Post #294,605
10/15/07 10:42:26 PM
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Hosting solutions...
Note: this is not a suggestion that I'm considering moving IWETHEY to a different provider. It's just an attempt to start a discussion.
IWT is at a co-location facility, which means that I own the machine, and the colo provides power, A/C, and a network drop. There's also a limited "remote hands" service, which means they'll push buttons and read a console for me if necessary.
Now, this is a pretty good deal. $50/month, and a much better facility than my den... which comes with its a 4-year-old inhabitant who also has a "remote hands" service, albeit a bit more random than is conducive to keeping a server running. However, as we just saw, when there's a problem it can take a while to get some action on the colo's end. I'd expect better service if I were paying a lot more money, but this is about the sweet spot for a non-commercial enterprise.
On the other hand, if I were to be hosting a site that had to be up to make money, I'd be pretty pissed off right now. 4 days is too long to wait for a machine reboot. So here's the question:
If you don't want to build your own machine room, what's the best place and manner to host?
I'm sure the answer is, "depends on what you're doing", and I don't expect much more than that in response, but I'd like to see the discussion. The options as I see it are:
1) Colocation. Hardware goes, you're screwed, because it takes a long time to get in there to get it resolved. On the other hand, you can completely design what you want in your rack: backplane, firewalls, and so on. On the gripping hand, you have to pay for it all as well. On the, um, other gripping hand, IWT's colo is the closest to where I live, and it's a full 30 minutes away without traffic.
2) Managed server. Decent, but the hardware seems limited and somewhat expensive. Some of the bigger places have load balancing, backup, and other services as well, which is probably a good deal. I'm not sure what the break-even point is, though. Another issue is what software is supported on the server. I've seen a range of Fedora, SuSE, Debian 3.1, FreeBSD, and Windows (which always costs a bit more each month than the UNIX, larf).
3) Virtual server, ala Amazon's EC2. Again, the virtual hardware is limited to that of a middling blade server, and there are other issues such as not supporting static IPs and the like.
What else is out there? Let's say you want two load-balanced web servers, two process servers with memcached, and a database box (or possibly two if you want to get into clustering). In other words, a simple ecommerce site with redundancy.
As a side question, are there any ways to remotely reboot a machine? The firewall stayed up and pingable the entire time, natch.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,608
10/15/07 11:18:12 PM
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Two ideas
Google [link|http://www.google.com/search?q=remote%2badministration%2bcard|remote+administration+card] => [link|http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/SIM.cfm|http://www.supermicr...ies/addon/SIM.cfm]
- and -
[link|http://www.slicehost.com/|http://www.slicehost.com/]
===
Kip Hawley is still an idiot.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #294,640
10/16/07 12:43:34 PM
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Slicehost looks like a polished EC2.
Interesting.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,677
10/17/07 12:01:27 AM
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Ask Chris Wright about Slicehost.
He is using them.
Also, EC2 just came out with better options.
And they *ARE* working on EC2 being able to support Static IPs.
They now have the original offering, 1 Processor, 1.something GB of memory 160GB of storage.
Now they have Large and Extra Large Host offerings.
Seems pretty cool. But, as in regards to static IPs, if you used some type of dynamic DNS hosting... this wouldn;t be a problem.
Though... it would suck fo rmail.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
PGP key: 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05
Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
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Post #294,696
10/17/07 4:24:34 PM
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Something like everydns.net, yeah
Although the extremely short TTL might be an issue with a big site.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,609
10/15/07 11:25:49 PM
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Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick 2.
It's the old problem... :-( I think you've outlined the +/- pretty well. But if there's money or a business at stake, shopping based on price is not a good idea.
[Aside:] There was a very good OS/2 software store on the web before many other retailers knew what the Internet was. (It was around before Indelible Blue.) He started getting too popular for his existing software and decided to totally revamp his site to handle the load. It was a disaster - slow, too complicated, too difficult to search. I think his business died in less than a month. A web site has to be up and usable when people try to use it or people will go elsewhere with their money. [/Aside]
On the remote reboot side of things - there are lots of options. There's a lot of hardware out there that's Ethernet (or even telephone) based and can control the power to almost anything. That's probably the most bullet-proof solution. E.g. [link|http://www.remotepowerswitch.com/|Remote Power Switch] and [link|http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS219US219&q=remote+reboot+card&btnG=Search|these]. It looks like it would be $100-ish and up, depending on features, etc. I've got no experience with any of them, myself.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #294,642
10/16/07 12:54:20 PM
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Re: Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick 2.
I think an IP KVM that can run a serial-enabled power switch would be cool... something like this: [link|http://www.kvm-switches-online.com/0su51068.html|http://www.kvm-switc...com/0su51068.html] and [link|http://www.mirapath.com/products/servertech/sentry_serial_power_tower_features.shtml|http://www.mirapath....er_features.shtml]
An all-in-one would be better, though, and that particular power supply is overkill for one server.
I also saw a VNC remote KVM switch... nifty.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,624
10/16/07 9:26:49 AM
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get a real server with LOM?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #294,639
10/16/07 12:42:57 PM
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What's LOM?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,648
10/16/07 1:26:23 PM
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lights out management like
[link|http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v120/|http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v120/]
Lights Out Management (LOM) software; Automatic Server Restart software. Has a serial management interface that can hook into a terminal server for power off management.
thanx,
bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #294,678
10/17/07 12:05:01 AM
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Ita s "ip console" for the machine.
Or a virtaul console tyoe thing like vmware-server-console.
Its really cool. You can add a card to nearly any machine to get this.
Only problem is it requires another IP address and ports.
You could re-direct ports from one IP addrsss to another behind a NAT/firewall setup.
IOW, port 9999 to port 1024 for the remote console... etc. 10001 for the remote websetup... etc.
Various options exist.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
PGP key: 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05
Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
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Post #294,695
10/17/07 4:23:19 PM
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Any suggestions for reasonably priced ones?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,814
10/18/07 10:44:15 PM
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Define resonable.
Some machine comes with stuff like integrated Light Out in them (HP Proliants do), Dell has them
Remote Insight boards used to be popular, but HP owns them and its now iLO.
Belkin makes an single host IP Console... but it ain't cheap.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
PGP key: 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05
Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
Alternate Fingerprint: 09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0
Alternate Fingerprint: 455F E104 22CA 29C4 933F 9505 2B79 2AB2
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Post #294,816
10/18/07 11:12:06 PM
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A few hundred dollars.
The IP KVMs and remote power switches run around $600... that's a bit pricey for a non-commercial machine.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #294,819
10/18/07 11:38:39 PM
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Made me think of STONITH
When the one of the original Linux clusters came out, they referred to the fact that runaway nodes could damage your file system so all the nodes needed to be on a power switch that could be controlled.
When a node refused to ack and accept control from the master, the master pulled the power on the node.
STONITH - Shoot the other node in the head.
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Post #294,625
10/16/07 9:44:26 AM
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I think you've covered the basics.
I actually work with managed servers.
The website, support system and licensing database for who I work for is on a bank of servers halfway around the world from me in RackSpace. Although we do a lot of custom configuration, they are extremely responsive and can do quite a bit of trouble-shooting at literally any time. I can request a box to be rebooted and it will be done within about 20 minutes, usually quicker. Of course, we pay for all this, but we have over 25 machines, most behind a dedicated load-balancer, as well as three quad Opteron machines with 8Gb of RAM as our databases. Hardware is usually Dell and there is a wide range. Without sounding like an ad for them, RackSpace can setup and run the box for you in whatever redundant arrangement suits your application and all you have to do is run your app. Since we look after the OS ourselves, we probably pay too much. But their support is stellar, which is probably why we went with them. They would be a top-shelf hosting setup.
We also have a few dozen boxes at an outfit called The Planet. They are rather less responsive and we pay correspondingly less. However, they have a remote console interface and a remote power interface, so you can theoretically reboot your machines yourself. I know commodity hardware to do this exists, but it gets pricey quickly. Colos obviously have to recover that cost.
I looked at a cheaper hosting company for my own website and domain, since I was wondering at one point if I could do that and go to a cheaper DSL service (turned out that would be more expensive than staying on my static IP DSL). One that I found advertising on Kuro5hin had a range of virtual machines at the low end to real hardware on the high end. Some of the virtual machines were for extremely specific applications: DNS and secondary mail queues was one. But that's usually a low-traffic situation.
There are also companies that host specific types of applications. They provide the hardware, the OS, the app - you provide the customisations to your instance. LiveJournal do this for blogs. I also worked briefly for a company that did that for e-commerver. They basically rented space out on their e-commerce web-servers. And don't think they're limited to small volume: where I work for now uses just such a service for our shopping cart and purchasing. And we're not their biggest customer!
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
|
-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. | · my ·
· [link|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/|blog] ·
· [link|http://yceran.org/|website] · |
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Post #294,626
10/16/07 9:45:46 AM
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I think you've covered the basics.
I actually work with managed servers.
The website, support system and licensing database for who I work for is on a bank of servers halfway around the world from me in RackSpace. Although we do a lot of custom configuration, they are extremely responsive and can do quite a bit of trouble-shooting at literally any time. I can request a box to be rebooted and it will be done within about 20 minutes, usually quicker. Of course, we pay for all this, but we have over 25 machines, most behind a dedicated load-balancer, as well as three quad Opteron machines with 8Gb of RAM as our databases. Hardware is usually Dell and there is a wide range. Without sounding like an ad for them, RackSpace can setup and run the box for you in whatever redundant arrangement suits your application and all you have to do is run your app. Since we look after the OS ourselves, we probably pay too much. But their support is stellar, which is probably why we went with them. They would be a top-shelf hosting setup.
We also have a few dozen boxes at an outfit called The Planet. They are rather less responsive and we pay correspondingly less. However, they have a remote console interface and a remote power interface, so you can theoretically reboot your machines yourself. I know commodity hardware to do this exists, but it gets pricey quickly. Colos obviously have to recover that cost.
I looked at a cheaper hosting company for my own website and domain, since I was wondering at one point if I could do that and go to a cheaper DSL service (turned out that would be more expensive than staying on my static IP DSL). One that I found advertising on Kuro5hin had a range of virtual machines at the low end to real hardware on the high end. Some of the virtual machines were for extremely specific applications: DNS and secondary mail queues was one. But that's usually a low-traffic situation.
There are also companies that host specific types of applications. They provide the hardware, the OS, the app - you provide the customisations to your instance. LiveJournal do this for blogs. I also worked briefly for a company that did that for e-commerver. They basically rented space out on their e-commerce web-servers. And don't think they're limited to small volume: where I work for now uses just such a service for our shopping cart and purchasing. And we're not their biggest customer!
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
|
-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. | · my ·
· [link|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/|blog] ·
· [link|http://yceran.org/|website] · |
|
