Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

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sapphire96
Posts: 193
Joined: Fri Jun 16, 2017 8:08 pm

Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by sapphire96 »

Hey everyone,

I run a website that is currently using Hostgator’s Business Cloud option. The site receives traffic only in the winter time. When it does, typically hundreds of people try accessing the website at once, then traffic immediately peters out. This happens many times through the winter. Each time this happens, users get error messages saying the site is overloaded because too many individuals are accessing it at once (a good problem).

I am itching to upgrade the site to something that can handle the traffic, but I do not want to waste money during the summer months when there is no traffic in it. The business using the site is very small, so it doesn’t have the resources to run a high end server a year. Does anyone have recommendations for hosts that offer dynamic speeds - the higher the demand, the more resources it dedicates to support it, and vice versa? Does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks!
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classicindexer
Posts: 208
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 10:43 am

Re: Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by classicindexer »

Have you asked Hostgator if they have any larger server plans? Sounds like you need larger CPU and memory capacity. Depending on what programming language your web site uses, you may want to consider other hosting companies who offer either larger dedicated servers or scale up/scale out options to handle the increased winter load.

Public clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google typically have a few size plans and let you switch between the sizes so you could use a larger size in the winter and smaller in the summer.
mattshwink
Posts: 455
Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2015 10:01 am

Re: Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by mattshwink »

I'll echo what was said above. There are a lot of options out there. For example, both AWS and Azure have burstable instance types that can scale CPU usage (to a point). You can even change instance types with a few clicks (and a few minutes of downtime).

But the real questions are what are you paying right now and what plan at hostgator do you have? It's not meeting your need, so you'll likely need to pay more. Their Value hosting plan maybe what you need. Or you can shop elsewhere. There are lots of providers out there.
j9j
Posts: 385
Joined: Sat Oct 24, 2015 1:46 pm

Re: Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by j9j »

Check out Azure webapps. Can start with a single web instance with minimal cpu and can scale to multiple web severs with higher cpu performance on the fly with zero downtime. This scaling cns be automatic depending on variety of thresholds or you can manual edit in just a minute or two.

Can just as easily scale back down. It gets pricey but for the slower months it should be fairly minimal costs.
Dakotah
Posts: 179
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 9:28 pm

Re: Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by Dakotah »

I'm sure other services can do similar...but AWS can certainly help in your scenario. Auto-scaling can help you minimize the cost while also scaling out when the need arises. Are your "spikes" predictable? If so, that will make it easier to ensure enough instances are available to meet demand ahead of time.
KyleAAA
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Re: Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by KyleAAA »

This is what public cloud was designed for. AWS elastic beanstalk can autoscale based on various criteria. If you know the timing, you can scale based on time. If not, you can scale by resource usage. Just keep in mind spinning up a new server takes a couple of minutes, so be somewhat conservative with your scaling triggers. You can easily go from 2 servers to 20 back to 2 without a couple of hours with no issue.
gavinsiu
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Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:42 am

Re: Help Needed: Website Server Capacity Options

Post by gavinsiu »

I also recommend looking at one of the cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or google cloud. They usually have pricing plan tht matches your needs. Most can scale so that if too many people access your web server in the cloud, the cloud will suddenly allocate additional cpu so that it appears to become a larger machine to handle the load. When the load is reduce, it will drop back to the smaller machine config.
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