When does a site require dedicated servers?

C

chatterbox

New member
Someone asked me this and I honestly don't have a clue on any specifics to give her. I was asked "how big do I need to get and how much traffic daily before I should upgrade to a dedicated server?" If anyone can give me some specific guidelines, I would very much appreciate it.
 
Well,

I believe renting a dedicated server is needed when you feel like your site required dedicated (Not shared) resources. You consider this if an immediate response time is the key for your business to survive. You can't afford to have even a few minutes down time which is too common on shared hosting.

I hope this will help,

Thanks,

Mike
 
The answer depends on the server they're on, how many other clients are on it, the CPU and bandwidth usage of those other clients, and so forth. These are not things that she'd be able to find out on her own. Few shared web hosts will tell clients how many other accounts are on the server with them, or will share information about other accounts' usage and traffic.

If you're running a lot of CPU-intensive scripts and have high site traffic, you may be ready for a dedicated server.

If you want to be the only one on the server so that no one else's site performance can impact your site's performance - or if you want to have true security, knowing that you're the only one on the server and no one else can access it - you may be ready for a dedicated server. (It's possible to find a good dedicated managed server, if you don't know how to administer a server. This can save you lots of headaches.)

If you want to have full server resources at your command (want root access), or want to make hosting reseller accounts available, you will want to move to a dedicated server...but this last point may not even address your question at all. I put it here, just in case...
 
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It depends on the resources which the website consumes. You can have thousands visitors on shared web host if you run website containing only HTML files. If you run something like forum, you will need more resources.

So there is no way how to exactly answer your question. But there is the best way how to find the ideal time to upgrade -- start with shared hosting service which offers CPU usage stats. You will see how much resources your site needs and when necessary you can upgrade to VPS. Then again watch the CPU usage statistics and upgrade to dedicated server when you will need additional resources.
 
I believe you should move to dedicated server when you have outgrown a VPS hosting solution. Generally, I suggest a path of Shared -> VPS -> Dedicated to the customers and this can be known when the application performance starts degrading at any of the above levels.
 
The deadline of when It should happen is when a host tells you that you have extended some resources, and therefore your account is limited with a rights... This also means you need to change a host.
 
okay, so I still don't know...lol

In other words, you guys are telling me that it's not just how much resources my friend uses but everyone else on the server with her? There are more factors here than I realized but I will tell her what you've told me about monitoring usage and advise her to talk to her host if she's pushing her limits.
 
Yes, that's correct.

If your friend is on a server with a large hard drive, dual CPUs, and not too many users - she will effectively be able to use more CPU resources and have a busier site (both in terms of CPU usage and traffic) than she would if she were on a less robust and / or more crowded server.

Even if she's on a hosting plan that allows her a large amount of bandwidth, if she exceeds a certain percentage of CPU usage, the host may ask her to upgrade to a dedicated server - though ideally that shouldn't be the host's first method used to deal with the problem. If the host can just move your friend's account to a less crowded server, that would let your friend keep the same hosting plan and not pay more while her host's other customers would not (presumably) have the negative impact of a high-traffic/resource-intensive site slowing down the server for everyone.

Keep in mind, though, that if she's using 5% of the CPU resources (just to pick a random number) on an occasional, short-term basis - the host still may ask her to upgrade if that 5% is regular enough, and of a long enough duration, as to significantly impact the other customers' sites' performance. The "red-flag" percentage may vary from host to host, and even possibly from server to server.
 
If performance is bad on shared hosting, its time to upgrade to a VPS.

If performance is bad on a VPS, its time to upgrade to a large dedicated server.
 
If performance is bad on shared hosting, its time to upgrade to a VPS.
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If she do not overload the server and overloading was caused by her server neighboors - she just need to switch to the new web hosting provider which keep their servers under control.
 
When your host says - account limited due to the resouces overusag - this means the time has already come. Possibly also for the migration to another host.
 
SoftsysHosting said:
I believe you should move to dedicated server when you have outgrown a VPS hosting solution. Generally, I suggest a path of Shared -> VPS -> Dedicated to the customers and this can be known when the application performance starts degrading at any of the above levels.
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yeah thats the route i went. shared then when the shared kick me out i went to vps. then dedicated shared bandwidth then full connection 10mbps then 100mbps.
 
If your site uses more resources than any shared hosting plan offers, or the host throws your site out of their server saying you are using too much resources. You know you need dedicated hosting.
 
I started off with a VPS account for my main site as I wanted more control over what was installed on the server and the ability to optimise the server as I saw necessary. When the site started crashing I then upgraded the VPS account to a larger one with more memory and will do that if I see problems again. The next step for me is another VPS and then on to a dedicated server after that (probably by mid next year).

With shared hosting you can sometimes get away with having a super busy site. It all depends on how busy and resource intensive the other sites on that server are.

Another reason to upgrade is if you are allocated X amount of data transfer a month and you are getting close to it. Rather then pay overage fees (if your host does that) then it's best to upgrade.
 
It definately depends on the resources provided by your current hosting provider.
generally your host will indicate when your server is eating up on their resources.
High traffic sites should go for Dedicated servers.
 
I have an internet radio site that streams about 1000gb of audio data per month. For optimum customer/listener experience I went with a dedicated server for that one. :agree:
 
Well it depened on your site, traffic and so on. Say your running a search engine that has web spiders crawling the web. You would probably need a dedicated server.
 
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