Making the move from shared hosting to VPS/Dedicated server

[WSWD]

The only sort of hosting that might have a slight effect on the distance latency would be game or voice servers. Webhosting, world location differences your really only talking about milisecond differences,

Well not quite. You have to remember it's milliseconds (several hudred, actually) for every single packet, every single file, every single piece of data, etc. that needs to be transferred. It absolutely adds up.

This is the main reason things like CDNs, anycast DNS, etc. exist in the first place.

 

[TPerry]

Why does everyone feel they "out grown shared hosting" and now need a VPS or dedi? You simply just require a premium shared hosting provider. We host over 150 xenForo communities on our shared hosting platform, several with over a million posts and a few with as many as 5 million or more posts and 1,000 users online. Don't believe all the you need an expensive server now hype.

It's not always that they've "outgrown" it... but frequently they want the ability to have full control over all aspects of the system... and then there are some of us greedy nerds that want all the resources (in case of a dedi) to themselves. Me, I do it because that's one of the aspects that I enjoy doing. None of my sites require a VPS - it's just that I'm one that enjoys the challenges.

 

[kaieivindm]

Yes, we are US based, but with today's technology and advanced network peering, it really doesn't matter where you host in the world. The only sort of hosting that might have a slight effect on the distance latency would be game or voice servers. Webhosting, world location differences your really only talking about milisecond differences, so it's not really a concern like maybe gaming would be. Our data center has a direct peer with Stockholm, making Estonia, Sweden, Norway etc very fast We host communities with owners based out of about 29 countries.

Thanks.

I will keep that in mind, but will do some more research locally before deciding upon anything.

 

[kaieivindm]

It's not always that they've "outgrown" it... but frequently they want the ability to have full control over all aspects of the system... and then there are some of us greedy nerds that want all the resources (in case of a dedi) to themselves. Me, I do it because that's one of the aspects that I enjoy doing. None of my sites require a VPS - it's just that I'm one that enjoys the challenges.

This is also a very good point, with VPS you at least can make up for your own mistakes quite fast. And not be dependent on waiting for support.

 

[rdn]

This is the main reason things like CDNs, anycast DNS, etc. exist in the first place.

And Cloudflare works out of the box .

 

[WSWD]

And Cloudflare works out of the box .

Cloudflare has issues though, and CDNs don't really do anything for dynamic content.

It's actually pretty funny to be honest...there are threads on this forum constantly about tuning MySQL (or the associated database engines) to shave a few milliseconds off the load time, tuning NGINX for a few milliseconds, but then they use a host that's several hundred milliseconds away from their target audience. Always makes me chuckle.

 

[rdn]

but then they use a host that's several hundred milliseconds away from their target audience.

Still Cloudflare really helps you on this.
I've been using Cloudflare for more than 1 year with just minor issue sometimes but not really big deal.

 

[kaieivindm]

Thanks all for good suggestion, think I am closing in on a "premium" host provider. And try that for a while first off, and see how that goes.

 

[WSWD]

Still Cloudflare really helps you on this.
I've been using Cloudflare for more than 1 year with just minor issue sometimes but not really big deal.

Unfortunately, most of our clients have had nothing but issues with CloudFlare (and we're a Premium Partner). In fact, for over I'd say 80% of them, CloudFlare actually slows things down. Really its only uses are helping to prevent DDoS attacks, and now the free SSL, but SSL certificates are so cheap these days anyway, that's hardly a benefit.

 

[rdn]

Mostly you lack some things (like adding all cloudflare IP as trusted/white list on your server) as I don't have any problem with Cloudflare, it really speed things up.

 

[WSWD]

Mostly you lack some things (like adding all cloudflare IP as trusted/white list on your server)

That's hilarious. Like I said, we're a CF Optimzied Hosting Partner, with access to Railgun, etc., and you're trying to tell me that I don't have the CF IPs whitelisted on our servers? LMAO!!

For some clients, it does really help. But as I said, for probably 80%, it slows things down. The problem (as is the problem with any CDN) is that often times, the CDN server is farther away than the actual hosting server. That's going to slow things down. You also become reliant on someone else's servers, DNS, bandwidth quality (i.e. premium vs. crap blend), path congestion, etc. You then add the fact that dynamic content isn't really cached, so now you get the added latency, since that needs to be pulled from the hosting server to CF's servers before it's distributed.

It's a great concept, and I know it works for some, but probably 80% of our clients who tried it ended up disabling CF.

 

[kaieivindm]

Just to update!

I have now moved to a "premium" host in Norway, and its like night and day in comparisson.
Reduced those nasty 5-10 seconds lag (6-8 times a day) when doing operations, like answering in posts, creating threads, admin stuff in the ACP etc to it never happens anymore.

It just flows better, and I also increased my speed with gtmetrix.com quite nicely done.

Thanks all!

 

[Puntocom]

I recommend you www.debian.org operating system without any panel. This OS has a great documentation and support and IMHO is the best GNU/Linux distro out there.