[sclug] Hosting recommendation request

Sat Oct 25 09:05:53 UTC 2003

I think you pretty much understand the issues at hand. As far as
performance and load considerations are concerned, there are some minor
things to keep in mind.

Firstly, you share the hardware so other peoples actions affect your
performance. As long as the hosting company is reasonable about the
ratio of users on each machine, you should be ok. Bytemark seems to do
regular hardware upgrades.

Secondly, things like cron jobs (happening accross many UMLs at the same
time) is not too great and Bytemark as a randomiser script that they ask
you to run to make sure that cron jobs do run more randomly.

We have never really had any problems with performance (we have the
cheapest deal from them) and the transparent hardware failover support
makes up for any operational issues (such as periodic downtimes to move
onto higher performance hardware) that we need to consider. It would be
interesting to hear the opinion of gaming host or anybody who actually
measures their "hardware" performance.

I have not thought about what would happen to your service if another
UML machine on the same host gets DOSed? I find on my desktop that
something going wrong in the UML can hurt the host's performance. But
then I guess the UML processes can be re-niced in the host?

Pieter

On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 22:51, Antony Bartlett wrote:
> bytemark-hosting, eh?  Just imagine - my own (virtual) Linux box
> on-line <drool/>
> 
> Connected 24x7 running any kind of web-app imaginable (no fixed
> feature list like you get with any other hosting package, install what
> you will), at a fraction of the cost of co-location, and the fraction
> of the hassle of hosting stuff from your home PC (I don't know
> about you guys, but I like to reboot my PC fairly frequently,
> turn it off when I'm not using it and have silence, and generally
> screw around with it in a multitude of other ways).
> More enviromentally friendly too.
> 
> And now you're telling me you think it could serve more than
> 500 users browsing at a time - hitting the database for most
> page-impressions and all.  I wouldn't have thought of using it for
> something quite that heavy, personally, but as I know nothing, I'll
> have to take your word for it, for now.  Wow.
> 
> To anyone taken aback by this sudden burst of breathless
> enthusiam on my part, I should probably explain that I have heard
> of bytemark-hosting before.  I haven't got around to trying them
> yet due to my total lack of knowledge about Linux,
> but it's always been on my agenda - what's been driving me to
> finally get around to learning something about Linux (and hence my
> motive for posting here).
> 
> So for me, UML, especially hosted UML has been The Killer-App,
> what's driving me to venture outside the world of Windows, which,
> for all it's flaws, works adequetely for me, and is where I'm cosy.
> And maybe a killer not just for me?  I mean, after all, there's no way
> in hell Windows can do anything like this, and even if it could, I suspect
> the Microsoft tax would be a fairly steep addition to any ??15/whatever
> hosting charge, and one I suspect people would be dis-inclinded to
> pay, even those willing to shell out ??90 for an upgrade to the latest
> version of Windows.
> 
> Anyway, I thought I'd share these thoughts with you.  I hope I'm not
> imposing.
> 
> Oh, and I wont be disappointed if I'm wrong about UML being The
> Killer-App for me, by the way, because I'll have learnt plenty about
> Linux along the way.
> 
>     Best wishes,
> 
>         Antony
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "pieter claassen" <pieter at countersnipe.com>
> To: <lug at assursys.co.uk>
> Cc: "Matthew Browning" <mb at matthewb.org>; <sclug at sclug.org.uk>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 7:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [sclug] Hosting recommendation request
> 
> 
> ALso check out www.bytemark-hosting.co.uk. Top UML service for ??15 per
> month and we have been very happy with them.
> 
> Pieter
> On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 17:42, lug at assursys.co.uk wrote:
> > On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Matthew Browning wrote:
> >
> > > I know this is a pretty boring question that does the rounds about once
> > > a week but I am looking for a hosting recommendation from anyone in
> > > Linuxland who has had a good experience.
> > >
> > > My needs are simple:
> > >
> > > - - GNU
> > > - - MySQL
> > > - - Perl (mod_perl ideally)
> > > - - sshd
> > > - - server doesn't fall over when >500 people are doing stuff like
> > > logging in and querying database.
> > >
> > > In a super-ideal world, I would like to be able to phone someone up and
> > > ask them to install $CPAN_MODULE system-wide and have them do it so I
> > > don't need to jump through too many hoops.
> > >
> > > Any thoughts?
> >
> > Try looking into Jason Clifford's UKFSN outfit <http://www.ukfsn.org/>.
> > Jason was previously the brains behind the technical part of UKLinux.net.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Alex.
> 
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