Do you really need a dedicated server?  You had an idea for an online business and started out with your website and basic hosting.  Now it seems like your concept might actually be working but your site has seemed to be down more than once and performance is occasionally slow.

In fact it has seemed to get more unreliable right when things are getting busy.   You have been on the phone with the web host and gotten little relief.  Is it time to upgrade to a VPS (virtual private server) or a dedicated server?

You may have checked out pricing and wondering if you should just bite the bullet and upgrade.   Worse yet you already shelled out a siginificant amount of cash to upgrade and now things are hardly any better: why?

Well the basic Apache web server only comes with 85 simultaneous connections at the default setting.  No matter how much hardware is added that limit will be holding you back.  Most web hosts won’t let you in on that secret.  It’s easier just to let you buy more hardware than to hire someone who is actually trained to optimize and manage the server software.

Does 85 simultaneous connections mean that 85 people can connect to your website at one time?  Nope.  It takes 1 connection to download the HTML, 1 to get the images and one to access the database.  If you are running WordPress you have a MySQL database.   So more likely: at the basic settings you can serve 25-30 visitors at a time.

Apache can do 1200 connections on a well optimized server but it’s not advised to raise it too much without optimizations.

Most major web hosts are using Lite speed server which doubles the capacity but these giant web hosts tend to load up shared servers with over 70,000 websites.

Even if the web hosting company does employ the right level of staff to correctly run the server beyond the default limits chances are that you will never get beyond “level one tech support” and be able to discuss your needs with the higher paid server administrators.  Every time you call or chat you get asked the same boiler plate LOQs (line of questions) and given the same basic standardized answers.

What should you do?  Stay put with your reputable web host or risk jumping from the frying pan into the fire at a different host?

 

dctommy

I like helping people actualize their vision.  For me it began with starting one of the first high traffic web hosting services back in 1998.  Since then I have also worked with game changers to articulate their message in ways that can be more easily assimilated by their audience. David Cruz