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Head of Protection Products at Citi Bank UK Consumer (Egg.com)
22 October 2002 16:42pm
I am in the market for buying hosting space. The site is relatively small, but is likely to be subjected to fairly major fluctuations in traffic. ie from a few hundred a day, to maybe, a few thousand an hour.
Clearly I need it to remain stable throughout this onslaught.
Can anyone suggest a company that can 'flex' the available bandwidth with demand?
Cheers
Founder / Director / Co-founder at easyBacklog / Aqueduct / Econsultancy
23 October 2002 11:15am
There are quite a few options in regards to hosting, mainly differing in their service levels, which I imagine for a reasonable sized commercial venture, will be quite important,
You need to also ask yourself if there will be specific database requirements, custom component installation or scripting requirements. If there is need for all three, you are probably looking at having a dedicated / managed server, but the cost for this is increased dramatically as their will be a single server allocated purely for your website.
The cheapest option is a virtual server / shared server solution where multiple websites are hosted on the same server. These normally offer database access at an additional cost, but considerably less that dedicated servers. The disadvantage to these servers are potentially performance degradation if multiple websites are simultaneously being hit. In my experience, this is very rarely a problem.
In regards to handling the peak hours of traffic, this should not necessarily be a problem. If you average your page size at around 50k, and assume in peak hours you will get 5,000 users per hour each hitting on average 5 pages (which is very amibitous), this gives you a total of 25,000 pages per hour @ 50k each, which gives 1.19GB per hour.
To calculate whether the server can support this level of traffic, find out what connection the server has to the internet i.e. the backbone that it is supported on.
FORMULA TO USE = Traffic per hour in KB * 8 (convert to Kbits) / 60 (convert to traffic per minute) / 60 (traffic per second) / 1024 (work out traffic in Mbits/sec)
EXAMPLE = 1,250,000 * 8 / 60 / 60 / 1024
= 2.7Mbits / sec
Therefore the provider has to ensure that the server can burst to this level of traffic. Hosting providers normally have 2 options for you traffiic levels, a fixed bandwidth i.e. 64kbits/sec, 128kbits/sec, or a fixed amount of bandwidth i.e. 10GB per month, which is burstable to 10mbits/sec. The latter solution is preferable for your requirement, as it will allow for the peaks in traffic.
The last thing you will need to consider is whether the server can physically serve that many pages that quickly. This will depend largely on scripting languages used, and database access. This should be load tested on a similar environment to the final hosting environment. In reality, this can be expensive and time consuming, and to some degree, you will have to make some assumptions about this. If the content is largely static HTML pages, you should not need to worry. If you are using extensive back end processing of the pages, you should load test the website if you want to ensure high availability. You may need to look at more enterprise solutions if you cannot support this with server clustering and load balancing, but that's another issue altogether.
So, to answer your question, there are numerous solutions in the UK (I assume it will be hosted in the UK. If you are not sure, ask me why you should/shouldn't host in the UK), ranging from the very cheap £30 per year to the more corporate hosting environments. I will list some that I have used previously, as there are too many to mention other wise. I am sure you will be able to find a site reviewing them somewhere.
CHEAP SOLUTIONS (SHARED SPACE):
www.easyspace.co.uk
www.uk2.net
MIDDLE GROUND SOLUTIONS (SHARED)
www.fasthosts.co.uk
www.9netave.co.uk
MIDDLE GROUND SOLUTIONS (DEDICATED)
www.9netave.co.uk
www.xtrahost.co.uk
HIGH END SOLUTIONS
www.via-net-works.com
www.worldcom.co.uk
www.globix.co.uk (although they were supposed to have been in financial trouble, but they still appear to be running)
www.easynet.com
Hope that helps.
Matt
On 16:42:58 22 October 2002 C.H wrote:
>I am in the market for buying hosting space. The site is
>relatively small, but is likely to be subjected to fairly
>major fluctuations in traffic. ie from a few hundred a
>day, to maybe, a few thousand an hour.
>
>Clearly I need it to remain stable throughout this
>onslaught.
>
>Can anyone suggest a company that can 'flex' the available
>bandwidth with demand?
>
>Cheers
CEO at Econsultancy
23 October 2002 13:45pm
I would emphasise / add to Matthew's points about the kind of content you are serving and kind of load you might expect.
In my experience what really cripples a server(s) is a high number of *simultaneous* users + complex processing requirements. For example running a prime time TV ad sending people to a personalised, dynamic page where they can enter their details to win something good is asking for trouble. I've been the one there hard re-booting the server so I speak from painful experience. I imagine the people at Nectar suffered likewise just recently (cf. Dave's post at http://www.e-consultancy.com/forum/default.asp?v=1380&p=1).
There are steps you can take to avoid this e.g.
- test it properly and hugely overestimate expected loads
- warn the ISP before any big advertising push so they can manage the bandwidth better
- use flat HTML files (as Matthew says, much easier to serve and much more reliable) for the most-hit pages. This doesn't mean that the pages can't be generated with a CMS, just output them perhaps daily in the middle of the night.
- manage your marketing / advertising so that it isn't too 'spikey' in the way it generates traffic
VP Sales at Smart Global
19 November 2002 18:08pm
Hi,
Just to clarify, Globix have completed a global restructuring and continue to offer hosting, colocation and access solutions.
Warm regards,
Lee.
On 11:15:20 23 October 2002 matt wrote:
>There are quite a few options in regards to hosting,
>mainly differing in their service levels, which I imagine
>for a reasonable sized commercial venture, will be quite
>important,
>
>You need to also ask yourself if there will be specific
>database requirements, custom component installation or
>scripting requirements. If there is need for all three,
>you are probably looking at having a dedicated / managed
>server, but the cost for this is increased dramatically as
>their will be a single server allocated purely for your
>website.
>
>The cheapest option is a virtual server / shared server
>solution where multiple websites are hosted on the same
>server. These normally offer database access at an
>additional cost, but considerably less that dedicated
>servers. The disadvantage to these servers are
>potentially performance degradation if multiple websites
>are simultaneously being hit. In my experience, this is
>very rarely a problem.
>
>In regards to handling the peak hours of traffic, this
>should not necessarily be a problem. If you average your
>page size at around 50k, and assume in peak hours you will
>get 5,000 users per hour each hitting on average 5 pages
>(which is very amibitous), this gives you a total of
>25,000 pages per hour @ 50k each, which gives 1.19GB per
>hour.
>To calculate whether the server can support this level of
>traffic, find out what connection the server has to the
>internet i.e. the backbone that it is supported on.
>
>FORMULA TO USE = Traffic per hour in KB * 8 (convert to
>Kbits) / 60 (convert to traffic per minute) / 60 (traffic
>per second) / 1024 (work out traffic in Mbits/sec)
>
>EXAMPLE = 1,250,000 * 8 / 60 / 60 / 1024
> = 2.7Mbits / sec
>
>Therefore the provider has to ensure that the server can
>burst to this level of traffic. Hosting providers
>normally have 2 options for you traffiic levels, a fixed
>bandwidth i.e. 64kbits/sec, 128kbits/sec, or a fixed
>amount of bandwidth i.e. 10GB per month, which is
>burstable to 10mbits/sec. The latter solution is
>preferable for your requirement, as it will allow for the
>peaks in traffic.
>
>The last thing you will need to consider is whether the
>server can physically serve that many pages that quickly.
>This will depend largely on scripting languages used, and
>database access. This should be load tested on a similar
>environment to the final hosting environment. In reality,
>this can be expensive and time consuming, and to some
>degree, you will have to make some assumptions about this.
> If the content is largely static HTML pages, you should
>not need to worry. If you are using extensive back end
>processing of the pages, you should load test the website
>if you want to ensure high availability. You may need to
>look at more enterprise solutions if you cannot support
>this with server clustering and load balancing, but that's
>another issue altogether.
>
>So, to answer your question, there are numerous solutions
>in the UK (I assume it will be hosted in the UK. If you
>are not sure, ask me why you should/shouldn't host in the
>UK), ranging from the very cheap £30 per year to the
>more corporate hosting environments. I will list some that
>I have used previously, as there are too many to mention
>other wise. I am sure you will be able to find a site
>reviewing them somewhere.
>
>CHEAP SOLUTIONS (SHARED SPACE):
>www.easyspace.co.uk
>www.uk2.net
>
>MIDDLE GROUND SOLUTIONS (SHARED)
>www.fasthosts.co.uk
>www.9netave.co.uk
>
>MIDDLE GROUND SOLUTIONS (DEDICATED)
>www.9netave.co.uk
>www.xtrahost.co.uk
>
>HIGH END SOLUTIONS
>www.via-net-works.com
>www.worldcom.co.uk
>www.globix.co.uk (although they were supposed to have been
>in financial trouble, but they still appear to be running)
>www.easynet.com
>
>Hope that helps.
>
>Matt
>
>
>On 16:42:58 22 October 2002 C.H wrote:
>>I am in the market for buying hosting space. The site
>is
>>relatively small, but is likely to be subjected to
>fairly
>>major fluctuations in traffic. ie from a few hundred a
>>day, to maybe, a few thousand an hour.
>>
>>Clearly I need it to remain stable throughout this
>>onslaught.
>>
>>Can anyone suggest a company that can 'flex' the
>available
>>bandwidth with demand?
>>
>>Cheers