Any suggestions on a dedicated server for a large board?

[RakimAllah]

Hello,


I run a forum with 50,000+ members receiving 80,000+ unique visits per day. According to ezboard, our current host, our data transfer is around 80,000 MB per day - and that's without any image hosting.

Can anyone recommend a good dedicated webhosting solution for a community of this size?

Any suggestions or advice on shopping for a host that would meet our needs?


Thanks in advance!

[Interdit]

*In Europe, USA ?
*How many users online at the same time ?
*With Cpanel ?

[Lynne]

That sounds like just a bit smaller than our board. We were on a Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz machine - all specs here. We just recently had to move to a two server configuration (two of second configuration servers listed in post 6). We are very happy with our new two server configuration.

[RakimAllah]

*In Europe, USA ?
*How many users online at the same time ?
*With Cpanel ?

We're based in the US.

Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing how many users are accessing the site simultaneously at any given moment with ezboard, but at peak we've had well over 1,000 people on within a ten-fifteen minute span.

We've been running on ezboard since 1999 and most of our staff, myself included, are essentially unversed in the technical nuances of webhosting - so we probably will need something with Cpanel. We'll need all the help we can get with the technical stuff. Our experience is in forum management rather than hosting, but ezboard's dragging its feet on the new "Yuku" platform and we're having all sorts of problems with their recently appointed CEO so we may have to take on hosting responsibilities ourselves. We've been looking to go independent for awhile now, but it's proving very difficult to make that transition.


U2Lynne: Thanks for your reply! If you don't mind my asking, how much are you paying per month for your current setup and what webhost are you using? We've tried asking a bunch of different forum operators what they're using and what it costs, but everyone acts like it's some sort of trade secret...

[Lynne]

U2Lynne: Thanks for your reply! If you don't mind my asking, how much are you paying per month for your current setup and what webhost are you using? We've tried asking a bunch of different forum operators what they're using and what it costs, but everyone acts like it's some sort of trade secret...

We are hosted at Quickpacket.com . When we had a single dedicated server, I paid $189/month and I paid straight up for the extra 1 GB of memory. For the two server configuration, we choose to pay a bit extra up-front and now pay $238/month for the servers. Our breakeven point for the extra we put upfront is around 5-6 months. (If I recall, we paid an extra $250 per server upfront to have our bill cut down by $50/server per month - or something like that). Server costs shouldn't really be a secret, but as I mentioned, I had several options on how to pay for it - no upfront costs with higher monthly costs or high upfront costs with low monthly costs. So, you kinda have to work it out with the host. I've been with this host since we started the site back in November 2004 and they've been real good to me.

[RakimAllah]

We are hosted at Quickpacket.com . When we had a single dedicated server, I paid $189/month and I paid straight up for the extra 1 GB of memory. For the two server configuration, we choose to pay a bit extra up-front and now pay $238/month for the servers.

$238 per month for both servers? Wow. If I told you how much I was paying ezboard right now under a revenue share agreement you'd probably scream.

I keep hearing that it's going to cost in the thousands to run an equivalent host given our bandwidth consumption. According to their website, we'd probably need to move up to the unmetered solution to avoid overages, but I'm a bit wary of "unlimited" webhosts. If we could get everything we need for $500 a month, that would be amazing. Frontloading those additional costs would be no problem considering what we're paying now.

How has the security and uptime been for you? A number of other boards I'm familiar with have been hacked recently and we're not exactly experts on the tech side. We're looking for something that we don't even have to worry about once the initial configuration is complete, so we can focus on managing the forums and revenue streams.

Is it difficult to use a multiple server setup? I imagine the database itself has to be on a single server to avoid conflicts/redundancy issues. For the sake of reducing load times, though, it sounds like that's the way to go.

[Knight Rider]

You could get a good dedicated server at hostgator with 4 gigs of ram and 2500gb b/w for $439 a month. That should be enough bandwidth.

[needhelp338]

To U2Lynne

We are hosted at Quickpacket.com . When we had a single dedicated server, I paid $189/month and I paid straight up for the extra 1 GB of memory. For the two server configuration, we choose to pay a bit extra up-front and now pay $238/month for the servers. Our breakeven point for the extra we put upfront is around 5-6 months. (If I recall, we paid an extra $250 per server upfront to have our bill cut down by $50/server per month - or something like that). Server costs shouldn't really be a secret, but as I mentioned, I had several options on how to pay for it - no upfront costs with higher monthly costs or high upfront costs with low monthly costs. So, you kinda have to work it out with the host. I've been with this host since we started the site back in November 2004 and they've been real good to me.

U2Lynne can you tell me why TWO servers ? Are you saying you have TWO physically seperate servers running the same website ?

I am shopping for a dedicated server, any help would be appreciated.

thanks

[WireNine.com]

Go with a powerful server from SoftLayer.com, you can go as powerful as your budget allows you to

The support and service are both top-notch!

[Sicloan]

U2Lynne can you tell me why TWO servers ? Are you saying you have TWO physically seperate servers running the same website ?

I am shopping for a dedicated server, any help would be appreciated.

thanks

The reason for getting two servers would be to separate the database from the file server. This can decrease load times because each server is responsible for 1 function.

[Kirsebom]

So is there a company on the internet that would handle something like this and manage it? I'm stupid when it comes to anything but cPanel and I imagine that I would not want cPanel if I had 2 servers running side by side, correct?

Any recommended companies for this?