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Oh yeah, it wouldn't be a capital expenditure if it's a service now would it. It seems blindingly obvious once it's pointed out to me.  Thanks!
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Mar 9, 2012 19:33
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orphean posted:I have a dumb hosting question. Who in the world is the market for high-end unmanaged dedicated servers? I can't see how spending $300+ a month on a dedicated server makes any sense whatsoever. If that's affordable why not just buy a 1U and get it colo'ed somewhere for less money? The difference between paying for a spot in a rack with no ups on a single homed cogent uplink where the facility ambient temp is 90F vs Paying a company with multiple carriers, in a ups backed, redundant a/c cooled, 24/7 staff, 2hr SLA etc. Sure you can build a colo but can you administrate it? You can pay the company techs and hourly rate to do some admin work. What if a site you host is going to be getting plugged on a national show in 2 days, will your colo provider front you 12 servers that night to handle your traffic? What if its time for a second colo, do you think they'll reserve a space near your old one or will it be a few racks away? You want a cross connect so you don't pay for traffic between the two? I hope you don't mind paying a monthly fee for patch panel space.
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Mar 9, 2012 19:58
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3spades posted:words
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Mar 9, 2012 20:23
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orphean posted:I have a dumb hosting question. Who in the world is the market for high-end unmanaged dedicated servers? I can't see how spending $300+ a month on a dedicated server makes any sense whatsoever. If that's affordable why not just buy a 1U and get it colo'ed somewhere for less money? Colo is not just monthly cost covers all - Remote hands - Hardware replacements - Spares - Shipping cost for spares - Shipping cost for servers - Import/export tax(es)(?) - Flight tickets possibly - etc
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Mar 9, 2012 20:31
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I agree with what you're saying but there is such a thing as managed colocation. I guess I'm just looking at things from a total cost of ownership point of view. It seems spending 90 bucks extra a month for 4 gigs more ram or whatever is less cost effective then just buying it and fedexing it to the colo for them to put in. What optikalus said makes alot of sense to me. I've worked with tons of customers who have weird stringent policies surrounding a capital expense whereas a service expense can just fly right through. I wasn't trying to come across as unamanged dedicated servers are for FOOLS 
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Mar 9, 2012 21:42
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orphean posted:I agree with what you're saying but there is such a thing as managed colocation. I guess I'm just looking at things from a total cost of ownership point of view. It seems spending 90 bucks extra a month for 4 gigs more ram or whatever is less cost effective then just buying it and fedexing it to the colo for them to put in. I figured Rackspace would charge us a one-time fee to upgrade RAM, some big fat markup on RAM plus an hour or whatever to install it, but it would be a pretty sizeable monthly increase to go from 16GB to 32GB (probably 48GB since that's the max).
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Mar 9, 2012 21:55
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orphean posted:I agree with what you're saying but there is such a thing as managed colocation. I guess I'm just looking at things from a total cost of ownership point of view. It seems spending 90 bucks extra a month for 4 gigs more ram or whatever is less cost effective then just buying it and fedexing it to the colo for them to put in. I would think it is for the kind of people that are on a crappy VPS or something and want to upgrade but don't want to go all in and invest the kinds of dough it costs to pay for a server all at once. They make X amount of dollars per month off their crappy blog or whatever site, and start getting more traffic so they move to an unmanaged dedicated because a) there is less risk if your traffic doesn't keep up the same rate down the line you can just bail and head back to VPS and b) you want to save a few extra bucks per month by removing managed fees from the equation since you already admin your own server. If you go for a co-lo you have to invest in a machine, plus the colo plan, and the bandwidth plan. If you outgrow that machine you have to shell out more money for a better one. If you downsize you wasted the money. I think if your main business isn't from the website that might be different. But a lot of times its just somebody with a side project that does it to earn some extra money.
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Mar 10, 2012 03:51
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I recently switched to cloud hosting and login to the virtual server with my web browser. This is my first foray into cloud hosting (and windows server 2008) and I'm curious if there's a better method to interface with the virtual desktop. As it stands, the browser interface is laggy and the small window makes the text difficult to read (even after using "CTRL +" to zoom). My hosting provider is a rather new, start-up in Cincinnati and have very little guides or "how-to's".
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Mar 10, 2012 06:44
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Druuge Fuel posted:I recently switched to cloud hosting and login to the virtual server with my web browser. This is my first foray into cloud hosting (and windows server 2008) and I'm curious if there's a better method to interface with the virtual desktop. As it stands, the browser interface is laggy and the small window makes the text difficult to read (even after using "CTRL +" to zoom). Can you just enable RDP and use that? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794832(v=ws.10).aspx (May also need to allow it in the firewall)
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Mar 10, 2012 06:52
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I have full access to the server so I suppose I can. Prior to today, I've never used any remote networking except for one instance with LogMeIn (which was quite easy to setup. EDIT: My machine is Windows 7 Professional 64 -- according to the Server 2008 Help and Support I should be able to use the "Network Level Authentication" so I'm reading through the technet link and trying to wrap my mind around it. Would it be more practical to use the "less secure" connection and revert the RD to "do not allow" when finished? Druuge Fuel fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 07:11
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A warning about EuroDNS, don't ever use them for anything, especially WHOIS. I've been monitoring the status of an quasi-abandoned domain using their form, and surprise, the minute it was supposed to be freed up, EuroDNS registered it for themselves and put up a domain parking page. It happened a while ago. Back then, I suspiciously shrugged it off, but just now I find out by chance that they're dicks in general, breaking ICANN rules pretty much all the time, especially in regards to grace periods and transfers, and other shady poo poo.
Combat Pretzel fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 19:23
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I'm looking to host a Wordpress site with lots of activity. Right now we're getting a 2k visits a day but that spiked to 30k when one article popped and we expect that to continue with even bigger spikes as our brand gets out. We're also going to be starting forums soon and expect hundreds of active users. The Wordpress setup itself is simple with not a lot of plugins or anything. I'm particularly interested in Green Hosting, but could go with any company with good responsiveness and real human customer service (someone actually reads my tickets and that same person answers followups). So my sense is we need a high-end VPS or maybe an intro Dedicated Server. It needs to be managed. I really don't know much about server administration. We want something that will just work in displaying our Wordpress/Forums to an increasing audience.
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Mar 20, 2012 17:54
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Do heavy caching (w3tc maybe), pick up a CDN account (I like akamai or level3), use Knownhost (vps) or Medialayer (shared iirc) or something. Green hosting is bullshit, don't bother. Specs that you need kind of depend on what your wordpress site is, what specific plugins are running, what has been done - heavy interaction? BuddyPress? I have a "normal" WP install (90% read 10% comments, mostly cache hits) doing way more than 20x your traffic on a cheap VM with 512MB RAM and it still renders insanely fast -- it depends on how nerdy you are and how much time you want to spend optimising everything really. If the majority of your users aren't going to be logged in you could possibly pick up varnish or squid or whatever and let them handle caching too.. Impotence fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Mar 20, 2012 |
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Mar 20, 2012 17:58
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I'd also throw in Wiredtree for a good managed VPS. They have what they call a "Hybrid" VPS that is basically a VPS with more dedicated resources and fewer other users on the system. But as Biowarfare said, you could probably get by with a smaller VPS. I'll also second that "green" hosting is something to stay away from. Talk to Knownhost and Wiredtree and see what they would be able to help you with. "Managed" means different things to different providers. Some will just ensure the server is up and running, others will help with performance optimization. Then head over to Web Hosting Talk forums and browse the VPS offers section. Wiredtree and Knownhost typically run specials there that give you more RAM or diskspace or bandwidth for free with a coupon code.
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Mar 21, 2012 00:34
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Shadowstar posted:I'm looking to host a Wordpress site with lots of activity. Right now we're getting a 2k visits a day but that spiked to 30k when one article popped and we expect that to continue with even bigger spikes as our brand gets out. If you are using something like vBulletin, it will allow you to use memcache to help performance. Same thing with the wordpress w3tc plugin. Using disk enhanced mode at the least, memcache if available and remember to turn on caching for 404s as well. That seems to such up CPU cycles when bots and other crawling things hit 404 pages and your page has php code on it calling back to the DB again. If you are ready to step up to a managed dedicated server my company runs constant.com (our new brand), and choopa.com I can't offer any kinds of discounts, but we try our best to keep our customers happy.
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Mar 21, 2012 01:13
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Stick it behind Cloudflare
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Mar 21, 2012 01:49
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I don't know how to word this properly, but here's my situation: I run a really small website, with probably less than 50 people using it, but it's public nonetheless. I've been using a shared-hosting account for a few years now, and I'm thinking about transitioning to an unmanaged VPS server instead. I'm not really switching due to any sort of bandwidth/space issues, I just wanted do more stuff like having a proxy server, host server side apps that requires shell access to compile, etc. I don't have any professional training, but I'm comfortable with using a Linux machine via shell. My concern is: If I just set up a typical LAMP VPS, and I remember to do the software updates, will I experience any deficit in the quality of the server? As in, is there anything that a cPanel-managed hosting account can do, that a VPS can't? I have a spare computer running Debian in my house that I've been learning from, are there any major differences from that to a VPS? I'm mainly concerned with security, I'm scared that 30 minutes after I set up the VPS, it'll get hacked or something.
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Mar 21, 2012 23:09
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If anyone cares, buyvm/frantech is going to have a fresh supply of $15/yr (and their other plans) VPSes this Friday. They will sell out extremely quickly.
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Mar 21, 2012 23:35
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nescience posted:VPS If you're comfortable doing stuff on a shell you shouldn't have any problems. Don't bother sticking a control panel on the thing (even though you're used to cpanel) and you'll get a lot more bang for your buck. Of course you'll be doing everything manually but don't let this daunt you. Doing basic server stuff is hardly secret information and there's tons (TONS) of information out there to walk you through almost anything. As for your server security doing some basic hardening is quite quick. Things to do would be to setup iptables to only allow access via the ports you want exposed, install denyhosts or fail2ban to autodrop random scriptkiddy ssh probing, or even better put your ssh port on a port that's not 22. That'll stop a lot of stuff just doing that. Other things to add to the list would be disabling root logon from SSH and disabling password authentication entirely and logging into the server using a key pair. At the end of this your basic server is pretty much hardened against most casual hackers. The next thing to keep an eye on is making sure your web applications and stuff are kept up to date. I've used VPSes for many years and haven't had any problems just following basic stuff like this. Edit: Manage your DNS settings through your registrar, if you need email use Google Apps for Domains. An intermediate level project would be setting up your server to use your Google Apps mail to send mail. orphean fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 04:41
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orphean posted:tips and stuff Thank you for the tips! I'm slightly comforted in that I knew some of the stuff you mentioned. So the biggest security threat is just malicious SSH access? Most of my public pages are just static HTML; anything with PHP/SQL, I lock the directory with .htpasswd. And for a small-community website (sub 50 users), will I notice any difference in performance between choosing OpenVZ/Xen/KVM and different OS's? That's one thing I could never test with my home network, I didn't know how to simulate 50 people simultaneously accessing a VM.
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Mar 22, 2012 09:55
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nescience posted:I didn't know how to simulate 50 people simultaneously accessing a VM. http://www.petefreitag.com/item/689.cfm
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Mar 22, 2012 12:56
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I have been using Linode for almost a year and so far I have avoided installing any kind of mail server. Most of the hosted sites use WordPress so I just install something like Configure SMTP using their google apps address to deal with outgoing email and call it done. The thing is, I'm not sure if I'm being stubborn and that a mail server is not that complicated to setup (for multiple domains/addresses) or if I should just continue avoiding it. Any experiences? EDIT: These are all my sites so it's not like I'm charging people for that plugin hack job. 
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Mar 22, 2012 23:09
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I think you're doing it the best way. If I could get away with it, I'd love to stop offering email services. Email isn't hard but it isn't trivial either. You're constantly worrying about deliverability (IPs on blacklists, thresholds, etc). You have to keep it relatively secure. You'll want SSL to make sure your passwords aren't transmitted across the wire in plain text. It's a lot of work to set up properly if it isn't part of your job responsibility.
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Mar 22, 2012 23:18
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gmq posted:I have been using Linode for almost a year and so far I have avoided installing any kind of mail server. Most of the hosted sites use WordPress so I just install something like Configure SMTP using their google apps address to deal with outgoing email and call it done. Email on Linux is really frustrating. I've read some decent guides over the years that make it better, but it still seems uneccesarily complicated. I try to avoid it myself where I can. Google apps is a good solution I think.
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Mar 23, 2012 02:22
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If you have something like webmin/usermin installed it makes it a bit easier to manage setting up e-mail but you still have to know what you are doing. Ther'es also this thing: http://www.iredmail.org/
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Mar 23, 2012 02:35
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Thanks for the answers. I'll keep using that Configure SMTP plugin then. I wish there was some way to tell PHP to use the GMail SMTP server for all outgoing email (for those scripts that are not WordPress) but I guess that involves installing a mail server anyway.
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Mar 23, 2012 03:40
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There is.. but you'd just have to create a script that pipes your message through your authenticated gmail smtp session. You'd have to define sendmail_path in your php.ini to point to this script. Writing the script would be more complicated than just installing the plugin 
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Mar 23, 2012 04:28
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JHVH-1 posted:Ther'es also this thing: I self hosted my email for a long time using iredmail to setup the 17 trillion interlocking pieces a mail system needs and Afterlogic Webmail for the front-end webmail stuff. I had my SPFs golden, my rDNS was valid, I setup DomainKey and DKIM, I had SpamAssassin and ClamAv tweaked just so etc. I enrolled in every postmaster specific feedback loop the likes of Yahoo and Hotmail offered (and even had them accepting mail from me, a minor self-hosted email miracle). And in the end it was just too much of a hassle to keep upgrading the thing, figuring out why spamassassin isn't marking this new class of spam as such, etc. The straw that broke the camel's back was a dovecot update that completely changed how you configured it. Faced with having to completely setup dovecot again I took a deep breath and switched to Google Apps. Basically self-hosting your own email is fun as a hobby if you like tinkering with your server. Once that shine wears off make sure you're going to want to keep dealing with it all. I had my go at it, hosted email all the way for me wether its google apps or another provider. optikalus posted:There is.. but you'd just have to create a script that pipes your message through your authenticated gmail smtp session. Rather than a script you could just setup postfix or qmail with qsmtp or whatever to relay mail through gmail. This has the advantage that local mail generated on the server can be handled by gmail too. Every so often I'll get an email from one of my servers letting me know one of my cronjobs has failed or whatever. If you don't care about any server stuff I agree, use the plugin. orphean fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Mar 23, 2012 |
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Mar 23, 2012 04:30
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orphean posted:Rather than a script you could just setup postfix or qmail with qsmtp or whatever to relay mail through gmail. This has the advantage that local mail generated on the server can be handled by gmail too. Every so often I'll get an email from one of my servers letting me know one of my cronjobs has failed or whatever. You could, but I was just trying to give an option that would be easier. Setting up postfix with a relayhost to gmail requires outgoing TLS and setting up a SASL auth hash.
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Mar 23, 2012 06:10
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I let my domain name expire without being renewed because I wanted to switch registrars (gently caress GoDaddy). The expiration was yesterday but apparently I can't reregister it because Godaddy still has the name or something, I guess they're going to try and auction it or whatever I don't know. Is there any way I can get my domain back?
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Mar 23, 2012 16:49
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Above Our Own posted:I let my domain name expire without being renewed because I wanted to switch registrars (gently caress GoDaddy). The expiration was yesterday but apparently I can't reregister it because Godaddy still has the name or something, I guess they're going to try and auction it or whatever I don't know. Is there any way I can get my domain back? Good lord, never let your domain expire. You're likely hosed. You can transfer domains at any time while they are under your control. edit: GoDaddy might have some BS thing that lets you pay an inflated price to get it back if you act quickly. start here http://support.godaddy.com/help/5018/recovering-expired-domain-names sleepy gary fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 23, 2012 |
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Mar 23, 2012 17:01
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Well poo poo. I'm guessing they'll probably hold the name indefinitely, then? I was hoping they'd kind of drop it after a while and I'd just register with someone else because I am an idiot. Thanks for the link, I'll see what I can do.
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Mar 23, 2012 18:09
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From that link, it appears you can get it back for fairly cheap as long as you get on it right now. If you wait longer it balloons to $100ish I guess. They aren't clear about this in their official policies. Get on it immediately, secure the domain at GoDaddy, then immediately transfer it to namecheap or another goon-approved registrar of your choice. It will cost you another year up front but you get all of the time you pay for on the registration.
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Mar 23, 2012 18:22
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What are the biggest advantages of hosting from a dedicated/VPS server compared to Amazon's EC2? e: I'm just looking at the prices and they seem awfully competitive with VPS/Dedicated server plans.
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Mar 26, 2012 22:53
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nescience posted:What are the biggest advantages of hosting from a dedicated/VPS server compared to Amazon's EC2? Potentially expensive bandwidth/diskspace and slow CPU in something like EC2. But with a dedicated or VPS (EC2 is really specialized VPS) you can't SCALE WITH THE CLOUD
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Mar 26, 2012 23:06
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Bob Morales posted:Potentially expensive bandwidth/diskspace and slow CPU in something like EC2. But with a dedicated or VPS (EC2 is really specialized VPS) you can't SCALE WITH THE CLOUD EC2 is really nice unless you decide to cheap out on it. In short, properly done AWS is not cheap and if you try to cheap out on it you end up being hosed in the behind. If you do AWS properly you end up with basically 100% uptime and fast speeds worldwide. The bandwidth is actually quite cheap (maybe not relatively in the US) if you pick a non-US location compared to 'normal hosting services' CPU is not an issue with the high CPU instances, CPU sucks dick in the free/micro instance
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Mar 27, 2012 01:12
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Re: Domains. It's not Godaddy being dicks, here's a rough outline of the process. Active -> expired (will generally still function, can be renewed within UP TO 60 days, generally less, at no additional cost) -> pending deletion/reactivation period (Can generally be renewed at a STEEP penalty, varies by registrar. The two registrars we primarily use are DirectI and eNom. DirectI charges $85, eNom charges $250.) -> Deleted (The domain can be re-registered. Keep in mind there are certain SEO benefits to having an older registration date, and that at this point anyone can re-register your domain, not just you.) Godaddy will likely not hold the domain indefinitely, unless it is a "good" domain, and then when it expires they may re-register it automatically, I don't know their policies, or the legalities. Typically domains can be transferred up to about two weeks before they expire, after that most registrars won't even try, because if the transfer does not complete before the domain expires, it can potentially be lost completely, however, there's no ICANN policy on how far away from the expiration you have to stop accepting transfers. Another one you may run into: domains cannot be transferred within 60 days of registration or transfer (also possibly renewal, I'm not sure)
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Mar 27, 2012 02:02
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Want to figure out how to set up my own mail server (as opposed to being practical and just getting Google Apps). Anyone have any suggestions against Postfix?
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Mar 30, 2012 13:42
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nescience posted:Want to figure out how to set up my own mail server (as opposed to being practical and just getting Google Apps). Anyone have any suggestions against Postfix? Linode has a bunch of guides that are worth checking out. http://library.linode.com/email
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Mar 30, 2012 22:20
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If anyone's looking for a cheap but okay unmanaged VPS, BuyVM has restocked and is offering a couple nice OpenVZ plans. They have availability at http://www.doesbuyvmhavestock.com/.
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Mar 31, 2012 01:36
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