Should I Place My Sites on Different Servers to Enhance Security?

[Olov]

I read Ryuzaki's thread about security breaches in Wordpress.

It had me looking through my own setup.

I realized that two of my main money sites are on the same VPS, with two other sites. I was thinking perhaps this could be a potential risk and if I should buy two more servers for each main site.

A few minutes ago I contacted Cloudways support to get their input on this. He said that the applications are isolated, but if one site is hacked and infected with malware that drain server resources the server provider might stop my server due to abuse, thus shutting down all of my sites.

What do you guys think?

Right now I'm leaning towards getting two more VPS servers to eliminate the above risk. I rather not pay 20 bucks extra per week, but if it can save me in the future, then it's a no-brainer.

 

[Poplanu]

He said that the applications are isolated, but if one site is hacked and infected with malware that drain server resources the server provider might stop my server due to abuse, thus shutting down all of my sites.

I'd say that you're worrying too much about it since AFAIK malware doesn't necessarily drain server resources to the point of them shutting it down. $80/month is a lot of money, you could invest it in a security audit of your site instead.

I'd proof the sites 110% to make them as hack-resistant as possible. And then I'd have a solid backup plan in case they shut down your server, including some kind of a warning system (phone, email), and deal with it if it actually occurs.

 

[Olov]

I'd say that you're worrying too much about it since AFAIK malware doesn't necessarily drain server resources to the point of them shutting it down. $80/month is a lot of money, you could invest it in a security audit of your site instead.

I'd proof the sites 110% to make them as hack-resistant as possible. And then I'd have a solid backup plan in case they shut down your server, including some kind of a warning system (phone, email), and deal with it if it actually occurs.

Thanks for your input and advice. Then I will keep them on the same server for now. :-)

I just want to correct myself, I meant that 2 VPS's would cost me 20 extra per month, not week. :-)

 

[Ryuzaki]

I'd think about this in terms of risk versus reward.

How much money do the sites earn? How much sunk cost are in them (content, links, time, effort)?

I know you didn't say this, but I'm saying it for the sake of readers. If you're spreading sites across shared servers then there's no point. Someone else can get hacked and you can still get reamed or the server can bite the dust from the spike in resource usage due to mass emailing or whatever else they're doing.

Isolating applications on a cloud server? Should be fine. Isolating sites on VPS's? Perfect. Using the same cloud server or VPS and having different authenticated cPanels or whatever should be fine too, unless there's some major flaws in there that nobody knows about yet.

VPS's can be had fairly cheap, especially if you aren't getting server-breaking amounts of traffic. I tend to put different sets of sites on different servers, as well as each one having their own gated accounts on the same servers. It's cheap and keeps me organized better too.

 

[Darth]

I'd only bother doing that for privacy reasons. Chances are, if one of your sites gets hacked, assuming you are running similar setups for both, they will find the other one and hack that too anyway. Just don't get hacked and stay up to date with Wordpress, it's not hard.