today's VMs (done right) are superior to the dedicated servers of 5 years ago.

I know, but I'm getting a managed VPS where the provider is going to administrate the technical side for me.

 

I'm looking at a powerful 1-2 GB RAM VPS so it should be able to handle my sites well, and going to ask the provider to provide optimizations and possibly configure nginx to work with cPanel for me.

Ok well I decided to go with VPSLatch.net, picked up their fully managed 2 GB package located in the UK. It comes with free cPanel/WHM and I had experience with cPanel from Hostgator before. I'll keep you guys updated with how everything goes.

Ok well I decided to go with VPSLatch.net, picked up their fully managed 2 GB package located in the UK. It comes with free cPanel/WHM and I had experience with cPanel from Hostgator before. I'll keep you guys updated with how everything goes.

 

Thats good news to know your got the host, I still afraid that 76 sites wont perform that well on a VPS server, So will require dedicated Hardware resources, in VPS the hardware resources are virtually shared by other VPS on the node.

Ok well I decided to go with VPSLatch.net, picked up their fully managed 2 GB package located in the UK. It comes with free cPanel/WHM and I had experience with cPanel from Hostgator before. I'll keep you guys updated with how everything goes.

Yes, please do let us know how you get on. I'm particularly intrigued that their marketing promotes unlimited (no time limits) access to managed support, at a budget VPS price. Since expert skills are expensive, I'm curious how they can cope with demand or will be able to scale out on the existing pricing model. Be interesting to know how you find their reliability and support.

Yes, please do let us know how you get on. I'm particularly intrigued that their marketing promotes unlimited (no time limits) access to managed support, at a budget VPS price. Since expert skills are expensive, I'm curious how they can cope with demand or will be able to scale out on the existing pricing model. Be interesting to know how you find their reliability and support.

So far everything has been great, support has helped me configured the server to meet my script's requirements and it took them less than 30 minutes to do.

 

Today I'm going to ask them to migrate my websites and see how they go, will keep this thread posted

 

So far I'm happy with VPSLatch.

Today I'm going to ask them to migrate my websites and see how they go, will keep this thread posted

 

So how did the web site migration go?