How do you determine the webhosting requirements of a site proir to going live?

Question

I have built a drupal site that will contain over a 2500 nodes (real estate listings). I have a feeling that a standard shared webhost will not be sufficient but I really have no way to know. Neither do I know how many hits the site will get, but I expect search engine traffic to be more than humans!

The site itself isn't that complex but the routine maintenance is a bit heavy. How do I go about determining the hosting requirements for the site? I don't want to pay for a dedicated server if shared hosting will work. On the other hand, I don't want to go with a shared host and then in a couple weeks have to upgrade to a dedicated server, cloud environment or whatever.

Is there some way to mathematically figure it out or is it just something that you have to learn with time? My question isn't that much about this specific situation. I can give more details of the situation if needed, but I am really looking for a principal, not a resolution to a specific situation. Any words of wisdom out there?

Answer 1

I recommend this approach:

• Deploy your site on the webserver of the hosting company of your choice under a "dummy" domain (which could be a subdomain like mystresstest.mydomain.com).
• Use a stress test service like http://loadimpact.com to determine if the site can handle the load.
• If OK, go live with that hoster, if not try another one.

I think there is no other way to handle that. It totally depends on the "operation ethics" of the hosting company... And that can change over time...

Note: Be aware that performance can change on shared hosting. If the server runs only a few sites it is faster than when it gets filled up with shared hosting domains...