Startup Lessons From ProductCritic - Save Server Costs

We thought it would be interesting to share some of the technical decisions we made with creating ProductCritic. In this first of a series we talk about the hardware running the site.

ProductCritic runs on its own VPS (Virtual Private Server) supplied by SliceHost. A VPS allows a single machine to emulate multiple machines. What this allows is a service provider like SliceHost to own a high end server and then slice it down into any number of smaller less powerful servers and then rent those out to customers.

It's a really great because you get your own rock solid piece of (virtual) hardware running in a secure data center with fast network connections at a very reasonable cost. Since you own the entire slice you can install anything you want on it. You also don't have to worry about anybody else wrecking the server when they install something because only you have access to it. Since the service provider is running very little software itself not much every changes on the server causing a crash or reboot. The result is great uptime as can be seen here:

  % uptime
16:55:55 up 76 days, 20:47,  0 users,  load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01

But one of the greatest reasons to use a VPS is because it allows you to grow your hardware needs as your site grows. Instead of investing thousands into your own dedicated server and that is basically just going to sit idle 99% of the time you rent a slice of the size needed for your site. This is less expensive, more flexible and very cost effective. Zero upfront costs and very low monthly costs. ProductCritic is running on the smallest slice available and as you can see from uptime report has a very low load. I find that a sustained load > 1.0 results in slower response times.

Disclaimer: We have no affiliation with SliceHost other than being a happy customer. If you signup with them and want to send us some love enter 'gerry_shaw@yahoo.com' in the referral email field. We'll get a credit but it won't cost you anything.

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