Questions when choosing a provider

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Posted by Bexyz, 09-27-2011, 05:58 PM
Hey everyone! I'm a new start-up business that will be selling reservations online. Therefore my site will be mainly text based with a few pictures. It's built using PHP5 and MySQL5. I have decided to host in the cloud because I want the reliability and scalability. I also decided I definitely want my server in Canada (as my business is Canadian). I saw the previous post on Canadian cloud hosting providers and have been looking at Cartika (Linux). Questions: - The plan includes 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM. How large does a company have to be (how many visitors/month) before it needs more than 1 CPU? Or another GB RAM? - storage - 100GB Cartika ZFS SSD/SAS-SATA Hybrid - what does this mean? Is this referring to how much space I have to store my website on, as well as emails? What happens if I go over? (does not appear to be an option for additional storage) - Bandwidth - my options are 10Mbps unmetered, or pay $25 extra for 3,000 GB on 100Mbps port. This is a big difference. Is 10Mbps slow? Or is 100Mbps unnecessary? - operating system type - CentOS, CloudLinux, Debian or Suse. What are the differences and how do I know which one to pick? - control panel - I've read that Cpanel is the most popular and very user friendly. If I have this installed on my server, is it reasonable that I can maintain security, backups, run updates, etc. given that I am not experienced in this area (although I do learn quick)? Rather than pay $100/month extra for a managed plan (until I am making money and don't have the time to run the server on my own)? - R1soft CDP license - it's free, but you pay per GB for the backup space required - how do I know how much I need? - Do I require SSH access to the server if I'm managing it on my own? I'm not really sure what SSH access means. So far Cartika seems like the most cost effective solution ($45 base to start). Radiant and Tenzing are seem fairly expensive in comparison. Thank you in advance for your help. I've done soooo much research on these things, but I'm an accountant, not a web techie!
Posted by tcstatic, 09-28-2011, 09:45 AM
Hi Bexyz, I'm afraid the best place to get an answer to these questions would be to submit a ticket, or via phone I would be happy to address your questions personally. The contact information can be found at https://cartikasupport.com/helpdesk/
Posted by Bexyz, 09-28-2011, 12:35 PM
Thanks for your message The reason I posted my questions here is because the last 3 providers I contacted directly didn't answer my questions well, and just "attached files" and gave me links back to their websites. I have submitted a ticket with Cartika now and hopefully their response quality is better
Posted by tcstatic, 09-28-2011, 02:26 PM
Hi Bexyz, I'm afraid I do not see any tickets that came in with the questions asked unless you have not submitted the ticket to sales? Submitted tickets come into our helpdesk and are viewable immediately. Please do mention your nic here at WHT or insert Attention Dave when submitting a ticket to sales.
Posted by ameeriklane, 09-29-2011, 03:08 AM
We signed up with Cartika's cloud solution in Canada a few days ago. We're not live with customers yet (still setting things up and testing on our side) but so far it seems to work well and network connectivity looks good. I think you may be fine starting off with the limited amount of memory, CPU, and bandwidth. The nice thing with the cloud offering is it's really easy to scale up as you grow.
Posted by Lionese, 09-29-2011, 08:29 AM
If you have 10,000 monthly visitors, you need at least a dedicated server. However, the number of visitors maybe lower as it depends the databases that you create in the server also. The heavier database you have, the higher resources you need. The hardisk you get is 100GB. Linux stores everything at one place by default. At cloud hosting, you can increase the hardisk storage at anytime. 10Mbps is normally sufficient for a new site. Again, it subject to your databases, visitors and streaming files (if any) that you put on the server. CentOS is more commonly used. The IT personnel/web designer should know better which suit better. Having cPanel control panel can actually ease your burden on website management. Without cPanel, you need to do everything manually using command prompt. I personally think that it is a little risky if you were to manage the server yourselves, unless you have an experienced IT personnel manage for you. Subscribe the lowest plan first. It can be upgraded when you need more. SSH is Secure Shell Access, the Linux's command prompt. You don't need to know if you don't know as you can use cPanel instead.
Posted by tcstatic, 09-29-2011, 09:23 AM
Hi Lionese, I agree with nearly every item you covered in your response and you offer sound advice. This is simply one of those questions often asked that cannot be effectively answered. Unless the individuals site/coding is live to benchmark the resource requirements under loads and scalability of their code - there is simply not an accurate answer. I know of many php/mysql sites that can easily handle that amount of traffic on a single vCPU and a couple of GB of RAM. There are also sites whose poor coding will crash a powerful dedicated server with 10 concurrent users - it's all in the coding. I often see people throwing huge amounts of hardware resources trying to cover up bad coding instead of fixing/streamlining the code issues. They often move from host to host blaming downtime/resource usage on the previous hosting company, when it is their coding that is causing the issues. Agree with disk upgrade Agree completely and they were advised of this. Agreed I agree completely. A user that does not have excellent server admin skills should never go with an unmanaged service. Even if skilled, there are often times a fully managed/monitored server is a much better choice. A single person cannot monitor a server 24x7x365. Managed services allows the user/business to focus on their core business instead of having to worry about hosting and servers etc. For a couple/few dollars a day, people have to ask themselves where their time is better spent. I actually recommended HSphere for this as it offloads a lot of the overhead onto our dedicated control panel servers. cPanel is also a fine choice and there are many happy users of it. You simply have to figure in a bit of resource usage/overhead that will not be available for your sites/applications. Yes, agreed. People should not as a general rule use command line for tasks unless they are very familiar with it.
Posted by Bexyz, 09-29-2011, 12:48 PM
Thank you SO MUCH everyone for your comments I'm so glad I found WHT and am finally getting some great answers!! Dave, you have been so helpful and I am sending you a reply through Cartika shortly. Thanks!!

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