VPS versus Shared - which is more reliable?

[danwednesday]

Hi,

After yet more down time with my VPS Hosting (which seems to require restarting about 3 times per day) I'm considering a move back to shared hosting.

Basically it seems like my VPS Hosting has never been able to handle running any kind of MSSQL database-driven website hosting - it just grinds to a hault with the lightest of usage. I set up a monitoring service (pingdom.com) to notify me of downtime on several of my VPS Hosting-hosted domains, and it's sending me numerous down-time alerts throughout the day - some of which appear to be resolved before I can witness the down time, some do show the website hosting being completely unavailable and require me to restart the VPS Hosting.

It's getting to the stage that if I'm not in the office 24 hrs a day, the VPS Hosting goes down and stays down. I thought that the VPS Hosting monitoring offered by EUKHost would include the services running under my VPS Hosting, but apparently (according to support this morning) it doesn't - so I basically need to be here 24/7 to monitor the services and restart when it grinds to a hault. What a nightmare.

Anyhow, having run all of these exact same website hostings symultaneously (plus about 200% more sites) on a shared server elsewhere, I never ever had these problems. The only reason I moved is because my previous shared hosts didn't offer guaranteed back-ups, which is something I really need (rather than having to FTP everything and run SQL Server back-ups every day or so manually). VPS Hosting is billed as the next stage up from shared hosting so if anything I thought it might be slightly faster and even more stable, but so far the only benefit has been that I can install my own components, which were atually installed on the shared server anyway! In every other respect is compares dramatically unfavourably.

So, question is, is anyone else finding that they'd wished they'd stayed with shared hosting? Has anyone tried EUKHost's shared hosting? How reliable/powerful is it? I notice there are loads of down-time complaints in the forums, but I guess most people only post when they're unhappy with something so that's probably skewed. Are you able to run MSSQL applications without it bailing out on EUKHost shared servers?

Of course dedicated hosting is also billed to be better, but the specification of the dedicated servers is very similar to those of the VPS Hosting (e.g. similar memory etc) so I'd only imagine they'd compare similarly to VPS Hosting, only without possible interference from other users as they're not in any way shared. I wouldn't be keen to double or triple my costs to get something that still can't run a SQL Server database reliably.

Are there any non-EUKHost staff who have any direct experience in dealing with shared/VPS Hosting/dedicated, and can compare them? I'm genuinely interested/concerned and could do with an impartial view on it. I'm also getting to the end of my patience with VPS Hosting - it's turning into a nightmare. I'm not blaming EUKHost - it's probably my fault for not realising that VPS Hosting's aren't powerful enough to run things like MSSQL very well, but I'd just like to hear from people who have similar experiences across different hosting types for reassurance. It's obviously a huge pain in the butt to move multiple website hostings, so I'd rather make sure the chosen platform is right before doing so again.

Thanks folks...

[eUKhost.com]

Hi Dan,

MSSQL and IIS Web Server are memory intensive and one needs to ensure sufficient amount of Free Memory to ensure trouble free performance of respective VPS Hosting.

Some of our windows shared servers had some problem recently, but now we have all our windows servers migrated to latest Dell Dual CPU E5420 Servers which will help us to bring our "Windows Shared Hosting" forum back in good shape. We have few Dozens of windows shared hosting servers and some customers login on forum only when they face problem with their hosting account. There's nothing wrong in doing so as your posts on our forum help us to figure out where we need to improve.

I would like to give some clarification on your wrong assumptions about our Dedicated Servers. If you think that you can afford a Dedicated Server and pay few ££'s extra, then there's absolutely no other hosting plan that can give you peace of mind. If you calculate time that you spend in monitoring your VPS Hosting then that time should be sufficient to compensate additional cost of a Dedicated Server. We will provide you with 25GB backup space free with your Dedicated Server and our system admins will take care of automated daily / weekly backup configuration.

You won't consider shared or VPS Hosting in future no matter if you need to host a small website hosting on any other platform besides what you have on your Dedicated Server, thats the ONLY disadvantage of switching to a Dedicated Server.

[247h]

Originally Posted by danwednesday

...Are there any non-EUKHost staff who have any direct experience in dealing with shared/VPS Hosting/dedicated, and can compare them? I'm genuinely interested/concerned and could do with an impartial view on it.

Well, Mark answered honestly (as usual) but he's not a third-party reference you requested!

OTOH I am, but unfortunately have no experience yet of Windows Shared, VPS Hosting or dedicated servers in data centres, but I can offer a generalised opinion based upon plenty of Linux shared, VPS Hosting and dedicated server experience, as well as experience of managing Windows Small Business Servers for clients (so I see a basis for comparison in this discussion) until such time as another (non-eUKhost) member answers ...

That opinion is in agreement with Mark in that dedicated servers (DS) are in a completely different sphere of reliability and performance than VPS Hosting nodes. I believe that whichever way you look at virtualisation technologies, they are inherently weak and unstable to begin with, then you have to accept that some other idiot on your node will screw up things for everyone else — Murphy's Law!

Comparing the latest VPS Hosting or semi-DS nodes' specifications (which look fantastic) to a low or moderately-spec'd DS gives one a totally false impression of which will perform best in terms of stability.

Yes it's an expensive leap of faith to upgrade to a DS but until you do, you won't have eliminated all the variables that you can do nothing about (and regularly suffer from).

How tied are you to MSSQL and Windows with your accounts — do most need it or the opposite? Just curious as it might be that there is more than one solution path for you. If you'd to test an account on a Linux DS then let me know by PM.

[viking30]

Are there any non-EUKHost staff who have any direct experience in dealing with shared/VPS Hosting/dedicated, and can compare them? I'm genuinely interested/concerned and could do with an impartial view on it.

You asked so here goes....Go for the dedicated server. You wont be sorry. I'm not.

[danwednesday]

Okay, thanks for the feedback everyone.

So the concensus is that dedicated is considerably more stable/reliable. However, is it actually powerful enough to compete with shared MSSQL databases or will a small/medium sized MS SQL Server database still bring a dedicated server creaking to a hault? How about 20 small website hostings with MSSQL databases? Would you still be confident in a dedicated server then?

These are the sort of things I was hearing about VPS Hosting over shared, and I've definitely made the wrong choice there, so I need to make completely sure the same didn't happen with a dedicated server if I'm going to be paying huge amounts more.

Thanks again...

[eUKhost.com]

Hi Dan,

You can run more than 100 MSSQL Server driven website hostings on a E4600 server with 2 GB RAM. there should be no problem for at least 50 website hostings with 1 GB RAM.

I'll issue full refund on Dedicated Server if your MSSQL Server driven website hostings face any problem on the Dedicated Server.

[danwednesday]

Thanks,

However, the VPS Hosting I current run has around 1Gb RAM (it was upgraded due to continual crashing) - that's supposedly "guaranteed RAM" too - and that really can't handle 5 very small/lightweight MSSQL databases very well at all. The only way I'd know would be to transfer several domains across to a dedicated server and see, but it's a risk I can't afford to take time-wise if it doesn't work, regardless of whether the financials were re-imbursed.

Are there any non-EUK staff who run several MSSQL databases across several domains on a dedicated server? How is it?

Thanks again...