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How to eliminate/minimize downtime (18)

12-07-2011 03:56 PM #1 krueger (Member)
How to eliminate/minimize downtime

Hi, I'm not a tech guy and the few things I know from hosting I learned here on STM and googling... Question is really simple I think.

For my FB traffic, the landing pages don't get more than 5k impressions/day so I think shared hosting is OK atm. I'm hosting images and stuff on S3, and recently set up a cloudfare account (free CDN), wanted to improve load time because I'm running mainly INTL offers.

Before and even after that I set up the CDN, I saw some minor downtimes like 3 minutes (monitoring with pingdom tools), but repeated 3 or 4 times during one hour, which means I'm losing money. That happened yesterday and today aswell, after I activated CloudFare

Can it be that CloudFare is causing this? It happened some times before (that's why I added the CDN), but my shared hosting says that they don't see any abnormal activity on the periods I say to them. Is it time to switch provider, or every provider has this small downtime thing? When it's time to switch to a VPS in my case?

Thanks in advance, cheers!

12-07-2011 10:59 PM #2 zeno (Administrator)

I don't like CloudFlare. I haven't used it though so I can't comment as to it's reliability. Downtime is unacceptable. Period. If your hosting goes down you should get mad. In this day and age with cloud hosting, load balancers and redundant everything there is no reason why you should have such outages (also it could be pingdom tools screwing up but w/e).

If you are serious about IM and can afford an STM subscription then you should be on non-shared hosting. I've been on shared hosting for years with various web bullshit I was doing and once you go to something like StormOnDemand or BeyondHosting you realise you were wasting your money on shared hosting. If you're with either of these services you won't really need a CDN, only if you're pushing some more serious volume. The more money you're spending the more good hosting is worth to you.

12-08-2011 03:04 AM #3 phoenix (Member)

Zeno's comments are worth a million bucks. take it from a cheapskate that has paid the price earlier in his career. you do NOT want to find out you have been wasting 10%,20%,50%,80% of your money on lost traffic.

As a good friend and top BH SEO hatter told me "Hosting...is#1"

I think you can be cheap on everything else (cept your STM membership)

learn for free [google, youtube and t*rrents are my friend ]
get people to do stuff on fiverr
hire a pro with down time (no, im busy...again)

BUT WHATEVER YOU DO!!! do not be cheap on your hosting

/endrant

12-09-2011 02:58 PM #4 krueger (Member)

OK, and what would you suggest to someone that knows very little about server management? Please consider that I'm not running lots of volume so it has to be cost effective, don't want to be wasting money.

12-09-2011 03:06 PM #5 nusolutionz (Veteran Member)

https://www.stormondemand.com/ fully managed with 24/7 support..very reliable and easy to scale..i would suggest to start with the 2gb plan +cpanel ...but even the 1gb plan will be way better than your current shared hosting.

you really shouldn't try to skimp on hosting..it's one of the most important parts of your business. you'll loose more then you save with cheap hosting..better skimp on ebooks and guru stuff ;-).

12-09-2011 03:10 PM #6 hd2010 (Member)

1GB is fine until you push more, shared hosting is suck, not all hosting companies created equally as well as the server administrator, only some with brains knows what affiliate marketers want

12-09-2011 03:52 PM #7 thekaine (Member)

Not rly feel like explaining it but:

VPS = Shared Hosting = same shit

Managed VPS is even worse! You drop out on flexibility which is the only plus from VPS ...

Go for "real" servers or get someone to configurate your own server. Or look for something that is EXACTLY what you need.

Going for VPS/Shared Hosting is always a gamble because it depends on who is using the machine with you. When you get lucky you have a shared hosting server which is full of small companys with 10 clicks a month so you can eat up there bandwidth and cpu power without problems. But when you have 10 other AM on it who are pushing thousands of visitors through it you will not be happy. Same goes for VPS!

So what i am saying is, do not simply trust that a VPS will make a difference until you are entirely sure what you need!

Also think about how much of a benefit a better hosting is in the end. When you pay 200 bucks each month for hosting and you are pushing low traffic then i guess would be fine to even have a downtime of 3 minutes and rather spend 10 bucks...

I would suggest btw a fair mix of hosting. Why not using a payed CDN and a solid bare metal (non cloud) server for tracking? That way you can use the benefit of the CDN and have the stability and reliability of the dedicated server to make sure your critical stuff (redirects and tracking) are not mixed up.
When you go and check out for all those cloud systems also go and check out how often they are gone how much trouble ppl have with it ...

12-09-2011 04:01 PM #8 nusolutionz (Veteran Member)

Originally Posted by thekaine

i think a dedicated/bare metal is a little bit oversized for his needs (5-10k clicks/day)...and a vps doesn't have to be crap if you get it at the right place....the vps servers from stormondemand/beyond hosting are far away from beeing crap. just my 2 cents

12-09-2011 04:23 PM #9 polarbacon (Moderator)

Originally Posted by thekaine

Not really the case again like anything else, it all depends on who your dealing with.....beyond hosting has some very awesome vps's that have destroyed some storm on demand instances costing 2-3x more....

cdn wise I like maxcdn....$40/1tb good for 1 yr

12-09-2011 06:58 PM #10 BeyondHosting-Tyler (Member)

Originally Posted by thekaine

I disagree with almost every single point made here.

3 Points I'm going to make and will not elaborate on.

1. Shared hosting is just that, SHARED, meaning your sharing EVERYTHING, this means apache, mysql, php ect ect ect. A vps has dedicated resources, may it be disk iops, cpu time, memory ect... Just because you share a host node don't mean the resources your allocated at not yours.

2. Managed does not mean you have no access to your server, it means that if you need help its there for you..

3. CDN are 100% reliable, its distributed for a reason, cloud is not distributed, its fault tolerant.

12-09-2011 07:25 PM #11 thekaine (Member)

Originally Posted by BeyondHosting-Tyler

Typical "hosting" reply sry but nothing is actually true there:

Shared hosting doesn't mean that you have to share same mysql or php or apache instace. Besides that there are software systems that just don't work that way. Apache for example is always distributed with instances. Mysql is way better on a dedicated system which only runs it (which is the case with shared) then when you would run it on your small VPS etc.

VPS systems are 1. often not set for DEDICATED resources they give you a rough estimation from what you might get as a average. You CAN set fixed resources thats true, but you will still be screwed when a person eats ob your bandwidth. And ofc when you have others using max performance all the time and you set a fixed limit then you obv drop out on the fact that you could handle spikes.

Managed does mean you have OTHERS running it for you. When you install your own stuff reconfig the way you want it they either stop deploying software updates (because they have no clue if that screws something up) or they just dont allow it but give you the chance to select from a softwarepool that they "allow" you to run.
When you say "if you need help its there for you.." that would imply to me that you are not managing the server but giving customer support (which is entirely different). Because managed server = the hosting company is to blame for security fixes, software updates, correct configuration, optimization...

About the "reliable" part of the CDN you could go check with how Amazon did this year ...

12-09-2011 07:57 PM #12 BeyondHosting-Tyler (Member)

Originally Posted by thekaine

You're clearly the hosting expert with lots of experience in the industry and CEO of a rapidly growing and extremely profitable/successful hosting company.

People, take what he says with a grain of salt.

Oh FYI, this forums hosted on a *VPS* by us... you don't see it having *problems*.

12-09-2011 08:03 PM #13 thekaine (Member)

Originally Posted by BeyondHosting-Tyler

Way to go!

Sry but your statement just disqualifyed yourself ... cya

12-09-2011 08:18 PM #14 heavyt (Senior Member)

Originally Posted by thekaine

Way to go!

Sry but your statement just disqualifyed yourself ... cya

An you are making yourself look like an ass. With any generic company not catering to what we do I would say the same thing but if its tyler and beyond hosting the whole situation is different.

12-09-2011 08:25 PM #15 chillyh2o (Member)

Originally Posted by thekaine

Managed does mean you have OTHERS running it for you. When you install your own stuff reconfig the way you want it they either stop deploying software updates (because they have no clue if that screws something up) or they just dont allow it but give you the chance to select from a softwarepool that they "allow" you to run.
When you say "if you need help its there for you.." that would imply to me that you are not managing the server but giving customer support (which is entirely different). Because managed server = the hosting company is to blame for security fixes, software updates, correct configuration, optimization...

About the "reliable" part of the CDN you could go check with how Amazon did this year ...

That is unless you host with Tyler.

Not your typical un-helpful, non IP giving, douche baggery German hosting companies.

I have 6 dedi's with him without 1 second of down time. A CDN that is the fastest I have found without 1 second of down time. A cage of equipment that is perfectly wired and hosted on the best networks to be found.

Don't mess with this kid, he'll out Host you all day long.

12-09-2011 08:27 PM #16 heavyt (Senior Member)

Originally Posted by krueger

Don't use cloudflare it created alot of problems for me response times are horrible I took it off and conversions went up, use maxcdn.com for a cdn, and for hosting use tyler is possible I use him and have never had a problem(this is personal opinion not related any way to the status I ahve being a mod on stm)

12-09-2011 08:30 PM #17 polarbacon (Moderator)

Originally Posted by thekaine

Way to go!

Sry but your statement just disqualifyed yourself ... cya

thekaine not really sure who you are...but beyond has very good rep...esp in the aff world.....they set their boxes up for high volume tracking.....vps or dedi....

not really sure why this battle is being fought.....tbh ...and it aint gonna last long if it continues

12-09-2011 09:16 PM #18 bbrock32 (Administrator)

Ok guys , first thing is keep it civil!

We are here to help each other not to waste time on drama.

@thekaine
You are correct when you say VPS are similar to shared hosting because of the resources being shared.

However , the low performance usually is not due to the shared resources model but to overselling.

Most hosting providers place as many VPSs as they can on a single box and on spikes of traffic everyone suffers.

With this said , if you don't oversell and plan carefully how you distribute clients into nodes a VPS can handle the load pretty well.

This is the case with Tyler & BeyondHosting. They are the best in the industry and def know their stuff.

That's why this forum is hosted there and I use them for my dedicated server too.

You are not the first one to get in a fight with Tyler about servers ( ...and prob not the last one too) , but I can say nearly everyone bought a server with them right after the arguing

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