So as you’ve probably heard, if your doing decent volume with anything your going to need MySQL 5.1 on your server. All good right? WRONG! MySQL is hard to upgrade to from an older installation or can just go wrong completely. Theres no commands you can drop in or something in cPanel you can click to do it either (not that I’ve found anyway).
So what Wes from P202 says is if your doing 5,000 clicks a day or so (not hard with social traffic) then your going to need it. MySQL has some horizontal partitioning or something like that (correct me if I’m wrong – I’m not sure lol) and that helps it bring the data up faster. The current version most of us are on is 5.0.* and most hosts won’t upgrade it for you unless you pay $75-150/hr for their time. That’s enough to get you spanking server right? Yep, and that’s what you should do.
Right now I’m with the Planet and they have some specials on nice Dual Xeon dual processor servers. $115-135 will get you:
- 2 Processors with 2 cores (shows up as 4 in cPanel etc)
- 2Gb of ram
- 2x 73GB SCSI Hard drive (FASTER)
- 2.5Tb Bandwidth
The price goes up in $10s for every processor upgrade you want. 2.4Ghz is $115, and the 3.2Ghz per processor is $135 a month. Now that’s a bargain, believe me.
Another good competitor for something to host a dedicated P202 installation on is The grid layer from the Layeredtech. The best option starts from $59 and gets you 20% of the CPU power, 512 ram and 2Tb bandwidth. The beauty of this is that you can SCALE. Which you know is going to be key if you want to grow big (who doesn’t?) So you can upgrade to some very big shit.
Lastly there is Softlayer which is more of a premium but have more to offer. They start from $159 and start with Single proc Dual core stuff. They have a private network with unlimited bandwidth FOR FREE. You’ll see where this plays in, in a moment. They do automated OS reloads etc and have very good hardware and a good team behind them. As well as multiple DCs to choose from.
Now you have the hosting covered, you need to think about the software / OS side of it. Personally I like CentOS but The planet give you free RHEL 5.2 which usually costs I understand. Just stick with Cent OS 5.x and you won’t go wrong.
As for a control panel, there are a few major contenders:
- cPanel
- Plesk
- DirectAdmin
- Interworx
Now personally I prefer Interworx because its easy and you can CLUSTER. So if your load becomes high around 4, 5, 6 constantly then you can just buy another server and install interworx on the 2nd box (Easy btw) and just setup the master with the secondary and bang! We have a cluster! Now the traffic will be spread accross the two servers. Easy to setup and cheap at $25 a licence. Only problem? Doesn’t support MySQL 5.1 or have an upgrade option until MySQL 5.1 goes stable.
The most popular option is probably cPanel. cPanel is just well known and widely used. Nothing fancy and has a big footprint. Doesn’t support MySQL 5.1 either. Avoid it to be honest, expensive and waste of resources.
Plesk – just don’t. This is a nice option for windows but really, don’t go there. It won’t be for you, and it’s pricey!
Now DirectAdmin is a big cPanel contender. It hasn’t going anything fancy but does what cPanel does with a lower footprint and faster panel. Best of all IT SUPPORTS MySQL 5.1! The install process is easy and its VERY cheap. From what I understand is, you just run a script (custombuild) and it will upgrade it for you.
Personally, I’m going to run with The grid layer or The planet with a Direct Admin licence till Interworx get MySQL 5.1 then I’ll migrate out (easy process too) as I really like Interworx.
So when (not if) you plan ahead, keep scaling in mind. And plan it out sooner, rather than later. Slow LPs, redirects etc will put the customer off. It’s fucking ANNOYING. You hate it when sites are slow, and so do they. I suggest you get tracking on a seperate server (good for uptime too) then you won’t have to hassle with it again until you get some REALLY big size put on.
If you get stuff managed or have a team, then just get them to do it – simple. They’ll just upgrade it on your current system, but it will take time (few hours) I suppose.
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