Web Hosting - For large site (Up to 1m views/day)

[GaryH-21]

Hi guys,

I'm researching web hosting solutions for a large website.

The website usually gets around 20k-30k page views per day (around 1 million per month), however this can jump up dramatically - We have had days with 700k views.

I've looked at hosting with:
Scolocate
Pulsant
Rackspace
Azure
Amazon
Hetzner
Vidahost (as highly recomended on here)

Ideally I would like 2, maybe 3 servers - A development server that I can break, A staging server to check everything out before it goes live, and the production server running the live website.

I will need Windows Server 2003 or 2008 (IIS & .NET 4)
Database will run on MSSQL 2005 or above.


What else should I take in to consideration, and are there any companies I should be looking at (Preferably UK based companies, even though I listed some outside of the UK)

Thanks

 

[GaryH-21]

I work for one of the companies listed above so I'd recommend giving the Sales line a call and explaining your requirements. You'll get a lot of help!

I'm waiting to hear back about our current disk usage, database size and bandwidth usage, then I have a meeting next week and then we'll start the process of contacting providers

I can't answer many of your questions but I use TSOHOST which are I think a UK company. They normally get recommended around here a lot too so worth checking out.

I checked out Tsohost too, but couldn't see any dedicated / virtual servers

Thanks guys.

 

[GaryH-21]

So having checked the figures myself, it appears we didn't get 700,000 VIEWS... we got 700,000 hits... with around 230,000 views.... and we get around 7,000 views a day (30,000ish hits).... DOH

Not quite as busy as I first thought then

Thanks for your comment, big red - made me think about it and it seems a lot more manageable than I first thought!

I'll check Peer1 out!

 

[GaryH-21]

Look under 'more hosting options'

Thanks very much

 

[GaryH-21]

Thanks for the help everyone.

I put together a proposal for a list of different companies mentioned - I think we're going to end up at one of the data centres near here!