VPS advice needed

**cjh82** · 29th October 2009

I look after an ASP.NET application I developed for a friend's company that handles job logging for them. It's reached a point where the it's outgrown shared hosting so I'm now looking around for a new solution.

I'm not that well up on the server side of things so am after some advice as to what I should be looking for. I'm guessing a VPS would be sufficient for what's needed but am happy to be corrected.

Currently there are only ever a maximum of about 6 people using the system at any one time. It's a .NET application (v2.0) with a SQL Server DB at the back end (version 2005 or above). It's outgrown the 50Mb of SSL space it currently uses and I could estimate the HD size the application and related documents would need, but how much extra needs to be allowed for OS/Application installation, etc.

With regard to managing the server, as I've said, I'm not that well up but probably have enough to get by. I know there are fully managed solutions available but these might be slightly cost-prohibitive - does a middle solution exist whereby OS patches etc are installed by the provider?

Any help on the basic specs I should be looking out for with the new hosting would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

**Ed-Freethought** · 29th October 2009

What kind of shared hosting are you on at the moment? Is it cheap as chips from someone who provides unlimited accounts or something a bit more reasonable? It's quite possible that a shared account on someone slightly less oversold would suit your needs.

Otherwise, if you do need a VPS/VDS/low end dedicated server then it sounds like you need a managed one so that the host takes care of everything for you.
Managed VPS/VDS are generally still quite reasonable price wise and there are some companies that have a "semi-managed" option which is sometimes cheaper and might be more suitable.

Most of the regulars on here are hosting companies themselves, but can't tout their wares in this area. If you drop a post in the Requests for Products or Services sections, then I'm sure you'll get several people offering you quotes quite quickly.

**cjh82** · 29th October 2009

Thanks for the response.

I'll post in the request are once I've narrowed down a bit exactly what I want.

At the moment it's hosted on a Business Shared Hosting plan with Fasthosts. I can't complain about that so far, but with only 50Mb of SSL space we need to upgrade. Scheduled backups are becoming more important now as well rather than the more ad-hoc approach we are currently taking.

The semi-managed option sounds like it may be viable. I suppose the areas I'm most in need of help with are the processor and memory I should be aiming for.

**Pete-CCS** · 29th October 2009

As Ed said, most hosts worth their salt don't ram their servers until they grind to a halt, unlike perhaps one mentioned here, and perform daily, off-site backups as a matter of course.

Unless you have a massive, resource hungry DB, that really just sounds like a choice of a decent host.

Get your full requirement together and pop a request up and we'll tale it from there.

**cjh82** · 29th October 2009

Will do, thanks very much.

**killerbee** · 17th December 2009

First, see for the RAM and user's feedback about the chosen host and choose GrEEN HOST>

**midnightsoftwar** · 17th December 2009

Originally Posted by killerbee

First, see for the RAM and user's feedback about the chosen host and choose GrEEN HOST>

That must get the unintelligible post of the week award surely?

**gavint** · 18th December 2009

Resources required largely depends if you want to stay with Server 2003 or move up to 2008 - Server 2008 x64 uses over 9GB to of disk for the installation and updates compared to ~2GB on Server 2003 x64.

For SQL Server as well I'd recommend 1GB of RAM although you might get away with 512MB.

If you're not sure then maybe test out your app on an EC2 instance for a couple of hours? Will only cost you £5 or so to see how it runs.

Gavin

**pacifich** · 19th December 2009

Try to gather as much as possible hosting reviews about the current hosting provider you are going to deal with.

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