Comments | eck: Today's technobabble...

eck

Today's technobabble...

Oct 24, 2003 20:46

Not sure how many technophiles read this, but in case you're interested: The migration of my internet server to a collocation facility is coming up off the back burner, driven by a confluence of incentive and means. Now ( I have to decide... )

Comments 7

eviljohn October 24 2003, 21:59:20 UTC

1Gig Duron is not much faster than a K6-2/450? Huh?

I'm definetly interested in reading all about the progress of all of this, as I will be one of your users. By the way - I'm happy to make a donation too, how should I send this to you?

I sent you email about some of the questions I had about UML, I'm interested in throwing in a few extra bucks in to have you configure all of the dns stuff to do with dekard.com (email, web, etc.) since thats a little beyond my skillz.

eck October 24 2003, 22:51:04 UTC

1 GHz Duron split several ways as virtual servers won't be much faster than a K6-2/450 devoted to running a smaller set of services. Without gobs of RAM, it could be *slower* (unusably slow if it swaps all the time).

Sorry to be slow with that other reply. I wanted to compose a clarification to send to all the friends whose reactions were something like, "$50/year? Count me in! That's really cheap for my own virtual server...!" While I don't want anyone paying so much that they'll view this as a supported service, I'm also anxious to keep expectations in check the other way around. If half the people pitching in to cover expenses plan to run virtual servers, we're that many times as likely to get slashdotted and/or just overload the machine.

But hey, we should be starting with a machine that's a long way from under-powered. I'm leaning toward buying a new mobo/cpu/ram, with all built-in features and heaps of drive space. It's all so cheap! Except MP mobos. :-7

Clarifying questions. neoliminal October 24 2003, 22:27:19 UTC

How many virtual hosts are you running?
Will they mostly be web servers, or are they running mail/web/mysql?
How many users?
Are you running into ethernet bandwidth issues?
Do you care encryption of data on the drive?

eck October 24 2003, 23:01:24 UTC

Thanks for the interest. Here's the gist...

My existing server hosts about 30 virtual web servers. Only 8 with their own IP addresses. None with high traffic, so far. We have about 60 users (prob'ly quite a few dead accounts in there, but others are keen to get accounts, too) who do little besides fetch email from the server.

I've got mysql on there for one application that gets very light usage.

We'll have a 20 GB/month bandwith threshold, above which the connection could get really expensive. So 10bT is a plenty big pipe, and we'll likely talk to the colo facility's swith at 100 Mbps.

I've almost got things to the point where no authentication to the system is in the clear. We have SSH for command-line stuff, SSL for web and file stuff, and simap/spop for email. I haven't taken the time to play with any encrypted-filesystem stuff, but maybe once things are generally coasting along smoothly.

My take on it. neoliminal October 25 2003, 07:19:41 UTC

I'd suggest going RAM heavy and fast HD. It sounds like the majority of your access will be web based. Are you noticing high CPU usage? It doesn't sound like CPU is a bottle neck from what you've described.

eck October 25 2003, 11:40:51 UTC

Nope, nothing should be too cpu-intensive. I didn't mention RAM, but there will be at least 1 GB. Your take is exactly right. I just need to find a good deal on an everything-included motherboard here in Edmonton.

Clarification eck October 24 2003, 23:04:11 UTC

Since we've already got at least 8 web servers running on separate IP addresses, I expect we'll have a dozen or so virtual servers to start with. If we're on a machine that handles all that without breaking a sweat, I'll quite likely do a lot more with U-M-L to jail or migrate services.