I did a few searches and didn't see anything that answered these questions, so hopefully I'm not creating an unnecessary thread here...

1. As I understand it, hosting a website and database on one server generally slows down the performance of the website.  If you're running a site that has, say, 500 hits and 2000 page views per day, is this degradation of performance going to be noticeable?

2. I recently discovered that my web hosting provider supports MS SQL 2000, but not 2005 (no wonder it was so inexpensive!).  It's just a personal website and I'm still testing and tinkering with it, so it's not a huge deal, but I do need to switch.  I have incorporated the login/username/password features of ASP.NET 2.0 into my website, but I don't really know a whole lot about the interaction of this feature with the database, other than that Visual Developer somehow makes it work.  Does the login feature create a separate database, aside from the one that I use to manage content?  I ask this because most web hosting plans allow only 1 MS SQL database for their basic hosting plans - more than 1 costs extra.  Would using the login feature in addition to a database for content management require a plan that includes at least 2 MS SQL databases?

3. (This one might be the dumbest question of the 3)  If a web host supports ASP.NET 2.0 and MS SQL 2005, does that mean that they also support the Express Editions of each?

Hello,

My views:

>1. As I understand it, hosting a website and database on one server generally slows down the performance of the website.  If you're running a site that has, say, 500 hits and 2000 page views per day, is this degradation of performance going to be noticeable?

I don't agree here. If you keep DB on a separate server, then obvious performance degradation would be there (due to extra network travel). I always advise against it unless absolutely neccessary. You can increase server hardware but if still perfomance is an issue, you can go for load balancing.

>2. I recently discovered that my ..............

You can use only one SQL  Server DB for managing your content as well as ASP.NET membership related info. See MSDN for details.

>3. (This one might be the dumbest question of the 3)  If a web host supports ASP.NET 2.0 and MS SQL 2005, does that mean that they also support the Express Editions of each?

Not neccessary. ASP.NET 2.0 has no express edition, its a free framework. It;s the IDE which comes free by the name of VWD or VS 2005 Express Edition. The hosting site generally does not install IDEs on its servers. If the site has SQL Server 2005 installed, it may or may not have the free edition of SQL Server 2005. You need to contact them for details.

Hope this helps,

Vivek

Hi Schmedlap,

1. It is always best practice to have your SQL server on a dedicated server largely due to it necessary overhead and disk access requirement. Saying that though if you are just talking one site then you can load it on the same server as your web.

2. This is basically a criminal position of most hosting companies that for some reason force you into buy a single 100 MB database within being able to split it up. Say NO to this. Especially considering the cost of MS SQL (which is very low). We offer unlimited databases within your hosting space. So if you want 100 x 10 MB databases then you can have.

3. Usually a host won't run SQL Express user instances due to the security risks. They can run a standalone version which attaches your database and for all intents and purposes is the same as the bigger version [no real performance limitations].

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Mark 

vivek_iit:

Hello,

My views:

>1. As I understand it, hosting a website and database on one server generally slows down the performance of the website.  If you're running a site that has, say, 500 hits and 2000 page views per day, is this degradation of performance going to be noticeable?

I don't agree here. If you keep DB on a separate server, then obvious performance degradation would be there (due to extra network travel). I always advise against it unless absolutely neccessary. You can increase server hardware but if still perfomance is an issue, you can go for load balancing.

Sorry Friend,

I do not agree with you in case of performance issue. I dont think a seperate sql server could affect performance.

Just few days back i had a strange yet pleasing experience about hosting and speed.

I just created a trial account with Ultima Hosts and was very happy with their quick services and FAQ responses.
Suddenly i found that my web config which works smoothly on Ultima Hosts is different.

I was using the connection string created for VWD Hosting and my web config was fetching data from there, while my all the files were hosted on Ultima Hosts.

Even though i was using different server for data amd different server for sql there was no performance issue.

This is just for your knowledge.

>I do not agree with you in case of performance issue. I dont think a seperate sql server could affect performance.

It depends. I was managing a project where the DB server was on a physically different machine than the Web Server (due to some other reasons). The client was hosting a single site and the web server machine had enough power (though it was getting many hits/day). But due to some n/w issues, they always had problems with performance getting degraded. Once we put the DB on the same server (and done away with those reasons), the site was peforming much better.

Anyways, the decision to put a DB server separate should not be a general "blind" practice and should depend on the actual project needs. And every project's needs differ. Putting a DB server on another machine might help increase the security of your site (we can have some firewall in b/w).

So one should consider all factors before taking any decision.

Hope this helps,

Vivek

I forgot to add: most people confuse scalability with performance. Adding a separate DB server would help in making your app more scalable, but it would definitely affect performance.

-Vivek

Hi,

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There are lots of other sound features like you will get the dedicated hosting for your POP3 Email accounts. Each Email account hosting is going to 512MB but the number of emails will be depend upton what Plans you have chosen.