Dedicated Hosting Newb

Hi all,

I’m an in-house web designer who has recently been asked to provide a client with the cost of dedicated hosting for a website that my company will develop and manage. As we have always hosted websites on our own established network, dedicated hosting is a new area for me. The type of website we are creating is a fairly simple one – roughly 30-60 pages, used to display information about the economy through text and static graphs (in image form) which will be maintained through a CMS like Joomla or EE. In terms of traffic, I think it would be about 1000 visitors per day and possibly 500 at one time a couple of times a month. I’ve been leaning towards a managed service since we do not have a fulltime IT person. So, in looking at different packages I’ve come across a lot of questions.

  1. What considerations in terms of features should I be looking at when choosing a service?
  2. What is the extent of services that a managed plan should provide? Does it go beyond set up?
  3. Is there an optimal server set up to host a CMS like Joomla or EE?
  4. With the differences in monthly pricing being so large amongst different companies I’m having a hard time trying to establish a base. Below is a basic managed plan from RackSpace. In terms of specs and price can anyone give any insight to how this configuration stacks up?
  5. Would this configuration be appropriate for my site and anticipated traffic?

Basic One* - $419/mo.
• 1xDual-Core AMD Opteron
• 3.5GB RAM (DDR2)
• 2x250GB, 7.2K, SATA (RAID1)
• 2TB Bandwidth
• Managed® Service Level

I’m just beginning the process so I apologize if my questions are a little off-base or vague. If anyone could provide any insight to any I will greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

In all honesty you could probably get a quad core server elsewhere for cheaper, then get management from a company like touchsupport.com or platinumservermanagement.com.

Because for the above specs, it looks a little pricey, even with a Managed service level.

But if he really needs the absolute best then I guess you can.
Also, a quad core Xeon will allow for future-proofing a little bit.

Just my $0.02

Thanks for the feedback, LocalNode. I appreciate it!

Yes. Maybe $40-50 is for the entry-level sites. But as you have lots of users in your site, you might be paying more.

I’m assuming less than $419.

The average price for VPS is $40-50 per month.

The average price for VPS is $40-50 per month.

Perhaps for unmanaged ones. That price is entry level for fully managed VPS though, which may have a bit of trouble coping with 500 users online depending on the exact configuration (though perhaps not so much of caching is being used).

Once can usually find pretty good special offers at webhostingtalk.com, in the VPS offers forum.

Thank you all. This is exactly the type of feedback I was hoping for. The VPS option sounds like the way to go. Does anyone know what the average monthly price range would be for a set-up that would be appropriate for this site? I’m assuming less than $419.

Hi Rob - to answer your question, yes I was recommending that we use a dedicated host. But to tell the truth when I started this process I did not know a VPS option existed. I thought it was either shared or dedicated. I personally think that this website could be handled by a quality shared host, but there are certain politics involved with the client and hosting outside of our network. Being able to say we are providing the next best thing to hosting the website on our network will make them rest alot easier…and make my job a hellava lot easier too!

IMHO that is way overkill, even shared hosting should cope with it - but if the client does’t want shared then I’d recommend a good quality managed VDS/VPS.

Definitely agreed.

Would this configuration be appropriate for my site and anticipated traffic?

I believe that would be more then enough for you. But at the same time I agree with Rob. You do not need that at all. Web site which have 1000 visitors per day is not new one and I believe that has been hosted somewhere. Would you mind posting your current stats and usages to have a look?

IMHO that is way overkill, even shared hosting should cope with it - but if the client does’t want shared then I’d recommend a good quality managed VDS/VPS. A lot of companies will try and sell you something you think you want rather than something that is appropriate, so be careful.

May I ask you a question? Does your customer want dedicated server or that is what you are suggesting them to use?

would be about 1000 visitors per day

will be maintained through a CMS like Joomla or EE

You are keen to have high end dedicated server. I think you do not need that at all. I think you can work on tyhe high end VPS server and that will be enough.