What is considered a normal amount of memory for a shared/vps server?

I've seen mentioned "Dual Quad-Core behemoths" in regards to shared and possibly vps servers.

Does anyone have a guess how many GB those things have? 64GB? I know technically there can be much memory, just trying to get an idea what is normal.


The reason is I'm trying to calculate how many vps accounts might be on a server. If the server has 64GB, and each vps account has 512MB then, in theory, there should be less than 128 vps accounts on that server.

If each account had 768MB then there should be less than 83 vps accounts.

 

Unless it is an enterprise level machine, it would not have 64 GB. Usually the server is an off-the-shelf configuration from Sun, IBM, Dell, HP or Apple that has components much like your home machine. Most servers probably have 4-8 Gigabytes of RAM installed on them. Usually the average is about 2 Gigabytes per core. Also if someone is selling a machine with 128 accounts on it as a VPS, run very very far away. True VPS machines typically have 6-12 accounts on them. Anything more than 30 should be considered a shared server, even if they provide token virtualization.

If you're talking enterprise level machines than you're playing on a different ballfield. Enterprise machines today will have 2-8 CPUs on the board. This would allow them to have between 8 (quad-core) and 64 (octo core) processing cores. The memory capacity on these machines vary widely in a product line. IBM supports between 2 and 128 Gigabytes in their Blade lines. Even with massive amounts of RAM though your bottleneck on hosting is going to be the CPU and the storage array's input/output capacity. Webhosting is primarily about moving massive amounts of data from one place to another. Though you can buffer slow storage hardware with RAM Drives and Solid State Storage.

 

assuming the server isn't a victim of being oversold then this would be the case. Most the time though to get a higher return and profit, most companies oversell their servers knowing that most customers won't utilize their full potential

 

Most of the hosting provides I have seen, usually have 8 - 12 gigs of memory on their VPS servers.

Even if a server did have 64 gigs of memory, a quad core Intel chip can only process X amount of information per second. Intel chips are good, but your going to need an enterprise level server to use that much memory and the CPUs keep up. That is where your going to need a Sun Microsystems or IBM server.

 

Thanks for the replies, especially Wayne!

So wouldn't a dual quad core have 16GB?

I'm simply trying to figure out the advantages between different vps hosting accounts from ServInt at the moment. The sales person indicated that 20-30 accounts per server was typical. Doing the math with 768MB per account guaranteed would mean 32 accounts X .75GB would be 24GB for the server.

Assuming even multiples of 2 are the slices that would mean things are broken up for 32 accounts. dual quad core for 32 accounts would mean 8/32 = .25 of a core with their smallest vps. I was told that going up in vps size gained another slice of processor & memory each step, so
Essential = .25 core, 768MB $49
Signature = .5 core, 1.5GB $89
Ultimate = .75 core, 2.25GB (but they advertise 2GB) $129

Whereas the 'super' vps series is setup differently, and they state outright how things are set up, I'll assume the server has at least 16GB because that is what is advertised as burst for the largest account:
Supervps = 1 core (burst 4), 2GB (burst 8GB), $199
Supervps 125 = 1 core (bust 4), 4GB (burst 8GB), $229
Supervps x2 = 2 core (burst 8), 8GB (burst 16GB), $349

Whereas the fully managed dedicated servers from them start at $299, have 1 quad core, 4GB.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why someone would get the Supervps for $349 when the least expensive dedicated seems much more powerful, although it does come with more ram.
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If they are using enterprise level hardware they could. Most motherboards don't support more than 8 GB though.

Not everyone is using 768MB at a time. A law of averages is applied to hosting accounts. If everyone used their maximum on the server on a consistent basis the server would fail.

I guess it would depend on what you are doing and how much you need in CPU power vs. RAM vs. storage. Or personal preference. For instance, I had a dedicated server in the past and will never get one again. I'll get multiple managed VPS accounts if I have to. Even on a managed account, Dedicated servers are too much work for my tastes. I'd rather pay more and just call up "Joe the server technician" and say fix it.

 

Extremely valuable information Wayne. Very much appreciated. It is especially good information because I am lazy.

Perhaps I'll contact servint and ask about amount of memory on their vps servers.

 

I found it on their website, WOW!!!
ServInt Specs
Minimum server specs
for all ServInt VPS products

* Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon L5300/L5400 Series CPUs
* 32 GB 667 MHz DDR2 Dual Rank, Fully Buffered RAM


So they could have 32 of the smallest packages on a server and there would still be 8GB left over for bursting.

And that would be worst case scenario which I doubt happens.

 

The quest for that information, for my site, will be next thing to obtain. It is however difficult assessing needs while on a shared server.

 

You can lease a dedicated server for less then that amount. You can get a dual core server with 2 gigs of memory for $139.95/mo

Dedicated Servers | Future Hosting

That is who I lease my server from.

 

Future Hosting says they offer a "Managed Server" option but don't list the price anywhere. I know they aren't doing it for the $3.95 a month addon they offer. That is a good recipe to go out of business.

That is why I went with a VPS. If I have a problem, then I call Servint and they fix it. I don't have to waste 2 hours trying to get it resolved. Trust me, my time is worth more than the $60.00, I would save by getting that Dedicated Server at Future Hosting.

 

Thank you - I will have to bring that to their attention.

I think its an extra $20 - $30 a month for a managed server.

 

Good catch.

They also say their managed solution makes sure the software is up do date. I'm not convinced that is a good thing. vB version ___ may break if PHP or MySQL is upgraded for instance, possibly years from now.

I talked with ServInt and they said they upgrade when requested.

 

I think they meant the operating system - not the actual server services like apache, mysql, php.

I receive notifications when critical kernel updates will be installed and the server restarted. But mysql was maybe 2 or 3 versions behind the last time I requested an update.

 

I cannot tell from their site, but I'm having an off day.

I was attempting to figure out, in general, how much ram shared hosting & vps hosting servers have, and was using ServInt as a specific example.

From what I can tell many 'vps' hosts have standard servers with 4GB ram, they possibly share the ram as needed, and they limit the 'available ram' for the account to a small amount. But that information seems difficult to get. Vps providers do not seem to advertise their server specs nor how many vps accounts that are on them.

ServInt looks pretty tempting at the moment overall but even their smallest package would be significantly more expensive that my shared account that seems to be working ok. Question is, how long can we survive with shared hosting. I'm trying very hard to get that information.

 

I went from shared to a VPS pretty fast. On the VPS I went from 384 megs of memory, to 512 and finally to 1 gig of memory. When my VBulletin forum was getting around 2.5 - 2.8 million page views a month, it was time to upgrade to a dedicated. But I also had 2 other vbulletin forums and 3 wordpress blogs on that server.

With one forum, you might be able to squeeze 2.8 - 3.0 million page views out of a VPS with 1 gig of memory.

The VPS I was on with future hosting - it had 12 gigs of memory. But I do not know how many total sites that server was supporting.

4 gigs with a VPS is not much. I am running 3 vbulletin forums, and 5 wordpress blogs on a dedicated server with 4 gigs of memory, and it does pretty good. But I am the only customer. If there were 4 or 5 more customers that had as many sites as I do, the server would drag to a crawl.

 

This is an extremely good discussion Kevin.

I'm at 0.5 million page views/month. 13GB bandwidth. At the moment our forum has reached a plateau though in terms of activity, but the database does continue to grow.


My hunch is that we are close to needing some other provider but the cpanel continues to say we are using virtually no cpu or memory resources. I'm beginning to think that some of the add ons people use such as vBSEO require more resources than the stock vB code. Ours is almost completely stock.

 

Find another provider? Your provider can not add resources on the fly? Just send them a message and tell them you need more memory.

How much memory are does you plan have right now?

 

I think you may have mis-read my post. According to my cpanel we are putting almost zero load on the server.

It is through hostgator. "Infinite" bandwidth, diskspace, memory. There are other limits such as %25 of memory & cpu used in the last 90 seconds. But everytime time I look it says, hang on, let me check....: 0.1% cpu usage, 0% memory usage, and 2 out of 25 processes max are running.

I am baffled how to obtain more information. I cannot believe 1/2 million pages a month have those stats.

 

32-48gb is currently typical for a high-end cost, as it's still somewhat more cost effective than the 64-192gb range, though that will only be for so long. You will typically see a couple-few dozen sharing a server.

I'm done with VPSes, myself, and never recommend them. Go high-end shared, or dedicated, but a VPS is just headache waiting to happen.