Switching over my web hosting service

Over the recent months, I have got several issue with my web hosting. It seems that downtime has become more and more frequent and I couldn't access my email during some urgent time. As the time goes by, my patience is running out.

On my recent release of my web game, there has been complaint that the game site page load goes pathetically slow. So I guess it is time to say goodbye to the current hosting. Ideally, any game site should always run on a dedicated server but as always, cost is the main culprit that most people who start to run game site for fun don't have the money to get a dedicated server.

After several days of browser shopping, I came to this conclusion;

Comparing the webhosting cost and limitation.

A shared hosting cost below USD10 per month. It is the most affordable option. The limitation, having thousands of other website in the same server mean, lag in pageload. Also, I will most likely to get suspended due to utilizing too much CPU or Memory as game application consume a whole lot more resources than a normal website. Most hosting company prohibit game site hosted on their shared hosting.

A Virtual Private Server or VPS hosting is something between a shared hosting and a dedicated server. It cost above USD10 to USD100 per month. Kind of affordable still. Instead of Disk Space and Bandwidth limit, it also specified the CPU and RAM limit.

The limitation, the server is still shared among dozens or hundreds if not thousands of users thus lag may still exists. It doesn't comes with a standard shared hosting control panel (eg CPanel or DirectAdmin) unless you pay additional $$$. However, it still have other types of control panel which you will have to learn to use them.

A Dedicated Server is the ideal choice to host a game site. It cost above USD150 per month, a throat cutting price. You get to torture the entire server hardware without limitation on your own. Everything is yours.

The limitation, I have to say it again, it is pricey. Unless your game generate good money or you got to burn a big hole on your pocket each month. Like a VPS, any additional piece of software comes with additional price. You also have to learn to manage your own server from the root or pay another sum of money to get the expert to manage it for you nicely.

My main concern about my game site is the CPU and RAM usage. Since my programming skill sucks deeply, I'm sure it consume a whole lots of processing resources. Shared Hosting is definitely a NO because there is no way I could find out how much CPU or RAM my application consume. The only way I know is when my site get suspended of over usage.

The ideal Dedicated Server is also out of the story cos I can't afford to dump USD150 every month just for the sake of fun to run a game site (which doesn't make money)

Well, I guess a VPS Hosting is the only option left and so I did. I subscribed a VPS package and hook up my application onto it. The VPS hosting package consist of;

10Gb Disk Space
150Gb Bandwidth
512Mb RAM
700MHz CPU

Cost only USD7.95 per month with a free domain when pay annually.
They offer 20% discount and double up the RAM and bandwidth now. Its a good offer I would say but then, would this cheap stuff perform as I expected? Time will tell.

My current issue is lag. Since my target clients is in the US region, choosing a US based datacenter would be ideal. I hope this VPS could improve the situation or I will have to find another host again.

My initial test shows that there are obvious pageload improvement compared with my old shared host. But since I live in Asia, I will need the user from the US region to give feedback on the performance there. All I could do now is pray...... and hope for the best.

Talk about the control panel of the VPS package. It comes with a HyperVM admin panel and Lxadmin control panel. Both this is entire new for me as I only used to CPanel and DirectAdmin on shared hosting.

HyperVM is the server admin panel. It shows the account usage like RAM usage other than disk space and bandwidth usage. It is mainly use to setup the DNS which is the Nameserver where the domain need to set for. Once I setup my DNS, I went to my domain registrar to set the domain Nameserver to point to this new setup name.

It also provide a very clear graphical information about the memory, cpu and traffic usage. this is something not available in normal shared hosting control panel.

Next is the Lxadmin control panel which is similar to the CPanel. Although I admin that CPanel is more use-friendly and more advance but Lxadmin is also capable to deliver what it need to setup a website in a short time. It took me some several hours to get used to the new control panel features.

There are several glitches alongway and their customer service didn't really get me the assistance in time. It seems that their staff don't work around the clock. Since I was living in the other side of the planet, their working hours is my sleeping hours. So, that causes a lots of delay every time problem occurs.

It took me several days to sort out everything and get used to the new system. And now I'm happy with my new hosting :)

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