7 mill pageview / month VB forum in need of a new Xenforo home

Mutt

Well-known member
1/2 a year ago I posted here asking about hosts but since I wasn't ready to switch to Xenforo yet I put it all on hold. Now that 1.1 beta is out, I can finally make the move. It's got what I wanted & I'm excited to finally have it. :) Problem is, i have no idea what kind of server setup I require let alone where I should go. my site is large & currently runs lousy. It's a heavily modified vb3.8 that's probably codded horribly (by me) and inefficient. it's possible that if I had a clean vb install it would run fine but who really knows. The DB is 10GB. Traffic is down but it's still a lot. For the past 6 months we've been averaging 800k Visits from 300k Unique Visitors creating 6.9 mil Pageviews per month. (according to google analytics)

many years ago I grabbed these 3 boxes & cavecreek (CCBill) has been hosting them.
- WEB SERVER - 4GB RAM, 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.80GHz Dual Core, 73 GB SCSI
- DB SERVER - 4GB RAM, 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.80GHz Dual Core, 73GB SCSI
- SLAVE DB SERVER - 8GB RAM, 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5160 @ 3.00GHz Dual Core, 73GB SCSI

their main advice to me to get things running better has been to upgrade to the newer code & not hack the **** out of it. before I go upgrading the Xen let me ask, should I change hosts, upgrade servers, what os / software is best for me, etc. I'd love to just move & start over fresh somewhere w/ a pretty new Xenforo board.

PS - how realistic is it to import / convert a 10GB VB DB to Xen?
 
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1/2 a year ago I posted here asking about hosts but since I wasn't ready to switch to Xenforo yet I put it all on hold. Now that 1.1 beta is out, I can finally make the move. It's got what I wanted & I'm excited to finally have it. :) Problem is, i have no idea what kind of server setup I require let alone where I should go. my site is large & currently runs lousy. It's a heavily modified vb3.8 that's probably codded horribly (by me) and inefficient. it's possible that if I had a clean vb install it would run fine but who really knows. The DB is 10GB. Traffic is down but it's still a lot. For the past 6 months we've been averaging 800k Visits from 300k Unique Visitors creating 6.9 mil Pageviews per month. (according to google analytics)

many years ago I grabbed these 3 boxes & cavecreek (CCBill) has been hosting them.
- WEB SERVER - 4GB RAM, 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.80GHz Dual Core, 73 GB SCSI
- DB SERVER - 4GB RAM, 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.80GHz Dual Core, 73GB SCSI
- SLAVE DB SERVER - 8GB RAM, 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5160 @ 3.00GHz Dual Core, 73GB SCSI

their main advice to me to get things running better has been to upgrade to the newer code & not hack the **** out of it. before I go upgrading the Xen let me ask, should I change hosts, upgrade servers, what os / software is best for me, etc. I'd love to just move & start over fresh somewhere w/ a pretty new Xenforo board.

PS - how realistic is it to import / convert a 10GB VB DB to Xen?

I suggest 1 and 1, pick up a dedicated server with centos on it and your pretty much good to go.
They dont have 15k SCSI drives, but they run all dedi's with a raid 1 setup for data redundancy in case of hard drive failure and give you a personal ftp repository to offload your data to for even more protection.

Your current setup looks expensive, whats your monthly budget if you don't mind asking.

15k drives obviously help with load times, so it depends, are you happy with your current host, or want to move away for any reason.

How realisitc to import? Very :) I imagine even with the loss of the 15k drives, moving to a 1and1 dedi server (with some configuration changes) with xenforo will vastly improve your site speeds also.
 
We were getting hammered on SMF with 10-12 mill page views a month on a single dedicated box. Moved to Xen and the speed improvements have allowed us to put off adding an additional server.

I run a Centos 12 gig RAM, Nehalem quad core 2.26 gig processor that is fully managed at Singlehop for $300 a month.
 
We were getting hammered on SMF with 10-12 mill page views a month on a single dedicated box. Moved to Xen and the speed improvements have allowed us to put off adding an additional server.

I run a Centos 12 gig RAM, Nehalem quad core 2.26 gig processor that is fully managed at Singlehop for $300 a month.

I used to be doing more like 20mill pageviews per month & everything was setup then. cavecreek wound up donating the servers to me & then only charging me for the rackspace. for the 3 boxes it winds up a little over that. i expect after the upgrade we'll see an increase in traffic but don't expect to ever get back to the 20 numbers.
 
I used to be doing more like 20mill pageviews per month & everything was setup then. cavecreek wound up donating the servers to me & then only charging me for the rackspace. for the 3 boxes it winds up a little over that. i expect after the upgrade we'll see an increase in traffic but don't expect to ever get back to the 20 numbers.

So the main question is what do you want to achieve, are you happy with the current setup or are you looking to cut costs / go elsewhere?

The setup you describe seems a bit elaborate for a xenforo forum :)
 
So the main question is what do you want to achieve, are you happy with the current setup or are you looking to cut costs / go elsewhere?

The setup you describe seems a bit elaborate for a xenforo forum :)

right now we run horribly. i want to switch to xen & have the site run better than ever before, have lots of cool features, really get back into working on making the site better again. i certainly wouldn't mind cutting costs but it's not my primary concern. running better is. oh, being able to understand / handle the server setup would be great too. back in the day it was one box & I could do everything. ever since we switched to multiple boxes, I'm totally lost.
 
right now we run horribly. i want to switch to xen & have the site run better than ever before, have lots of cool features, really get back into working on making the site better again. i certainly wouldn't mind cutting costs but it's not my primary concern. running better is. oh, being able to understand / handle the server setup would be great too. back in the day it was one box & I could do everything. ever since we switched to multiple boxes, I'm totally lost.

Well you sound like you would be better going to a single dedicated server setup.

For the prices you mention, you would be able to pick up a decent specced server that will host your site with no issues.

Where do you live, and do you have any host preferences?

Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, ANYONE is better than 1&1.

A 14 year old kid running a hosting service out of a bedroom in their parent's house is better than 1&1

If thats the best advice you have, I suggest you get your coat.

1+1 have done my hosting flawlessly for 8, nearly 9 years now. On 3 dedicated server, multiple vps's and all my dns.
 
As far as hosting goes I would pick a few companies out then do a search on webhostingtalk.com to see what others have said about the host.
 
Where do you live, and do you have any host preferences?
I'm in Philadelphia PA and no, I have no preferences.

As far as hosting goes I would pick a few companies out then do a search on webhostingtalk.com to see what others have said about the host.
I certainly will. just needed an idea of specs & setup I should be looking for for a good sized xen site.

thanks all
 
I'm in Philadelphia PA and no, I have no preferences.
Have you explored colocation providers in the area? I'm about 30 miles west of you (near the Pottstown, PA area) and have been looking for a colo provider. Found several in the city and one in West Chester but not much else out in the 'burbs.
 
I'm in Philadelphia PA and no, I have no preferences.

I certainly will. just needed an idea of specs & setup I should be looking for for a good sized xen site.

thanks all

My personal reccomendation then would be a 1and1 Quad Core XL, Quad core 2.3ghz, 8gb ram, with a centos stack.

Alternatively, go for their cloud server service, pick up 4-6 cores on the CPU, 12gb on the ram and 100gb on the disk drive, you get the first 3 months free then its $274.99 a month thereafter, and if you use my referal code aswell, you also grab me a nice discount off my next bill :)

My impressions from your posts are that you have a basic level of server knowledge, in which case, a centos stack with plesk will help you manage everything very well.
 
Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, ANYONE is better than 1&1.

A 14 year old kid running a hosting service out of a bedroom in their parent's house is better than 1&1
Depends on what type of their service you're talking about. I hate their shared hosting, but their vps/dedicated is pretty good.
 
PS - how realistic is it to import / convert a 10GB VB DB to Xen?
Look at rackspace.com they have plenty of options. Huge datacenter.

You should a message to the Kier or Mike about using their CLI tool for importing.
 
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