# Need help in getting a VPS



## dashing.sujay (Dec 3, 2014)

Looking to switch to a VPS for one of my website. (Welcome - Prepvelvet)

Was on a shared hosting @ outpowerhosting, but those ahole guys keep on repeating that we use resources more than our limit and that our site is getting more than 3L hits which is not at all possible.

Looking out for a VPS solution under 10$/month (max, not a penny more; if cheaper, then better).

- Do not require much storage, a couple of GBs will be more than enough, currently using just 150mb.

- Main requirement is bandwidth. No idea about requirement, just require some odd couple of 100 students to give online exam at a time. 50GB should be fine, I guess.


Now since i am absolute beginner to hosting, a couple of queries bouncing in my head :

- How to figure out that how much RAM my site will need ?

- I can handle linux (just a starter though) and pretty much ready to do everything whatever comes along the way, so should I ditch managed hosting ?

Some of the options which I have circled out are - 

1) *www.digitalocean.com/pricing/   (only 5$/month)

2) Bluehost  /  Hosting24.com / SSD VPS Servers - VPS.NET

3) AWS (but totally confused by their site, currently signed up for AWS free tier)

Any other option is welcome. Need to finalize this week or max this month.

PS: Need some special inputs on AWS. Really confused as how much free tier covers ? Can I really start running a full website for "a year" ? Doesn't seem to be as they give limited hours. 

Thanks in advance.


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 4, 2014)

Guys..


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## cute.bandar (Dec 4, 2014)

I am with BuyVM - Affordable VPS hosting with a touch of insanity - they are great. costs me 30$ / 6 months. 
Digitalocean should be equally good I suppose. Heard only good things about them.


> PS: Need some special inputs on AWS. Really confused as how much free tier covers ? Can I really start running a full website for "a year" ?


Short answer : yes 
Long answer: They give 750 hours free usage on EC2 / month for the first year. Source
So yes if you can figure out how to use aws, you can use the free usage. 
But there can be a lot of gotchas with aws , if you don't kind of understand their setup. Like one should choose a free OS (not redhat ) when creating a ec2 instance, or making sure not to terminate an ec2 instance (that would delete all the data, if memory serves me right) . Heck a bitcoin exchange lost 1000's bitcoin because they didn't know this.



> Main requirement is bandwidth


Bandwidth is cheap,  the 512mb RAM buyvm plan gives 2TB



> - How to figure out that how much RAM my site will need ?


depends on what you are running on it. Would you require cpanel or not etc.


> I can handle linux


Why not try to setup a vps environment on you local computer first , by first installing any distro and apache/ php / mysql etc.


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 5, 2014)

cute.bandar said:


> I am with BuyVM - Affordable VPS hosting with a touch of insanity - they are great. costs me 30$ / 6 months.
> Digitalocean should be equally good I suppose. Heard only good things about them.



I was also inclined towards them. Today I received $5 credit from them. Seems like I will give it a shot.



> Short answer : yes
> Long answer: They give 750 hours free usage on EC2 / month for the first year. Source
> So yes if you can figure out how to use aws, you can use the free usage.
> But there can be a lot of gotchas with aws , if you don't kind of understand their setup. Like one should choose a free OS (not redhat ) when creating a ec2 instance, or making sure not to terminate an ec2 instance (that would delete all the data, if memory serves me right) . Heck a bitcoin exchange lost 1000's bitcoin because they didn't know this.



Wouldn't 750 hours become almost finished in just a month ? 24 * 30 = 720 hrs. If this is true, "1 free year" is such a big lie.

And not to forget, AWS is so confusing.

PS: They charged me $1 just as "confirmation" charge without even notifying me. That too without CVV code.



> Bandwidth is cheap,  the 512mb RAM buyvm plan gives 2TB
> 
> depends on what you are running on it. Would you require cpanel or not etc.



Isn't cPanel chargeable ? I was thinking on using zPanel.



> Why not try to setup a vps environment on you local computer first , by first installing any distro and apache/ php / mysql etc.



Will do that.

One more question, how much do 1 core/ 2 core CPUs affect in this scenario ?

Trying to finalise b/w these two plans - 

1) Digitalocean - $5 - 512MB/1 Core/ 20GB SSD/ 1 TB

2) buyvm.net - $5.95 - 512MB/2 Core/ 50 (HDD ??)/ 2 TB

If 256MB should be enough, then I might go with the cheaper buyvm plan (256MB/2 Core/30GB/1TB = $3.5/m).

Thanks for your help buddy, really appreciated.


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## krishnandu.sarkar (Dec 5, 2014)

I suggest DO too..!! You can also go with Vultr. I'm hosting 3 of my clients Call Centre Suite at Vultr it's performing fine.

But for high end clients I use Rackspace.


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 6, 2014)

^Which plan you are you having buddy ? And what do you suggest, going for more RAM or CPU ?

Both DO and vultr are giving 1 core CPU, the latter giving 1.5x the RAM. However, the suggestion of cute.bandar - buyvm.net is giving 2 cores, 512MB RAM though. It also offers 2 cores/256MB @ 3.5$/month. Shall I try that ?

Bit confused on this. Once, I clear this, I can finalise this ASAP.


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## Deleted member 118788 (Dec 6, 2014)

I will also vouch for BuyVM. I have a VPS there and running 2 wordpress sites very fast.


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## krishnandu.sarkar (Dec 6, 2014)

dashing.sujay said:


> ^Which plan you are you having buddy ? And what do you suggest, going for more RAM or CPU ?
> 
> Both DO and vultr are giving 1 core CPU, the latter giving 1.5x the RAM. However, the suggestion of cute.bandar - buyvm.net is giving 2 cores, 512MB RAM though. It also offers 2 cores/256MB @ 3.5$/month. Shall I try that ?
> 
> Bit confused on this. Once, I clear this, I can finalise this ASAP.



I'm having 2 $5 server, 2 $35 server and 1 $70 server.

I run a call center suite on these servers. So those companies have 50 - 100 employees across the cities and it works fine for them. So you see it's low traffic for me.

So if you are expecting much more throughput, then better go with different thing.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway for your reference, check the monitor images below

This is what my daily consumption is. So it's not like a public facing web server. It's a call center's server where automatic calls are placed to US / UK for about 50 employees with the required services and web interfaces. The web portals are only used by the employees. But it needs power for internal tasks as it's CPU bound heavily. BTW it's a $70 one. 

*i.imgur.com/NJLTBkm.png

*i.imgur.com/IyCkdBQ.png


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 6, 2014)

Alright, I think I have a fair idea about it. I'll soon purchase and let you guys know the experience. Thanks a lot !


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## cute.bandar (Dec 6, 2014)

> Wouldn't 750 hours become almost finished in just a month


 It's 750 hours per month 



> PS: They charged me $1 just as "confirmation" charge without even notifying me.


 That should get refunded I think.



> One more question, how much do 1 core/ 2 core CPUs affect in this scenario ?
> If 256MB should be enough, then I might go with the cheaper buyvm plan (256MB/2 Core/30GB/1TB = $3.5/m).


I am not sure to be honest.. You could try googling for your requirements and ram usage - Example


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## prateek70007 (Dec 6, 2014)

I'm using Servers from Strad Solutions Datacenter, Mumbai for my websites and Business from last 1 year. Plans are very cheaper and Performance is awesome. On an average i got 99.8% Uptime, thats better than most of the providers.

All the best.


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 7, 2014)

Thanks to all for their help. 

Lastly, a silly question, to test the server locally, do I need to download the dekstop version of linux or server version (which is a CLI version, apparently) ?

PS: Have planned to go for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS + LEMP (nginx) setup.



prateek70007 said:


> I'm using Servers from Strad Solutions Datacenter, Mumbai for my websites and Business from last 1 year. Plans are very cheaper and Performance is awesome. On an average i got 99.8% Uptime, thats better than most of the providers.
> 
> All the best.



Thanks but their costs seem to be over my budget.


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## krishnandu.sarkar (Dec 8, 2014)

I'd suggest better go with CentOS + LAMP Stack for server. Though it depends on what you'll be running and how much traffic you expect.

Generally the servers around the world runs RHEL / CentOS. But that doesn't mean Ubuntu can't be used and no one uses Ubuntu. You'll find many Ubuntu / Fedora servers too.

To, just give you idea, I'm serving few old clients of mine by running 5 sites of theirs on CentOS + LAMP $5 Droplet. So it'll be fine. Ofcourse those are not something heavy, basic PHP sites, with not much traffic.


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 8, 2014)

krishnandu.sarkar said:


> I'd suggest better go with CentOS + LAMP Stack for server. Though it depends on what you'll be running and how much traffic you expect.
> 
> Generally the servers around the world runs RHEL / CentOS. But that doesn't mean Ubuntu can't be used and no one uses Ubuntu. You'll find many Ubuntu / Fedora servers too.
> 
> To, just give you idea, I'm serving few old clients of mine by running 5 sites of theirs on CentOS + LAMP $5 Droplet. So it'll be fine. Ofcourse those are not something heavy, basic PHP sites, with not much traffic.



I see.

Alright, I'll go with CentOS, however, the reason for choosing nginx was that it is lighter on resources than Apache. What's your view on this ?

And what about desktop version Vs server version ? Which one should I choose ?

My site will be a basic wordpress one. - Check it out - Welcome - Prepvelvet

In future, we plan to expand it for online tests. So at the most, say a couple of 100 students giving exam at same point of time.

At the moment, traffic is next to negligible, so it doesn't matter as of now, what matters is that it shouldn't crash when time comes.

One more question, how many IPs do you get in one $5 package ? And one droplet = 1 website or am I missing something ?


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## krishnandu.sarkar (Dec 8, 2014)

dashing.sujay said:


> I see.
> 
> Alright, I'll go with CentOS, however, the reason for choosing nginx was that it is lighter on resources than Apache. What's your view on this ?



Surely nginx is more lightweight than Apache. Wordpress will run fine on it.

I never tried it, so can't comment much, but I like to stay mainstream in case of production servers. See it's not for my personal usage or person RnD. For that I have different setup in Vultr. But I don't want to come across situations where I won't get much help or some package won't support nginx or like that. So I don't take risk in case of production servers specially when it's for my clients. Can't afford to RnD on their production related things.

But I know, that everything runs on nginx, but I don't know why max of the providers use Apache.



> And what about desktop version Vs server version ? Which one should I choose ?



Well, generally from user's perspective, desktop versions comes with GUI and other packages needed for day to day tasks. (For E.g. Ubuntu will install Unity, Libre Office, Disk image burning softwares etc.) Whereas, server version comes with only packages needed to run a server.

From technical point of view, Desktop OS are released on much short cycle, say every 6 months (for Ubuntu). But server version's are always LTS (generally). This statement can vary from distro to distro. But generally this is the thing. 

So, Desktop OS are much like getting bleeding edge features, while server version packages are tested thoroughly before releasing so that production server doesn't breaks down.




> My site will be a basic wordpress one. - Check it out - Welcome - Prepvelvet
> 
> In future, we plan to expand it for online tests. So at the most, say a couple of 100 students giving exam at same point of time.
> 
> At the moment, traffic is next to negligible, so it doesn't matter as of now, what matters is that it shouldn't crash when time comes.



Yeah, with Cloud (DO / Vultr / Rackspace / blah blah) you can upgrade it anytime you need. You can do so in VPS or Dedicated too, but you need to call them up to upgrade your package. In dedicated, they will add extra hardware. I prefer Cloud now-a-days.



> One more question, how many IPs do you get in one $5 package ? And one droplet = 1 website or am I missing something ?



You'll get one Static IP. 

No one droplet is not equals to one website. You can host multiple website there.

Install a control panel and it'll be like same shared hosting that you are managing through cpanel. cPanel comes with huge cost, but for peoples like us there are many alternatives of cPanel (E.g. Virtualmin, Vesta Control Panel, zPanel etc.)

I use zPanel in my DO. I prefer it over the others. Virtualmin / Webmin is a powerhouse of control panel, but may seem too much complicated sometimes, whereas zPanel is much easy and UI is much much better than Virtualmin. So it helps when I provide my clients their control panel as it looks good


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## prateek70007 (Dec 10, 2014)

Buy a Server according to the users Geographic location. If your most of the users are in Asia, then there in no need of buying hosting in US and like wise. Test IPs for latency from different areas of the globe.


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 10, 2014)

prateek70007 said:


> Buy a Server according to the users Geographic location. If your most of the users are in Asia, then there in no need of buying hosting in US and like wise. Test IPs for latency from different areas of the globe.



Money matters.
 [MENTION=129717]nandu[/MENTION] - That was a lot of info buddy, thanks a lot. 

Will start my server, within 2-3 days, and then let you know guys.


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## krishnandu.sarkar (Dec 10, 2014)

[MENTION=86068]dashing.sujay[/MENTION] Np. Enjoy


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## dashing.sujay (Dec 10, 2014)

Bought starter package at DO. Set up Ubuntu 14.04 x64 + WP.

Still figuring out everything.

Thanks for all the help guys !!


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## krishnandu.sarkar (Dec 11, 2014)

Enjoy the RnD 

Don't forget about security and firewall. With unmanaged VPS / Dedicated / Cloud security is your headache. Everything is up to you 

One more thing, nothing wrong with Ubuntu, but just for your knowledge, CentOS is preferred for Servers. Almost all the servers in the world runs on RHEL / CentOS. CentOS is the free version of RHEL. In case of Debian based package systems Debian is preffered for servers. Though I have seen it very less. Mainly CentOS and those who can afford RHEL (specially the enterprises). Almost all the datacenters are on CentOS too.

Even these DO / Vultr guys runs CentOS on backend.

But for you it doesn't matter, Ubuntu is fine.


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