Wondering about VPS

Hey DreamHost staff and clients. I'm currently a client myself but only using the standard inexpensive hosting package ("as low as $5.95/month").

I'm considering hosting a Drupal site, and don't believe the DreamHost inexpensive hosting package would perform very well... I'm using it for WordPress and don't think I'd try use it for anything more interactive than that.

BUT a friend suggested slicehost.com instead, saying that the DreamHost VPS configurations won't perform as well because DreamHost splits up the web server from the DB... they're always separate virtual machines communicating across ethernet. As opposed to being hosted on the same virtual machine where there'd be no communications overhead.

So why is a $15/mo VPS for PHP distinct from a $15/mo VPS for DB? I mean if I need more memory, shouldn't I just be able to pay $30/mo for a better single VPS on DreamHost?

I do appreciate the turnkey DreamHost installs... so all things being equal I'd rather not configure a Drupal+DB box from scratch (as I'd need to with SliceHost). But I'll do it if I'm going to perpetually be taking a performance hit.

Thanks for any insight into this. -Gord

Hey, welcome to DH first.

This is a customer-to-customer forum. We can share our experiences with VPS in DH. But it seems like your question should be sent to DH support.

There are few ways you can contact DH support. You can either contact them via Contact form or via DH panel --> Support --> Contact Support. They will be glad to answer your question.

Yes this s the worst thing at Dreamhost, databases and websites not ont the same server, even when you pay $400 a month for a VPS... incredible !

The advantage to having it on a separate machine is that it can run in parallel to your site. Even if the application itself is not meant to take advantage of this per request, when multiple people are requesting at the same time one request should not block the other when one is waiting for a response from the mysql server. Another advantage is that it is a more straightforward way of having multiple front ends to the same backend (easier to optimize and should scale more linearly). The overall effect should be a significantly faster website.

Yeah, having the database on a separate machine is a GOOD thing!

Another big difference between Slicehost and DH is that the VPS here are managed, the ones over at Slicehost are just a basic system (with root access). You need to install and configure everything yourself. If you know how to administrate a Linux server, want all the freedom to use your very own configuration then Slicehost might be the better choice. If you don't want to worry about server configuration, running HTTP, MySQL server and all that, then DH is the better choice.

Having MySQL and Apache/HTTP server on the same machine is ok if you have a small website. If you want to grow the professional solution is to split the services on two seperate server. Webserver need fast disks but might not need that much Memory. A MySQL server needs lots of ram to keep the data in cache.

Jan

I'm not a system administrator. To me, I like the way DH manages their VPS servers. I don't need the root access to configure the sever. Yet I don't even know how to configure (in a safe way).

Honestly,
I'd stick to DH since it's managed and you could always roll-back to normal shared hosting as long as you meet the requirements.

Hi,

Do you know any good dedicated or virtual server with databases and sites on the same machine ?

Thank you !

Just a thought, as DH PS allows you to run your own processes and you can use the high ports for those (port >1024) couldn't you run your own MySQL server on the PS? Has anyone tried this?

Jan