Questions

[Prodimysterio]

Hello everyone,

I have recently been reading up more on VPS and it has peaked my interests. Currently, I am on a shared hosting plan that seems to do just fine for the most part, but there are some times to when my site gets a bit sluggish and I end up with PM's from my members complaining about the performance. Here are some of the questions that I have in regards to a potential move to a VPS.

1. Is there an honest speed difference? I mean, will pages, images, etc load faster versus a shared hosting plan and will there be periods where I could potentially experience sluggishness?

2. I am running a vBulletin forum. When I moved from my previous host to my current host, they were able to transfer my site via cPanel in no time flat. Is such a service offered here? I wish I knew enough about the technology to just do it myself, but unfortunately I am relatively new to this realm.

3. I have read where Zend optimizer seems to be the choice of most shared hosting sites. Is this something that I would have to install myself, or again, could someone just configure my server to be I guess what you would say "pre-configured" for a vBulletin forum to be used on it?

Thanks in advance for any and all help. If everything can be worked out smoothly for a n00b like me, then I might just be the next customer in the ranks.

:)

Prod

[nadzri]

1) I think sometimes a shared host will be faster, especially when the server is mostly idle, and you're able to take advantage of the whole cpu and ram without the virtualization process going on. But the point about a vps is you'll have guaranteed resources therefore you should not be having sluggishness unless you have more visitors than the vps can handle.

2) I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they can.

3) If you are mainly running your own site (not a reseller), eAccellerator is what you should ask for. Support can install it for you I believe.

:)

[Prodimysterio]

1) I think sometimes a shared host will be faster, especially when the server is mostly idle, and you're able to take advantage of the whole cpu and ram without the virtualization process going on. But the point about a vps is you'll have guaranteed resources therefore you should not be having sluggishness unless you have more visitors than the vps can handle.

2) I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they can.

3) If you are mainly running your own site (not a reseller), eAccellerator is what you should ask for. Support can install it for you I believe.

:)

Hi nadzri, thank you for the response!

That's interesting. I was always told that VPS was the way to go for speed and performance versus shared hosting, but of course, I am simply going based upon what others have told me. It is good to know that I would have guaranteed resources via a VPS, but the overall performance in regards to page loads, image loads, etc is going to be the selling point for me. I am just big on performance, performance, performance.

:)

I do hope that someone can assist me with the vBulletin transfer. Otherwise, I will certainly be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Also, this is the first I have heard of eAccelerator. I take it as it is a similar PHP optimization tool in comparison to Zend Optimizer?

Finally, sorry I did not specify this information earlier...My site is currently at about 80 members utilizing ~2 GB a month in bandwidth. Also, I am not a reseller. My website is strictly a little gaming forum community.

:)

[charles]

I do hope that someone can assist me with the vBulletin transfer. Otherwise, I will certainly be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.


What panel does your current hosting use? If you go from cpanel shared to a cpanel vps, we can help you no problem.


Finally, sorry I did not specify this information earlier...My site is currently at about 80 members utilizing ~2 GB a month in bandwidth. Also, I am not a reseller. My website is strictly a little gaming forum community.

:)

What matters is how many average and peak **concurrent** users are on your forum at any time. How many is that?

charles

[Prodimysterio]

What panel does your current hosting use? If you go from cpanel shared to a cpanel vps, we can help you no problem.



What matters is how many average and peak **concurrent** users are on your forum at any time. How many is that?

charles

Hello Charles,

My current host is utilizing cPanel 10.2.0-RELEASE 67. Also, I would say on average I may have 5 to 7 users on average browsing the forums with maybe 15 concurrent users at peak times. A small amount of users for sure, but I just want to be sure that quick and speed page loads are available at all times.

[nadzri]

Prod,

I meant I think sometimes, a shared host will be faster.

Of course since you now have resources that you won't have to share with others, overall you'll have faster performance, consistently.

eAccellerator caches compiled php code so your server doesn't have to compile a php page everytime someone requests for one. Zend Optimizer doesn't do this. And with dedicated memory, you can allocate more for this cache, and also cache mysql queries so ..... performance, performance, performance.

[Prodimysterio]

Prod,

I meant I think sometimes, a shared host will be faster.

Of course since you now have resources that you won't have to share with others, overall you'll have faster performance, consistently.

eAccellerator caches compiled php code so your server doesn't have to compile a php page everytime someone requests for one. Zend Optimizer doesn't do this. And with dedicated memory, you can allocate more for this cache, and also cache mysql queries so ..... performance, performance, performance.

I wish I knew what that meant lol.

;)

[nadzri]

Hehehe, sorry Prod. I'll let someone with better English explain that. It just takes me too long to think up the words ... :)

[elix]

I'm sure the support team, which is excellent, by the way, can install Zend Optimizer w/ eAccelerator for you. Your forum isn't all that popular so it should fly on the VPS! I find the VPSes here to be faster than shared hosting services for the most part.

[Prodimysterio]

I'm sure the support team, which is excellent, by the way, can install Zend Optimizer w/ eAccelerator for you. Your forum isn't all that popular so it should fly on the VPS! I find the VPSes here to be faster than shared hosting services for the most part.

Thanks for insulting my website. :D

I'm sure the support team, which is excellent, by the way, can install Zend Optimizer w/ eAccelerator for you. Your forum isn't all that popular so it should fly on the VPS! I find the VPSes here to be faster than shared hosting services for the most part.

Can you elaborate on that Elix?

[charles]

Hello Charles,

My current host is utilizing cPanel 10.2.0-RELEASE 67. Also, I would say on average I may have 5 to 7 users on average browsing the forums with maybe 15 concurrent users at peak times. A small amount of users for sure, but I just want to be sure that quick and speed page loads are available at all times.

We can migrate your account (or show you how - its very easy) which brings over *everything*.

YEs we can install the accelerator of your choice. eAccelerator is good.

That number of users should be no problem for a cpanel power-1

charles

[Prodimysterio]

We can migrate your account (or show you how - its very easy) which brings over *everything*.

YEs we can install the accelerator of your choice. eAccelerator is good.

That number of users should be no problem for a cpanel power-1

charles

Hi again Charles. If you all do the migration, is there any charge for that, or would that be a free service?

Also, just a quick FYI on my site, I have vBulletin 3.0.7 installed with the vBadvanced CMPS portal version 1.0.1 along with it. I have zero experience with installing this software, so I would definitely be dependant upon the services you could offer me.

:o

In regards to the accelerators, could you elaborate as to what I would need? Would both eAccelerator and Zend Optimizer need to be installed or just one? Also, would there be any fee for the optimizer install as well, or would that be a free service?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I am so very new to this entire process. Thank you for your continued time and patience!

Prod

[charles]

Hi again Charles. If you all do the migration, is there any charge for that, or would that be a free service?


One million dollars..... or free, whichever you prefer.


Also, just a quick FYI on my site, I have vBulletin 3.0.7 installed with the vBadvanced CMPS portal version 1.0.1 along with it. I have zero experience with installing this software, so I would definitely be dependant upon the services you could offer me.


You wont have to re-install anything. Iike pure magic, you site will be copied over to the VPS and everything except your IPs will be the same.


In regards to the accelerators, could you elaborate as to what I would need? Would both eAccelerator and Zend Optimizer need to be installed or just one? Also, would there be any fee for the optimizer install as well, or would that be a free service?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I am so very new to this entire process. Thank you for your continued time and patience!

Prod

You dont use both at the same time afaik, but you can have both installed. Our support guys can clear this up for you, but if you use Zend now, then stick with it. Another million dollars for this too (or free if you prefer).

charles

[Prodimysterio]

One million dollars..... or free, whichever you prefer.

I prefer free, although I am rather certain that you would prefer the million...

:)

You wont have to re-install anything. Iike pure magic, you site will be copied over to the VPS and everything except your IPs will be the same.

Sounds good. Now, what about all of my files and directories that have been uploaded to my current webspace? How will all of that be transferred. Also, will support help me setup FTP on the new VS?

You dont use both at the same time afaik, but you can have both installed. Our support guys can clear this up for you, but if you use Zend now, then stick with it. Another million dollars for this too (or free if you prefer).

charles

I have been using Zend for now which seems to work just fine. Does anyone have a preference between Zend and eAccelerator?

Last question for now...Do the virtual servers automatically gzip pages? On my current host's shared hosting environment, the servers gzip pages automatically which saves a decent amount of resources versus having vBulletin forum software gzip the pages for me.

Thanks again everyone,

Prod

[Hvu]

I dont believe Zend Optimizer does gzip compression. But you can ask one of the support team or charles to enable gzip compression in apache. (:

[Prodimysterio]

I dont believe Zend Optimizer does gzip compression. But you can ask one of the support team or charles to enable gzip compression in apache. (:

Thanks for letting me know about that Hvu.

;)

I am starting to get the feeling that going forward with this may be far too difficult for me...Alright now...Someone convince me otherwise lol.

[charles]

Sounds good. Now, what about all of my files and directories that have been uploaded to my current webspace? How will all of that be transferred. Also, will support help me setup FTP on the new VS?


By everything, I mean everything. Yes support can help you, but all you should need to do is wait for DNS to propogate or just use the IP. The acount details will not change.


Last question for now...Do the virtual servers automatically gzip pages? On my current host's shared hosting environment, the servers gzip pages automatically which saves a decent amount of resources versus having vBulletin forum software gzip the pages for me.


Support can help you enable compression.


I am starting to get the feeling that going forward with this may be far too difficult for me...Alright now...Someone convince me otherwise lol.

This is going to be up to you. Try find others with similar skillsets and circumstances adn se how they fared.

charles

[Prodimysterio]

Thanks as always for the information Charles. Can anyone here provide some URL's to some sites they have hosted here on a virtual server? I would like to see some examples of what is out there. Also, if anyone has some good stories to tell about their experience of moving here from another host, I am all ears.

:)

[danweber]

Go with PowerVPS, you wont regret it! Support here is always fast and goes above and beyond anything I have seen.

[Prodimysterio]

Go with PowerVPS, you wont regret it! Support here is always fast and goes above and beyond anything I have seen.

Thanks for the vote of confidence Dan.

:)

I'm just gathering as much information as possible. I am hoping to hear from someone that noticed a huge difference from moving from a shared environment to a VPS for encouragement!

[Robert]

Honestly the "difference" depends on your current host.

For example... if your current host has dual Xeon boxes that has absolutely no load on it (a couple small sites), then it may not seem faster because you would have a majority of the resources of that box.

However if the host you're on is busy and overloaded, then you'll see a huge performance jump.

The benefit of a VPS is that you have FULL control over your sites at that point. Should something happen you have the ability to reboot your own server as you wish. You decide what is allowed and not (within bounds... AKA... no copyright/warez files and no IRC basically) and you have GUARANTEED resources. You will not have to worry about someone else crashing YOUR sites. :)

Performance tends to be better, but the degree varies on the situation you're coming from. If you grew up rich and moved to a rich neighborhood, it would not be a big jump. However if you grew up in a shanty and moved to a rich neighborhod, it's like night and day. Hope that anology helps a bit.

The BIGGEST difference between us and many providers is our support. Not to toot our own horn or anything... but I'm VERY proud of our support team and think we have one of the best on the net.

Give us a holler if you need anything.

[Prodimysterio]

Honestly the "difference" depends on your current host.

For example... if your current host has dual Xeon boxes that has absolutely no load on it (a couple small sites), then it may not seem faster because you would have a majority of the resources of that box.

However if the host you're on is busy and overloaded, then you'll see a huge performance jump.

The benefit of a VPS is that you have FULL control over your sites at that point. Should something happen you have the ability to reboot your own server as you wish. You decide what is allowed and not (within bounds... AKA... no copyright/warez files and no IRC basically) and you have GUARANTEED resources. You will not have to worry about someone else crashing YOUR sites. :)

Performance tends to be better, but the degree varies on the situation you're coming from. If you grew up rich and moved to a rich neighborhood, it would not be a big jump. However if you grew up in a shanty and moved to a rich neighborhod, it's like night and day. Hope that anology helps a bit.

The BIGGEST difference between us and many providers is our support. Not to toot our own horn or anything... but I'm VERY proud of our support team and think we have one of the best on the net.

Give us a holler if you need anything.


Great post Rob, and I appreciate your feedback.

Currently, I am with asmallorange hosting, and thus far, I have been pleased with the product and their staff. I have a feeling that at times the server I am on may be overloaded, but I am not sure where to look to see if that is even the case. I have had some sluggishness here and there and my users have PM'ed me at different times specifying the same thing. I thought about moving to their VPS setup, but they just do not offer enough bang for the buck at this time. Luckily, I stumbled across the site here.

Simply based upon the reponses to my questions today, I can tell the staff cares about the customers and the community which is critical to your success rate. My only holdback at this point is my general stubbornness and my resistance to change.

:o

One last thing I thought about. I noticed where there are RAM guarantees, but not CPU guarantees. Can you or perhaps another staff member provide some details as to how CPU resource distribution is handled?

[Hvu]

You get equal share of the CPU. Since PVPS has different servers they can not specify how much you get. They also load the servers differently depending how much load a particular VPS generates. So one VPS host can have 5 and another have 10 It depends how much load is generated on each VPS.

------ My Story -----------

I moved from a now disfunct VPS provider. They're service was okay, support was the worst. Well support was alright but compared to PVPS it sucks. Uptime and download on that VPS was like a rollercoaster. Siteuptime had me at 80% uptime with its 30mins monitoring. Now its 100% most of the time except for scheduled downtime. The switch was rather quick if you set your DNS low and move your sites over. I can tell the difference in site performance and speed very quickly. That was back in Aug 2004. The only downtime was in dec 2004 when the drive array failed and had to be rebuilt on my VPS host server, none of the other servers were affected. They hotswapped the VPS to another standby Host and downtime was minimal. Then in the beginning of 2005 they moved the affected VPS to its brandnew home on a dual opteron 250 from a dual 2.4 xeon. Again they wowed me the site performance jumped again and mysql queries 10x faster than before. Now I host a medium usage forum with 30 users at once at any giving time and can peak to 200. The forum has its own site and it powered by a custom script that generates extremely quickly. We get sub 0.01 sec generate times in Invision Board.

[Robert]

Currently, I am with asmallorange hosting, and thus far, I have been pleased with the product and their staff. I have a feeling that at times the server I am on may be overloaded, but I am not sure where to look to see if that is even the case. I have had some sluggishness here and there and my users have PM'ed me at different times specifying the same thing. I thought about moving to their VPS setup, but they just do not offer enough bang for the buck at this time. Luckily, I stumbled across the site here.

For a VPS it may be hard to tell if the node itself is overloaded. If you're seeing a very low server load when you look in "top" from a SSH prompt, but see very slow performance, it could be a very good indicator of an overloaded node.

Usually it's sparatic as the load would go up and down with normal daily traffic volume. But if it just seems "slow", it could also be a network issue. You can test this by using a program like WinMTR (http://winmtr.sf.net) to trace to your server for a few minutes to see if there is packet loss or large delays between hops.

Simply based upon the reponses to my questions today, I can tell the staff cares about the customers and the community which is critical to your success rate. My only holdback at this point is my general stubbornness and my resistance to change.

Your success is our success. :) We take a great deal of pride in our work and love seeing when things take off and go well for our customers. When we see messages saying that we were able to help someone and that they appreciated the assistance, it really makes our day.

Regarding stubbornness and resistance to change, hopefully our Easy Start package should make the transitiion as smooth as possible. We'll be happy to help you move your existing CPanel site to your new CPanel VPS. All that you would have to do is register ns1/ns2.yourdomain.com as nameservers with your domain registrar and then point any domain your VPS hosts to ns1/ns2.yourdomain.com. If you already have custom DNS nameservers, you would just update ns1/ns2 to point to the new nameserver IPs we give you in your welcome e-mail.

One last thing I thought about. I noticed where there are RAM guarantees, but not CPU guarantees. Can you or perhaps another staff member provide some details as to how CPU resource distribution is handled?
I'm going to cheat a little bit and copy/paste a bit of info we use for some of our common pre-sales questions. (I'm bad, I know. I cheat and make my life as easy as possible as often as possible. lol)

The minimum CPU usage is really tough to describe in Mhz. There is a minimum guarantee, which in theory is roughly 250Mhz for our power-1 plan. Sounds horrible doesn't it? However, you never just get your minimum. The whole point of the technology is that you share *much more* resources with other VPS and there is always more than your minimum available. In fact you will have an average of greater than 1-2Ghz based on our average utilization and get to burst to the full power of the node if you need it and it's available. The technology ensures that you share this power with the other VPS and neither you nor they can starve each other out.

[Prodimysterio]

You get equal share of the CPU. Since PVPS has different servers they can not specify how much you get. They also load the servers differently depending how much load a particular VPS generates. So one VPS host can have 5 and another have 10 It depends how much load is generated on each VPS.

------ My Story -----------

I moved from a now disfunct VPS provider. They're service was okay, support was the worst. Well support was alright but compared to PVPS it sucks. Uptime and download on that VPS was like a rollercoaster. Siteuptime had me at 80% uptime with its 30mins monitoring. Now its 100% most of the time except for scheduled downtime. The switch was rather quick if you set your DNS low and move your sites over. I can tell the difference in site performance and speed very quickly. That was back in Aug 2004. The only downtime was in dec 2004 when the drive array failed and had to be rebuilt on my VPS host server, none of the other servers were affected. They hotswapped the VPS to another standby Host and downtime was minimal. Then in the beginning of 2005 they moved the affected VPS to its brandnew home on a dual opteron 250 from a dual 2.4 xeon. Again they wowed me the site performance jumped again and mysql queries 10x faster than before. Now I host a medium usage forum with 30 users at once at any giving time and can peak to 200. The forum has its own site and it powered by a custom script that generates extremely quickly. We get sub 0.01 sec generate times in Invision Board.

Oh man, now THAT's news I am interested in. Is there any possible way that I could be put on a dual Opteron box???

[Prodimysterio]

For a VPS it may be hard to tell if the node itself is overloaded. If you're seeing a very low server load when you look in "top" from a SSH prompt, but see very slow performance, it could be a very good indicator of an overloaded node.

Usually it's sparatic as the load would go up and down with normal daily traffic volume. But if it just seems "slow", it could also be a network issue. You can test this by using a program like WinMTR (http://winmtr.sf.net) to trace to your server for a few minutes to see if there is packet loss or large delays between hops.



Your success is our success. :) We take a great deal of pride in our work and love seeing when things take off and go well for our customers. When we see messages saying that we were able to help someone and that they appreciated the assistance, it really makes our day.

Regarding stubbornness and resistance to change, hopefully our Easy Start package should make the transitiion as smooth as possible. We'll be happy to help you move your existing CPanel site to your new CPanel VPS. All that you would have to do is register ns1/ns2.yourdomain.com as nameservers with your domain registrar and then point any domain your VPS hosts to ns1/ns2.yourdomain.com. If you already have custom DNS nameservers, you would just update ns1/ns2 to point to the new nameserver IPs we give you in your welcome e-mail.


I'm going to cheat a little bit and copy/paste a bit of info we use for some of our common pre-sales questions. (I'm bad, I know. I cheat and make my life as easy as possible as often as possible. lol)

The minimum CPU usage is really tough to describe in Mhz. There is a minimum guarantee, which in theory is roughly 250Mhz for our power-1 plan. Sounds horrible doesn't it? However, you never just get your minimum. The whole point of the technology is that you share *much more* resources with other VPS and there is always more than your minimum available. In fact you will have an average of greater than 1-2Ghz based on our average utilization and get to burst to the full power of the node if you need it and it's available. The technology ensures that you share this power with the other VPS and neither you nor they can starve each other out.

Thanks for all of the information here. I am going to download that tool and see what I can come up with. In regards to what was posted above, is there any possible way to request to be put on a dual Opteron box or is it only based upon load that my site requires?

[Robert]

Hi there,

More than likely you would be on a dual opteron box. We have both Xeon and Opteron nodes, but we tend to favor the Opterons a bit more just because they've performed better than the Xeons. If you happen to be put on a Xeon box, you can open a ticket and ask to be moved to an Opteron.

[charles]

Before everyone on a xeon goes running off to request being on an opteron, you should NOT see worse performance on a xeon!

charles

[Prodimysterio]

Hi again,

I'm thinking of more questions here, so please bear with me.

:)

My site is currently running on PHP Version 4.3.11. Should I request that my VPS be setup with that, or would a later version perhaps be better? I'm not sure how later versions of PHP would affect my website's functionality.

[danweber]

Why don't you just get a VPS and move one or two domains over and see how well it works for you. You don't have to give up your old hosting until you did you tests with the VPS and could always fall back if it doesn't work for you (I can't see a single reason why that would be the case though). There is a 30day money back guarantee as well, so what's the risk?

[Prodimysterio]

Why don't you just get a VPS and move one or two domains over and see how well it works for you. You don't have to give up your old hosting until you did you tests with the VPS and could always fall back if it doesn't work for you (I can't see a single reason why that would be the case though). There is a 30day money back guarantee as well, so what's the risk?

Stop making logical sense Dan...It's not fair!

:o

[charles]

My site is currently running on PHP Version 4.3.11. Should I request that my VPS be setup with that, or would a later version perhaps be better? I'm not sure how later versions of PHP would affect my website's functionality.

You'd better think this over very carefully, and perhaps ask on a few other forums which is the best version. Once you choose the version of php, you have to stick with it for 9 months minimum. Having us upgrade it after the 9 months can be very expensive too.


In all seriousness, Dan is right. Your not signing up for a 30 year mortgage on a $200,000 house here. You have to make no commitment, and you have probably invested more energy in questions here than it would to actually just try it and see.

Our VPS come with php 4.3.11 and I dont recommend you trying to lead the pack on upgrading to 4.4.

charles

[Prodimysterio]

You'd better think this over very carefully, and perhaps ask on a few other forums which is the best version. Once you choose the version of php, you have to stick with it for 9 months minimum. Having us upgrade it after the 9 months can be very expensive too.


In all seriousness, Dan is right. Your not signing up for a 30 year mortgage on a $200,000 house here. You have to make no commitment, and you have probably invested more energy in questions here than it would to actually just try it and see.

Our VPS come with php 4.3.11 and I dont recommend you trying to lead the pack on upgrading to 4.4.

charles

Who's to say there is anything wrong with upping my post count?

;)

Post Count + 1

And yes, I do realize that I have asked many, many questions here. Fortunately, you all have answered them in a way I can understand and it all sounds just fine with me. I think I'll be signing up here shortly...

[Prodimysterio]

No further questions your honor...For now. Say hello to your newest customer!

:D

[vps-vince]

You'd better think this over very carefully, and perhaps ask on a few other forums which is the best version. Once you choose the version of php, you have to stick with it for 9 months minimum. Having us upgrade it after the 9 months can be very expensive too.


That was a joke right? :confused:

- V

[Robert]

Hi again,

I'm thinking of more questions here, so please bear with me. No problem. :)

My site is currently running on PHP Version 4.3.11. Should I request that my VPS be setup with that, or would a later version perhaps be better? I'm not sure how later versions of PHP would affect my website's functionality. By default CPanel accounts are setup with the latest stable version of PHP. 4.4.0 was *JUST* released yesterday, so we have not had a chance to fully test it yet, so for now new accounts would have 4.3.11.

Support is always happy to help with upgrades to Apache, PHP, mySQL as you need help. Just open a ticket and we'll take care of it.

Hope that helps!

[charles]

That was a joke right? :confused:

- V

Yes, very much a joke. LOL

charles