VPS to Managed Dedicated Server

[ihsreal]

I'm new to the forum and have found myself looking into managed dedicated servers a little sooner than I anticipated. I just got an email from my hosting company - inmotionhosting - that reads as follows:

>>System administration has been tracking high resource usage on the machine housing your account... To be clear, your account will be deactivated on the shared systems by the close of business on Wednesday 2006-09-27 at 4PM EST. If you would like your site to be active past the stated date, you will need to get in touch with us about a move up to a dedicated platform as that is minimum plan that can sustain your site's resource usage. Dedicated servers are $289.95/mo.>>

The first notice just came on the 15th and since then I've been trying to get an answer as to which particular resources are being "overused" and what might be causing it. Apparently they couldn't give a definite answer so they are giving us the ultimatum of cutting us off (read: putting us out of business until we can get everything transferred to another hosting company) or "big boying" us into a dedicated hosting plan for 300% of what we're now paying. And, they don't seem to have managed dedicated hosting from what I can tell on their website.

So I'm hoping someone here can steer me in the right direction. We have no staff with familiarity with dedicated servers so I don't even know what questions to ask. We're currently familiar with using a CPANEL WHM and our website has always been on a Unix/Linux box. We need lots of disk space and mysql php myAdmin, etc. Price is an issue as we are basically a start-up.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[SA007]

Hi,
You can try dedicated with the following companies they are managed aswell
www.servstra.com
www.managemybox.com
www.servermatrix.com
Enjoy
Saad

[rwh]

May I ask what are the specs on the server they have offered to you for 289.... a month. cpu type, motherboard, ram, hard drives, bandwidth, uplink speed and such...

Joey

[CapsLOCK]

I think you will try VPS. There are a lot of good VPS companies over there. Some of them provide realy good quality. I know (have heard) following:
vpsland.com (helpfull support, Xen, linux and windows offers)
eurovps.com - no high prices
vpshosting.com - looks not bad.
But I will prefer vpsland.com.

[jijo]

Don't know your specs but a good VPS from a good company may be enough for a while if you are growing at such a high speed

[TE75]

We use isomedia and have had amazing experiences with them.

[paladin2]

I am using hostony and they are awasome as well.

[damien_ls]

Originally Posted by ihsreal

>>System administration has been tracking high resource usage on the machine housing your account... To be clear, your account will be deactivated on the shared systems by the close of business on Wednesday 2006-09-27 at 4PM EST. If you would like your site to be active past the stated date, you will need to get in touch with us about a move up to a dedicated platform as that is minimum plan that can sustain your site's resource usage. Dedicated servers are $289.95/mo.>>

I'm confused by the topic title of "VPS to Managed Dedicated" since it sounds like you're using shared hosting at the moment?

I'd recommend moving to a VPS (probably with a different provider!) as there is certainly no need to move from shared to dedicated and the expense that includes.

There are numerous providers who can offer you a managed VPS, including a simple (zero downtime) upgrade path to full dedicated servers if/when that's required for you.

As an example, you can get a managed VPS from $22.95/month which I'm sure would be a welcome saving for you compared to the $289.95/month your current provider are offering for an unnecessary dedicated server upgrade!

[AndrewRae]

A VPS would be a good start and if you wish to migrate to a dedicate server you can easily do it.

Take the time to read some reviews about the best VPS providers since you should choose carefully.

I currently have two dedicated servers, and nothing compares with owning your own server.

Good luck!

[rwh]

When considering a VPS please make sure that you get one with enough ram and cpu power to handle your site if not you will just be spinning your wheels.
Without knowing your true usage it is hard to say just get a VPS when indeed you may need a dedicated server. You can get one for alot cheaper than 289.95 a month though, again this really depends on ram and cpu usage..

Joey

[damien_ls]

Originally Posted by rwh

When considering a VPS please make sure that you get one with enough ram and cpu power to handle your site if not you will just be spinning your wheels.

I agree with you, but I'd say that the best solution here (given the complete "unknown" about actual usage) is to ensure that you can upgrade your VPS plan easily should there be a need; this is true of any VPS (or hosting plan) really, but particularly where you have no idea whether you need a tiny VPS or a massive dedicated server cluster.

Originally Posted by rwh

Without knowing your true usage it is hard to say just get a VPS when indeed you may need a dedicated server. You can get one for alot cheaper than 289.95 a month though, again this really depends on ram and cpu usage..

Whilst I agree (as above) that you can't tell for sure, I'd say it's pretty unlikely that any shared hosting provider would tolerate usage to the extreme where a dedicated server is more suitable than a VPS. Any shared provider doing that wouldn't be in business long!

Certainly agree that you can get a dedicated server cheaper than 289, but you'd really get better value for money on decent VPS vs. a low spec. dedicated server.

Also, I should point out that when I mentioned above about the ability to upgrade, the should include checking how difficult it would be to upgrade to a full dedicated server too! Does the VPS provider offer them? can you upgrade easily? What happens to fees paid for VPS services? Who handles the migration between VPS and dedicated server? How quickly can you upgrade?