Ok, because I foresee the need to upgrade my hosting to handle larger loads I have been doing some research. thewhir.com posted an article called The Web Host Marketing Roundup in which several of the top hosting companies were reviewed in terms of growth. MediaTemple had the largest growth. One of the reasons is probably because sites that use MT usually have a (mt) logo on them (like the 9rules sites!).
However, MediaTemple also has a unique hosting setup that is better for growing sites than standard Shared Hosting. MT spreads your site across multiple servers and rather than you paying for room on one PC, your site is handled by as many server’s as needed. Just like the way the google search is handled, hundreds of servers will help to get your content to your users. This network of servers means that you are free to have HUGE spikes in visitors without your server reaching 100% usage and starting to time out requests.
However, in exchange for this performance they charge by a different form of usage - GPU's (Grid Performance Unit). MediaTemple gives you 1000 GPU's per month and if you go over that number they charge $.10 per extra GPU.
What if my server exceeds the allocated GPUs?
One great aspect of the GRID is that it is built to handle spikes and surges in usage. If your server grows to use 100% continuous use of a processor core, your server will effectively use 13.4 GPU per hour. It is also important to note that it is unlikely that your server will have the same usage during off-peak hours as it will during high-peak hours -- so as an example, your server can effectively can use 2 GPUs per hour during the day and 0.6 GPUs per hour at night and at the end of the month you will not have exceeded the allocated amount with your plan. This is called "bursting". Based on the analysis of over 10,000 random sites, we emphatically show that the vast majority of sites (99.97%) run perfectly fine, even under serious traffic, and never exceed their GPU allocation.
They also have a James Bond security center that is as good (or better) than 1and1's.
So I am looking into this new type of server should I ever reach the limits of my current hosting. Honestly though - for right now, Shared Hosting still is fine. I have lots of (small) projects like Drupal, Wordpress, phpBB (over 40+) all on a "home" plan from 1and1.com. I only pay $5 a month for all this, and actually, I haven't needed to upgrade or anything yet. (Although, my databases are on another server so I am sure that helps)
I have always used Shared hosting and it has worked great for my sites. I had over 400,000 page views this year that the server had to provide to my users and it did just fine. So, it is not that I am over looking Shared Hosting. I just want to be prepared and "readup" should I ever need a better solution to handle large loads.
Want more data on top hosts? Read this!
