server hardware/bandwidth requirements

[flipocrisy]

Hello, I've been trying to find a good book or resource to calculate what type of hardware and bandwidth I would need on a particular website. Is there a good book or online resource out there that can shed some light on the topic? I've been having a hard time finding this information on my own.

Thanks in advance

[Karma]

Welcome flipocrisy :)

Do you already own a website? If not and this is your first then I wouldn't worry too much about hardware/bandwidth as you'll probably not use your hosting anywhere near to its limit for quite a while.

Most people seem to start out with basic PHP hosting and a database or two, with bandwidth being around 5gb-20gb.

If you need any more info, please explain your web developent background and what you're looking to do.

[flipocrisy]

just planning a social networking site of sorts, built on RoR. mostly will be text, images limited to site graphics and user avatars. no streaming media. not sure on estimates on growth. just trying to find any resources to calculate needs. hope that helps and thanks for the reply

[wheel]

The short answer is that most paid hosting plans, even the basic ones, are way more than enough to handle anything you're ever likely to throw at it. So just go get some hosting and forget about it. 5 years ago this was a concern. Today, it's not.

The long answer is, if you figure a page is 50K in size, and you serve 1000 pages a day, then you need 50,000k a day - so 50megs of transfer. 30 days in a month, you need 1500 megs of transfer. Or 1.5gigs a month. See? Any old hosting plan out there will do that level without blinking. And 1000 pages a day is plenty for most sites out there. Now throw in automated compression and you're probably down to 1/2 a gig a month even at 1000 pages a day.

[Warrenphillips]

I would also suggest choosing a host that can allow you to grow if you do move beyond their basic hosting. I would also as the host what is the % of the CPU your site can use and how much resources cab be used before they take your site down. That is big thing to look at.