single powerful dedicated server or multiple small vps on cloud ?
 

hi all.
i need opinion. for my new project.

there gonna be on server

nginx http
cache
mysql + sphinx

so i was thinking about single powerful dedicated server for all this on same server, but i read on digital oceans ticket system , that i shouldnt put all eggs in one basket and saw some suggestions to do like this on cloud

1 vps as load balancer
1 vps for cache
2/3 vps for nginx http
1 vps for mysql

so what option should i go for ?

the project is very database hungry, i mean there gonna be sphinx and around 20 gb + database.

so what will be better for stability wise
1) one powerful dedicated server running everything on it. offcourse there will be backup server if anything goes wrong.

or

2) small vps on cloud so i can resize them as per my requirements, and if one nginx vps goes down i still have very functioning web site.

thanks for your time.

What you need is called DigitalOcean
- SSD drives BLAZING FAST!!!!
- Lots of ram and fast CPU
- 1TB of bandwidth
- cheap backups
- fast and seamless upgrades
- instant activation/provisioning
- can buy install cPanel yourself for easier management
- if you need any help - feel free to contact me at celebempire{at}gmail(dot)com

you can make one instance just MySQL server, one for static php (apache) and one instance for nginx (statics)...
you can start also start with everything on and just upgrade when you need more power...
it will be super-fast...

Depends on your traffic! 10 hits a day you could even do on your home PC :)

What kind of cache will you be using? If varnish, you surely need a dedicated vps/server for that.. If memcache, digital ocean will be a bit expensive (you don't need the expensive SSD storage, just the ram)

Have a look at amazon too..

Thouse plans look great do they allow adult

Yes they do...

personally i would go with a single server in that situation.

Cloud - I am in love with the cloud - Seriously...

A personal dedicated cloud environment is something we can set you up with at XenLayer.

The following machine is being recycled and will become available in the next few days, these are our OpenVZ and Xen nodes we use ourselves. I would be happy to set up OpenVZ for you with OVZ Web Panel (or any other panel of your choice) so you are be able to create/resize VPS containers easily by yourself.

Dual Xeon L5520 Quad Core @ $159/mo (4 cores, 8 threads)
- Memory: 24 GB DDR3
- Hard Disk: 1000 GB SATA x2 (RAID)
- IP Addresses: 5 (IPv4) + IPv6
- Bandwidth: 5000 GB
- Onboard remote reboot and KVM

The above plan can be found directly in our billing/order system when available. Addons like SSD, control panels or additional bandwidth are available.

Your contract with XenLayer comes with full management, this means we will perform the initial setup of your master node. Read more about it on our website. Master node and VPS management included, we will monitor your servers for resource usage and abnormal activity.

yes, i know digital oceans hardware are top notch but still confused.
as the project required inoodb db and the ram needs to be around 24+ gb for innodb buffer so it will make more expensive with them.

yes, i am looking to optimize for high traffic site.

memcache is what i am planning to use.

i am thinking the same, why make things difficult by spreading each services on small vps.
i even read 10 million hits/day WordPress can run on 15 bucks vps. ref : http://ewan.im/900/10-million-hits-a...ng-a-15-server

yes, i like the idea too, still for static files i will be using cdn, so its just about the serving dynamic files ....

thanks to you all for your input.

Amazon would be best here, imho.

Get the benefits of great DB hosting as well as CDN.

I don't understand the point of this when the OP's reason for going "cloud" is to ensure his site can scale with demand. Why would you admin 5 different VPSs on your own machine when you could just have a single bare metal install? And what happens once the cores on your dedicated machine are consistently 75%+ loaded?

Looks like I oversaw the fact that you need 20 GB of ram...
(I thought you have 2GB DB... my mistake)...

$320/month for DO VPS could be too high...
You could find (unmanaged) server with 32GB of ram for about $200...
Don't know the costs of running something like that on Amazon...

As for high-traffic optimization - you could also try out Varnish (instead of MemCache).

Varnish and Memcache are two completely different things. IF anything, he should be using both of them, together, rather than one or the other.

You deploy a new machine and move/resize the containers.

amazon prices are overkill.....i am thinking of dedicated server and a cdn,

i guess then have to add more ram or add another server for scaling.

yes , thats what i thought.
i can manage 200 bucks dedicated server easily...

i am going with memcache as

memcache/memcached cahes data and objects from a database, whilst Varnish is an HTTP accelerator for "content-heavy dynamic websites" and in my case i am gonna host most static files on cdn....