Need Good Shared Host / Need Dedicated Server Recommendations

Eoj Nawoh

Eoj Nawoh

Active member
This is two separate things, firstly, I need recommendations for hosting. We had around 16k messages and thousand or so members, however we lost our database and there were no backups.

Our new forum has been up for about 2 weeks now and has the below.
Discussions: 386
Messages: 2,771
Members: 116

We do manage some other things off the site, like a Bans database/website, a donator database and some small misc stuff for our community.

We need a host who has good support and good speed (gamers are impatient people).

And because I know it's going to happen, please don't suggest Mike Edge, he is our current host.


---------------------------------------------------

Next up, I need suggestions on Dedicated Servers. My community has a Voice server, and 4-5ish game servers and I'd much rather prefer having them on a dedicated server. It's possible we can drop/gain some servers, but ideally I'm looking for a good host, with good uptime and speeds.

I've never run a Dedicated before, so someone that can guide wouldn't hurt, but isn't necessary. And price does play into it, as much as I'd like to be on a dedicated, I rather not spend more (at least too much more) on the dedicated for the same stuff I have now.


Edit: I should add our sites are US based, however receive a lot of traffic from EU.
 
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No backups? :eek: Ouch :( You didn't take any backups of your own either? Is there absolutely nothing that could possibly be used to salvage some of the content?

As for a hosting recommendation, I really don't like shared hosting. Somewhere someone else is going to end up ruining your day. I'd stick with a VPS, where you're guaranteed certain specs, and stuff runs in a more isolated environment.

We're hosting with NimbusHosting. They've been nothing but reliable, and their support is stellar.
 
SchmitzIT said:
No backups? :eek: Ouch :( You didn't take any backups of your own either? Is there absolutely nothing that could possibly be used to salvage some of the content?

As for a hosting recommendation, I really don't like shared hosting. Somewhere someone else is going to end up ruining your day. I'd stick with a VPS, where you're guaranteed certain specs, and stuff runs in a more isolated environment.

We're hosting with NimbusHosting. They've been nothing but reliable, and their support is stellar.
Click to expand...
Quite honestly, I used to take backups on previous hostings, but I suppose I've been so busy I didn't here. And there was a 'hourly backup' service in place, which was not working for the duration of our hosting (April 2013 to Present). I had in the past created some sort of automatic backup via email or a FTP, but only manual backups were available. I don't solely put the blame on anyone. However, losing my site and then not having backups despite having been sold the service under the belief that there were hourly backups, and some other issues have me looking elsewhere.

I should correct myself, we had one backup, it was from the day we transferred to the host.
 
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Honestly, if your site is important to you, you need to make your own backups. You can't rely on a host's backup system, which may or may not work. You just can't rely on someone else to make your important backups.

About a year ago, for example, we lost a VPS server. The RAID card went bad as was corrupting the data. Unfortunately, the backups were simply copies of the corrupted data. Our daily (twice) and weekly backups had all been corrupted prior to the server completely failing. So the only backups we had were our monthly backups.

Things happen. Backups fail, they get corrupted, etc. But it's nobody's fault other than your own if you lose important material because you don't care enough about it to back it up yourself.
 
Eoj Nawoh said:
I should correct myself, we had one backup, it was from the day we transferred to the host.
Click to expand...

That's a shame, but might be a starting point. You could then always import the new content into the existing forum. It'd not be ideal, but you'd be left with more than you have now?
 
WSWD said:
Honestly, if your site is important to you, you need to make your own backups. You can't rely on a host's backup system, which may or may not work. You just can't rely on someone else to make your important backups.

About a year ago, for example, we lost a VPS server. The RAID card went bad as was corrupting the data. Unfortunately, the backups were simply copies of the corrupted data. Our daily (twice) and weekly backups had all been corrupted prior to the server completely failing. So the only backups we had were our monthly backups.

Things happen. Backups fail, they get corrupted, etc. But it's nobody's fault other than your own if you lose important material because you don't care enough about it to back it up yourself.
Click to expand...
As I previously said, I know I am at fault for not taking my own backups. I said that to give context to the lower numbers. I am not here to cry and moan about losing my site, I rebuilt it from scratch and improved it. Now I'm looking to move hosts, so that I may have a host that has the ability for me to actually create backups and schedule them, rather than go into a Cpanel which Chrome gives me security errors about and have to download it from there.

SchmitzIT said:
That's a shame, but might be a starting point. You could then always import the new content into the existing forum. It'd not be ideal, but you'd be left with more than you have now?
Click to expand...
We've already created a new forum and I got to implement a lot of things I've been wanting to do for quite some time. So up and onward. I'm less concerned with recovering the old site, despite what we lost as the backup quite honestly has pretty much less than we have now, as April - Present was when we expanded/gained a lot of users.

But I'm more interested in just finding what hosts others recommend so that we can have a stable and consistent host. Having tickets remain open for a week+ without responses and having to email/PM to get them looked at isn't what I'm interested in.
 
Eoj Nawoh said:
Now I'm looking to move hosts, so that I may have a host that has the ability for me to actually create backups and schedule them, rather than go into a Cpanel which Chrome gives me security errors about and have to download it from there.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, there is no means of doing this on shared hosting. You aren't really going to be able to schedule your own backups unless you install your own backup script of some sort, or use SSH/RSYNC and run the backups via CRON or such. You aren't going to have access to change the backups.

On a dedicated server or VPS, you can certainly do it whenever you want.
 
WSWD said:
As far as I know, there is no means of doing this on shared hosting. You aren't really going to be able to schedule your own backups unless you install your own backup script of some sort, or use SSH/RSYNC and run the backups via CRON or such. You aren't going to have access to change the backups.

On a dedicated server or VPS, you can certainly do it whenever you want.
Click to expand...

I have been on hosting before that allowed for you to set up some sort of scheduling, I believe it was through their panel, but I understand that it's not always a functionality, and I am open to VPS suggestions also.
 
Also, managed or unmanaged? Managed VPS/Dedi will add to the price. I am on 3 unmanaged servers with ServerComplete and my current "highest priced" system is $84.00
Code: 
Dual Intel Xeon L5520 - alpha.twowheeldemon.com (12/01/2013 - 12/31/2013)
Processor: Dual Intel Xeon L5520
Memory: 24GB DDR3 ECC
Primary Hard Drive: 1TB SATA
Bandwidth: 30TB @ 1Gbps
IP Addresses: 1 Primary + /28 Secondary (17 Total)
Operating System: Debian 7 (64-bit)
Control Panel: None
Data Center: Jacksonville, FL
$80.00

Dual Intel Xeon L5520 - centauri.twowheeldemon.com (12/01/2013 - 12/31/2013)
Processor: Dual Intel Xeon L5520
Memory: 24GB DDR3 ECC
Primary Hard Drive: 1TB SATA
Bandwidth: 30TB @ 1Gbps
IP Addresses: 1 IP Address
Operating System: Debian 7 (64-bit)
Control Panel: None
Data Center: Jacksonville, FL
$80.00

Dual Intel Xeon L5639 - pegasus.twowheeldemon.com (12/01/2013 - 12/31/2013)
Processor: Dual Intel Xeon L5639
Memory: 24GB DDR3 ECC
Primary Hard Drive: 1TB SATA
Secondary Hard Drive: 1TB SATA
Bandwidth: 30TB @ 1Gbps
IP Addresses: 1 IP Address
Operating System: Debian 6 (64-bit)
Control Panel: None
Data Center: Jacksonville, FL
$84.00
No hardware raid (I use software) but I have it backing up everything to 5 other locations daily and I frequently will also do backups manually to keep a "Known good copy". Support has been fantastic and no down time.
alpha.twowheeldemon.com is set up with ProxMox as it's OS and is configured to serve out VPS's (something I'm playing with).
 
Try Ramnode. I have one VPS with them and so far so good. I pay 20$ for below specs:
  • RAM: 2048MB
  • VSwap: 2048MB
  • Cores: 4 @ 2.3GHz+
  • 200GB RAID10 SSD-Cached HDD Space
  • 1 IPv4 Address (+1 FREE)
  • 16 IPv6 Addresses
  • 4000GB Bandwidth
Their 35% discount code: WHT35

For Dedicated Server I recommend Choopa or Internap for gaming. Just get linux box for 80-120$ depending on config you like and host website on it. All at one place. Would be cost saver.
 
I recently moved to Linode and have so far been very pleased with the set up and speeds for the price. You can also choose the location of the VPS. We have quite a lot of US and Australian members, so I use a CDN for the static content.
 
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