Please explain the difference between 3 Types of servers/VPS

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Posted by Scotty87, 05-02-2016, 09:59 AM
A few years ago we setup several VPS through OVH (Canada). We are now looking to migrate to their new server infrastructure - apparently they had issues with the platform we are on and they have completely rebuild their VPS offering. Our goal is to move everything from our old servers with them to the new one - I will take advantage of the switch and go with CentOS7/CL7 so we're on the latest platform as a side note. The thing is, I just can't wrap my head around the differences between these three types of services. Besides some minor hardware differences, I'm not sure what implication each service has and what would be the best for web hosting accounts. Most ours servers we manage and take care of in-house, however, we have a couple servers that are for "public" use in a sense people can buy hosting from our website and get access to cPanel, etc themselves. All servers are hosting a mix of WordPress/Joomla websites and a handful of custom build ones. I basically want to make sure we are making the right jump and not decide on something we might regret. Since I'm going to be the one needing to make the call on which service, I want to make sure I clearly understand each. --- So I will use one of our existing servers as a baseline and try and compare to all others. Server: OVH Cloud VPS 2014 6 vCores (AMD Opteron @ 3.1 GHz, 10 GbE)8 GB Rams100GB Storage (I assume HDD, not SSD)100 Mbps From OVH console stats. We average ~%5 CPU usage on peaks and <2GB RAM during peaks hours with exception of the daily backups seems to make it peak at 5-6GB during the process. This is our busiest server. Options: 1. VPS Cloud 2016 This is the most obvious one. This is their new package which to my understand is almost exactly the type of service we already have. Same price too. Specs: OpenStack KVM 4 vCores Xeon E5 v3 @ 3.1 GHz 8 GB RAM 100 GB High Availability (Ceph) **NOTE: Should I be concerned about 2 less vCores? Apparently these servers work much better/faster than the 2014 line but I did have 6 vCores. I'm just not sure it would make a difference. 2. VPS SSD 2016 This is one that we are the most interested in. SSDs are a big appeal. The price is actually cheaper even with the additional storage I would need to get. Specs: OpenStack KVM 2 vCores (Xeon E5v3 @ 2.4 GHz) 8 GB RAM 40 GB SSD (+$14/month for 100GB) Local RAID 10 **NOTE: This one has even less vCores so I'm even more concerned. Considering we barely use 5% on average, would it be OK? Am I overthinking the multitasking needs of a web server? Since these are cheaper, is it really CPU power that cost the most in hosting? 3. OVH Public Cloud Instances This is something OVH suggested we consider. I know we can pay per hour or simply pay less if we pay monthly upfront. We definitely don't need the RAM instances so I'm only looking at the CPU instances. I'm not sure between "High Availability" and "Low latency Disk" instances? Which is optimize best for web hosting? Specs: 2 vCores x 3.1 GHz 7 GB RAM 200 GB HA block storage OR 100 Go SSD (no raid) for Low Latency Disk instance 250 Mbps Bandwidth **NOTE: The price range is very similar - Same vCores as option 2 but faster. More storage and Bandwidth speed, however 1GB less RAM which I'm not super concerned about. So with all of these 3 packages. The safer option for us is #1 since it's essentially the same service. Option 2 is a big appeal since I believe storage access (IOPS) are the most common bottlenecks in hosting and could improve speed. The public cloud is something different for us so we have a lot of uncertainty about it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Are vCores so important that it would not be worth sacrificing? Can we safely go with Option 2? Any insight would be great. To Summarize: Option 1. Safe option - same price. Option 2. Our current pick - cheaper - Going from 6 vCores to 2 vCores are concern? Option 3. New to us, possibly cheaper/more expensive depending how billing works out - mainly don't want to dismiss a potential better service. If there's any information that may help you help me, let me know and I will try my best to answer. Again, this is for mainly hosting our own (CMS) websites clients while offering some hosting services to local businesses who have their own designer or want to build it themselves. We use CloudLinux/cPanel on all our servers.
Posted by ServerSitters_JohnMC, 05-04-2016, 12:03 PM
Personally, I like option 1 the most, as it would have the most room for growth over time and should offer greater stability. With your CPU usage what it is, losing 2 cores shouldn't have a giant impact, but I think going from 6 cores to 2 might. Also, once you've chosen your new VPS and moved over to it, you should be able to easily upgrade or downgrade if you feel the need, so don't feel trapped by whatever choice you make.
Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 05-04-2016, 12:14 PM
I'd go with Option 2 with faster I/O on SSD and upgrade to their Dedicated range when needed.
Posted by Nnyan, 05-04-2016, 12:26 PM
Since you state that you are using barely 5% of your CPU now I would agree with Chris that option two would be where I would go. You don't mention specific models numbers for the CPU but the newer Xeons really kick arse. I like them much better over the opterons in a shared hosting environment. Definitions vary between providers so you will need to ask OVH what they mean about anything, but typically HA just means that there is some redundancy built into how your service is deployed so it should be harder to bring down. Low Latency Disks can mean a number of things you'll have to ask them.
Posted by Scotty87, 05-04-2016, 12:58 PM
Thanks for the input! Option 2 is our current preferred choice, however, what is you take on going from 6 vCores to 2?
Posted by Nnyan, 05-04-2016, 05:07 PM
Not sure if that is directed at me, but that really depends on a number of variables. For example how many accounts do they put on a server? Server specs, how well do they manage the node load (move accounts around to balance things out, etc...). Keep in mind that those 6 vCores are not dedicated to just your VPS. You share this with others on your node. It may say you have 6 vCores but you may sometimes (or with some hosts never) be able to utilize all those. I'll repeat one of my rules, don't get too bogged down with specs. I have personally been with (top tier) hosts that have A M A Z I N G specs for their VPS accounts. But then they get blown out of the water with another VPS which has more modest specs (both real world and tested performance). One of the reasons I ended up with Knownhost was that they manage their infrastructure/servers/services extremely well and with the same websites they killed it as compared to other's "bigger" VPS accounts.
Posted by ryus, 05-04-2016, 05:28 PM
All three options are good. Just make sure if you select Option 3, go for High Availability, NOT for Low Latency disk (no RAID is a big no no). After comparing the specs, here is my order of preference : 1st Choice - Option 1, i.e. VPS Cloud 2016 (reasons : 99.99% SLA, High Availability storage , 4 Cores) 2nd Choice - Option 3, i.e. Public Cloud 2016 (reasons : 99.999% SLA for network, High Availability storage, 250 Mbps network port while the other two only have 100 Mbps but only 2 cores) 3rd Choice - Option 2, i.e. VPS SSD 2016 (reasons : only 99.95% SLA which comparatively lesser than the other options, lesser cores than the 1st option and slower cores than the 2nd option). All three will be an upgrade in compared to your current plan. Xeon cores are significantly faster then the older opteron cores of 2014 series. So do not worry about the lesser number of cores as they have similar horsepower (if not more).