Need Colo/VSP recommendation.

Post #314,676 by mvitale 9/27/09 9:59:24 PM 9/27/09 9:59:44 PM Reply	Need Colo/VSP recommendation. I'm in the market for a new colocation provider/VSP/whatever. Cheap is good, but is not the end-all-be-all. Root access to a Linux box is a requirement. If colocation facility, I have 3 1U servers to ship to them. If VSP, I have requirements that must be met, but "root access" should pretty much cover it and allow me to do what I want/need. Debian/Ubuntu preferred. -Mike "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania Edited by mvitale Sept. 27, 2009, 09:59:44 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #314,683 by static 9/27/09 11:22:57 PM Reply	If you hadn't have said "cheap"... ... I would have suggested RackSpace. We used them in a previous job and they are worth the money. However, at the time, they only fully supported RedHat. Debian was available, but they couldn't do as much for you (like RAIDed hardware). We also had hosts with a few other people and the support was distincly less than adequate. Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #315,188 by jones 10/6/09 6:02:03 PM Reply	Re: Need Colo/VSP recommendation. slicehost.com, linode.com <-- good solid full access and flexible VPS solutions. vps.net <-- very promising new comer (and one I currently use), but still the occasional minor growing pains. Has nice option of growing VPS temporarily for a daily fee to handle spikes in traffic. All three should have debian and ubuntu images readily available.
Post #315,192 by drook 10/6/09 7:55:48 PM 10/6/09 7:56:03 PM Reply	How do photo sites deal with bandwidth Kind of forking this thread, but all of those have bandwidth caps that aren't nearly high enough for my site, until you get to the $400+ / month range. But photo sharing sites like Flickr have a pro version that's $24.95 / year with no caps. How can they have unlimited bandwidth for $2 / mo when all the site hosts are capped, with per GB charges? -- Drew Edited by drook Oct. 6, 2009, 07:56:03 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #315,194 by boxley 10/6/09 8:12:07 PM Reply	same way google does, oversubscription a hosting company has a fixed cost plus profit model, flikr et all offer unlimited hoping that only a very few users will exceed a very small alocation
Post #315,214 by jones 10/7/09 10:05:17 AM Reply	Flickr and Yahoo Flickr is owned by Yahoo. The cost model for bandwidth when you have your own datacenters is significantly different than budget hosting providers. Plus Flickr has other avenues of revenue (like partnering with other companies for ordering prints). But if you want to look at high bandwidth options if you look around you can still find some sites that provide flat rate bandwidth fees, usually capped at something like 10 Mbps and utilizes cheaper bandwidth providers (like Cogent).
Post #315,215 by drook 10/7/09 10:20:57 AM Reply	Who would that be? Everyone I've seen lists rates as GB/month. If I could price it at MB/s I could at least calculate what I need. -- Drew
Post #315,221 by jones 10/7/09 11:18:04 AM Reply	Unmetered Bandwidth Unfortunately I don't have any reliable information on who provides these anymore. The sites I've used before have mostly dropped this option. What you are looking for though is typically called "unmetered bandwidth" so if you search for that you'll find some options that range from fairly reliable to piss poor.
Post #315,223 by drook 10/7/09 11:56:42 AM 10/7/09 1:15:24 PM Reply	Thanks, checking them out now Let's see if my math makes sense. The best hour of my best day I had 1,336 visitors. That day I had 15,292 visitors. Total bandwidth for the day was 67.2 GB. Average transfer per page ~4.4MB Round up a bit 1,500 visitors in one hour = 25 per minute. 25 visitors * 4.4MB = 110MB/min = 1.833 MB/s So on the best hour of my best day I'd have needed 1.833 MB/s to handle the traffic. Does that sound about right? And assuming it's actually capped at 1.5 MB/s (which is what I'm seeing is standard for basic plans), things would slow down at peak. Can someone who does capacity planning check my assumptions? -- Drew Edited by drook Oct. 7, 2009, 01:15:24 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #315,261 by malraux 10/7/09 5:34:47 PM Reply	Slightly OT - I can't see the blog host from here... I hope you have some kind of advertising on it with those numbers. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,304 by drook 10/8/09 8:51:47 AM Reply	Soon as I find a new host with good bandwidth ... When you say "can't see blog host" do you mean blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com or cooklikeyourgrandmother.com? What aren't you seeing? As for advertising, it's not the slam-dunk it seems, that I can/should be making money with those numbers. The people who quote what you can make with advertising have sites that are designed to make money with advertising. Different traffic acquisition strategy, different audience. -- Drew
Post #315,307 by malraux 10/8/09 11:43:08 AM Reply	I can see the main site, but not the blog. There's a link I'll send you about the advertising. It related directly to blogs, and talked about optimal ad positioning, etc. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,317 by drook 10/8/09 2:30:37 PM Reply	Can't believe I'm about to ask this, but ... Could you try flushing your browser cache and check again? They're insisting that's what the problem is, that you've got something cached from before they move my site to a new server. And can you take a look at kegmobile.com, see if that one is working? I'm so close to just buying a cheap server and finding a colo it's not even funny. -- Drew
Post #315,327 by folkert 10/8/09 4:53:12 PM Reply	third retry, I got kegmobile.com two timeouts, then it worked. Of course, I forgot I had your zone live and loaded in my DNS server. Same issue with cooklikeyourgrandmother.com and I was blind to blog until the third time.
Post #315,332 by malraux 10/8/09 9:19:21 PM Reply	I don't need to. sanderson@sanderson:~$ host cooklikeyourgrandmother.com cooklikeyourgrandmother.com has address 64.29.151.221 cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 110 mx3c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 100 mx2c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 10 mx1c40.carrierzone.com. sanderson@sanderson:~$ host blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com Host blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com.bdg.local not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) They're idiots. You knew this already, of course. sanderson@sanderson:~$ host kegmobile.com kegmobile.com has address 64.29.151.221 kegmobile.com mail is handled by 100 mx2c40.carrierzone.com. kegmobile.com mail is handled by 10 mx1c40.carrierzone.com. kegmobile.com mail is handled by 110 mx3c40.carrierzone.com. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,333 by malraux 10/8/09 9:20:31 PM Reply	And from home it's the other way 'round. bigberet:~ anderson$ host blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com is an alias for ghs.google.com. ghs.google.com is an alias for ghs.l.google.com. ghs.l.google.com has address 74.125.95.121 bigberet:~ anderson$ host cooklikeyourgrandmother.com cooklikeyourgrandmother.com has address 64.29.151.221 cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 10 mx1c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 110 mx3c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 100 mx2c40.carrierzone.com. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,421 by drook 10/10/09 9:22:48 AM Reply	And now? I switched to DNS Made Easy last night. You seeing it now? (Just for the cooklikeyourgrandmother site, haven't done kegmobile yet.) -- Drew
Post #315,424 by folkert 10/10/09 9:50:58 AM Reply	WOOT! Everything looks right! I went through and checked all of your entries, including your SOA and NS. SWEET! Not so hard, eh? The interface is simple, yet effective.
Post #315,434 by malraux 10/10/09 11:05:06 PM Reply	Re: And now? From home: bigberet:~ anderson$ host blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com is an alias for ghs.google.com. ghs.google.com is an alias for ghs.l.google.com. ghs.l.google.com has address 74.125.95.121 bigberet:~ anderson$ host cooklikeyourgrandmother.com cooklikeyourgrandmother.com has address 64.29.151.221 cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 100 mx2c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 110 mx3c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 10 mx1c40.carrierzone.com. From work: sanderson@sanderson:~$ host blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com is an alias for ghs.google.com. ghs.google.com is an alias for ghs.l.google.com. ghs.l.google.com has address 74.125.95.121 sanderson@sanderson:~$ host cooklikeyourgrandmother.com cooklikeyourgrandmother.com has address 64.29.151.221 cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 110 mx3c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 10 mx1c40.carrierzone.com. cooklikeyourgrandmother.com mail is handled by 100 mx2c40.carrierzone.com. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,435 by drook 10/10/09 11:43:29 PM Reply	Cool, thanks -- Drew
Post #315,436 by malraux 10/10/09 11:52:20 PM Reply	I can't find that article I mentioned It was on a blogger's site, talking about all of the various things he had tried with ad positioning and so on. Basically he came up with: 1) make sure you're using the context-specific functionality in Google adwords so the ads reflect the page/section, 2) put the ads left and top, and a few within the content itself (like between posts, I guess, or in the post text), because that's where people will actually use them. He claimed to have gotten a good multiple income over his old configuration. I wish I could find the damned link, because there was quite a bit more to it. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,440 by drook 10/11/09 1:42:44 AM Reply	Seen similar comparisons before Basically people keep rediscovering that the more intrusive you make the advertising, the better your conversion percentage. What I haven't seen any of them talk about is whether they saw any impact on retention of regular readers after making the ads so annoying. -- Drew
Post #315,442 by Another Scott 10/11/09 8:15:40 AM Reply	ezBoard might have some data. :-/ They may not want to share, though. I don't know if you've seen this, but it might be helpful - a little calculator on what you "should" charge (scroll down). http://onlineads.dig...sponsorships.html Have fun. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #315,443 by drook 10/11/09 8:50:08 AM Reply	I like the math, but the income per visitor is way off In some segments you might get $10/day off 1,000 visitors, but I never came close to that. -- Drew
Post #315,453 by malraux 10/11/09 11:09:07 AM Reply	Re: Seen similar comparisons before Here are numbers from one person: You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that Â it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low Â a whopping $53 the first month. If youÂd like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although itÂs certainly not my only source. http://www.stevepavl...y-from-your-blog/ And it's not necessarily intrusiveness. People naturally look at things on the top and left of a page (well, left-right top-down languages, I'm sure). The comparison I can't find talked about size and obnoxiousness of the ads didn't really matter. Contextual relevance and position did. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #315,472 by drook 10/11/09 7:49:19 PM Reply	Position is obnoxiousness Best converting ad position is "in content". In other words, in the middle of the article, there's a two-inch break for an ad. Totally disruptive. And the more it mimics the article layout, the better the conversion. -- Drew
Post #315,336 by folkert 10/8/09 9:42:06 PM Reply	Dude... I have your zone all setup and was working until I made it inactive. I could also do kegmobile.com. Let me know.
Post #315,338 by drook 10/8/09 10:22:13 PM Reply	Check your email -- Drew
Post #315,380 by folkert 10/9/09 1:28:48 PM Reply	Checked and replying... Make sure you tell me which e-mail I need to check... I have several I use as non-primary and the gmail one is that kind.
Post #315,381 by drook 10/9/09 1:33:59 PM Reply	Ahh, gmail was the first I found, I still had it in my inbox -- Drew
Post #315,385 by folkert 10/9/09 1:48:41 PM Reply	Sentededed. You also have an account on that machine IF you want it. Let me know. Its always nice to have a disconnected machine from everything you do to double check you stuff.
Post #315,391 by drook 10/9/09 3:35:05 PM Reply	Will you be around tonight? I'm taking Winnie to dance, should be back around 9-ish my time. Think I could give you a call and we can try this? -- Drew
Post #315,392 by folkert 10/9/09 3:35:55 PM Reply	Sure. I'm always available, at least it always seems like that.

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