WebHosting Choices

What P3 CPU motherboard would you recommend for building a 1U or 2U web server for co-lo?

What do you especially like about the board…and what "remote management" features do you look for in a motherboard for your co-lo boxes?

If you were going SCSI, would you prefer a board with on-board SCSI…or one without it and use a low profile SCSI PCI card?

Thanks!

Louis

-jason

*Which* Tyan board(S) are you referring to?

How much uptime do you have running with those boards?

Thanks,

Louis

However if you are worried about price, then the next best alterntive (IMHO) would be an Asus board.

Never had any problems with Tyan or Asus before.

Take care,

Louis

I’ll take a look at that board. At this point, I’m not sure which Supermicro, Tyan or Intel board to get. I suspect it will be hard to go too far wrong in any event. But as a techie, I sometimes fret over the minor differences more than I should.

The biggest thing I’m wondering about is whether to go with onboard SCSI or some other specific SCSI add in card.

Thanks again and take care,

Louis

How much of a difference does having dual P3 CPUs over a single P3 CPU make in your web server? And *what* are the differences you notice when you are running a dual P3 web server over a single P3 CPU web server?

Does it make a difference in how many retail or reseller hosting accounts you’ll put on a box? How much of a difference?

Thanks!

Louis

I have at times seen people upgrade to dual CPU systems only see notice a downgrade in performance (yes this does happen).
Its actually pretty common in bentchmark tests were Single CPU systems outperform dual CPU systems. It just all basicly comes down to what the server is running and how much overhead (CPU overhead) is being used. Dont upgrade to a Dual CPU system if you utilize allot of Memory resources and marginal CPU resources - that in itself is pointless.

Are the two systems (before and after the upgrade) 100% identical?

Can you point me to what benchmark tests you are referring, and of course, the result of these tests? I have not seen a benchmark tests in which a single CPU outperforms Dual CPU.

cheers,

dual AMD 700mhz
512MB of SDRAM @ 133Mhz
1xmaxtor 20gb hard drive @ 7200RPM’s
(had identicle system just utilizing a single CPU)

Most systems should ensure that the average process run on the system, meets the below criteria - before upgrading to Dual CPU:
1) The average process working set fits in the L1 or L2 cache.
2) The average process working set fits in main memory.
3) The average process does not requires a large amount of disk I/O.

E.G:
If you have a system with 300 sites on it and extensive disk i/o with only one HD then your going to lose peformance as the i/o operations to the hard drive must now be split between 2 CPU’s. Not to mention adding a CPU cant make a hard drive perform i/o faster than its designed for.

The single CPU system had out performed the dual CPU system by almost 20% whilst performing extensive disk i/o operations.

But dektong, your write within reason - youl never find a single CPU system outperform a dual CPU system on intensive CPU operations (youl always get more flops out of the dual CPU system).

But essentialy, the CPU is only one critical system component. If your hard drive cant keep up with whats being thrown at it then your obvisouly going to have problems. I make it habbit to get 2 hard drives with dual CPU systems. As well Memory is another factor - if your system has low amounts of physical ram then the system as a whole can take a performance hit (including CPU operations).

Basicly you just have to balance hardware in a dual CPU system - make sure your hardware components can keep up pace with what the Dual CPU’s can throw at it.

the trick is to see if you can tune the server to the max of it’s abilities. everytime I sit down to tune a windows server I have about 3 weeks worth of log files and performace log files to look at.

some of the things that I look for are:

I watch the disk I/O because small changes within that area can improve the system overall. ( nasty application is mysql for win2k, more I/O reads than anything else)

I watch the CPU utilization and the application that caused the spike. sometimes you’ll find that those spikes are not random but are active because of 2 or 3 applications running at the right time together, so you have to figure out how to priorities the requests as they come in so that the server does not get to 100% alot.

I think I got it mostly figured out so that I can place about 120 - 150 active domains on a server or about 190 on a server that have some activity but not a great deal.

Mike

What kind of server (i.e. number and type of CPU, amount of memory, operating system, SCSI or IDE, etc) are you referring to with the number of active domains you mentioned?

Thanks a bunch,

Louis

bunch of questions that I never answer to the public directly. but here goes as general outlines

servers are win2k servers
cpu’s 800 to 1200 mhz
memory = always have a min of a gig less than that your wasting your time in windows.
drive can be ide, then you have to pay attention to the I/O. The controller cards you buy ( spend the money right there on the controller cards right after memory ) have to be the best within your outlined budget.

SCSI same rules apply.

if I recall correctly ( or I just might not care to devulge things ) try to find controller cards that will offload from the cpu and have the largest read ahead cache you can find ), if you find these types of controllers then you can safely get a lower cpu mhz machine like 800 mhz and provide yourself with a nice cost savings.

I don’t believe in dual CPU’s systems as an important need of a host. Again I’m most likely wrong but the added cost for that CPU does not justify the gains that are produced. better to place another server on line and load balence the system.

Thier is a way that I can see the justificate for dual CPU ( or even quad CPU) servers . but the cost for the setup’s and the requirements are huge. and requires that the host have a justifyable income under certain applications before even attempting the idea ( don’t ask me what it is, I’m not interested in talking about it )

also look for a specific poster, I think he’s Cpervira or something like that. The person has more knowledge in his left pinky than most people combined. he drops hints all the time about improving systems in general. fountain of knowledge. and I find that I’m always asking him something or atleast some clarification on certain points.

Mike

Thank you for sharing. Just so you know, I’m not trying to pry any trade secrets out of you or anyone else. I’m just interested in folk’s real world experiences with their rack mount servers.

I frequent a few technical boards and forums where it’s a common practice for folks to share quite detailed specs on the machine’s they are talking about or asking for help with.

Thanks again and take care,

Louis

Joel Strellner

depends on the motherboard, and the operating system, still you would be required to shut the server down unless the montherboard is equiped for a hot swap

Mike

Nothing like that, it’s that there are a lot of vindictive people within forums so I never want to give out ammo. good example of this is a pal of mine in germany. His DNS server’s are some 550 mhz server. he got it used against him for over 3 months on a forum, to the point where he went out and spent an extra 400 for 2 more 550 ( used box also ) and made them redundant dns server with load balancing. Certain people know my config’s right down to the CPU model number LOL.

but to the point, there are many ways to take a weak mhz server(s) and make then hum like F1 race car.

mike

In addition, if you’re running on Windows 2000 Server take note that there there is a large difference between a SQL Server Single CPU license vs. a Dual CPU license.

In addition, when running Dual CPU’s there’s always the additional (slight) risk of overheating assuming you have bad ventilation

your right on some points there. If you run MSSQL and Cold Fusion, you got to run the fastest you can get otherwise say hello to slow slow slow.

but if you have a defined client base and know there usage patterns I really can not see why you need to buy the 1600 - 1800 mhz cpu when you can go out and save 400 and buy a 1.26 pIII

for me atleast it’s easyer to place another server on line and spread the load over a few servers, then try my hardest to have a nice balence of usage, and retune the servers. All my clients never have a problem when I redistribute them over the servers
because they know that they will be getting a nice little speed boost.

side note :
I rate each domain on the server on the basis of I/O load and cpu. When a new server comes on line, I then take a specic total of load and cpu from each server and place it on the new one.

in reference to the dual cpu license ( youch ) I myself rather split it into 2 servers and go out and get a second license to spread the I/O loads.

side note again:

instead of taking 1 x 40 hard drive, use 2 x 20 hard drives, why you have the databases run off 1 drive and the domains run off the other. Why, most controllers out there are good to handle the load split and can run extra hard without the problem.

mike

Thanks. From reading your posts, I infer that you prefer an add on card for SCSI rather than using the onboard SCSI that comes with some high end motherboards. Am I correct? If so, it *might* (wink) be because of the cache on a card over the lack of same with onboard SCSI, right?

Please feel free to PM me if you would care to answer — but not in the public forum. I don’t divulge info. shared in private, FWIW.

Anyway, if it’s OK to ask, do you know if there is much of a difference in performance between using the onboard SCSI that comes with the high end Intel, Supermicro and Tyan dual P3 boards .vs an add on SCSI controller?

I’ve yet to build my first rackmount system — or my first SCSI system for that matter.

Will likely build a 1U rather than a 2U. I know most 1U cases allow you to have a PCI card off a riser; but onboard is nice. Not sure how the extra performance a specific SCSI card might translate into how many extra domains a system can host.

I’m reviewing the motherboards and SCSI options right now. I don’t have money to waste, so I’m wanting to pick the right components, that’s all.

Thanks again & take care!

Louis

Hi louis, yes I like off the motherboard processing, simple reasons is that every cpu cycle you remove from the motherboard you remove heat, and you can take advantage of the 32bit pci bus

1u cases are nice, make sure that you have the right motherboard that will let you get some good amount of ram with it. ( about 1 gigs is what you’ll need if you run MSSQL and Cold Fusion and if you really want to host more then try to find 1 that will let you get to 4 gigs )

there is no exact rule for extra performance, the trick is knowing how to find the bottlenecks and clearing them up. once you got that solved you notice that sites run faster.

Now the last question is the clencher.
what is the value of the bottleneck in relation to hosting income.
if a bottle neckwhen cleared will reduce your overall average cpu load by 10%, that inturn means you should be able to load a few more sites within the server.

example : unix
500 domains, average cpu usage is at 60% ( running hot )
fix bottleneck and the cpu drops to 54 %, you should be able to load atleast another 20 domains on to the server ( 2/3’s of the change).

20 x 6.95 = 139.00 extra revenue per server per month

now I would only be doing this sort of work when you get to 150+ clients, you got to get them first otherwise you risk spending money for no return.

but then again I could be completely wrong
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0…thread&tid=137
mike

Thanks again.

Take care and have a nice weekend!

Louis

But just hit the caffeine and hit it hard………

So, if your having trouble getting to sleep I could probibly float him accross to you, don’t think he would notice if he was somewhere else.

MESSAGE TO EVERYONE - Don’t ever ever give your upstairs rasta ‘mate’ digital looping software!

- James

LOL

LOTS AND LOTS of coffee. Loads of sugar but you got to keep inhaling it. The high only lasts short while

Good luck

PS There are other things you can take but I wouldn’t recomend them

<edit>
heh.. maybe it is running up and down the stairs to get the snacks and water that really does the trick? It’s true, if you get your blood pumping you will be able to stay more awake. You should take some naps in between though.. sleep is necessary.

Penguin Reds
or
Warp Mints

Both give the caffeine spaz you need without the pee factor of pop and coffee.

Hmm, 4 AM? That’s just about when I’m waking up.

Food isn’t good to keep you awake, it just fills your stomach and makes you drowsy. I’d recommend coffee, chocolate, and loud classic rock (the Stones, Cream, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull)

a 12 Pack of Mountain Dew

and some nice techo playing pretty loud

Good luck buddy!

and then throw lots of classic rock at it as suggested above.

BC12

long as its all kept in perspective everythings fine.

Or you could fill a trash can with cold water and ice, then jump in and fully immerse yourself. Repeat every half hour until awake/dead.

- LOL..

I would do that, but it would have to be in something bigger, maybe the tub? RIP

No health problems here *cough* *cough*. Nope, I’m fit as a fiddle *hack* *rrrrrggghhhh*. Oops, gotta go. Need to change the batteries in my pacemaker. As soon as I climb out of my iron lung.

sleep 45 minutes work for 3hr.and 15 minutes.

I did that for about 3 years. overall it improved alot of things, got more work done within my time frame that most, I could without a problem sleep in the subway, it was rather funny at a bar that I would zonk out for a quick nap, then awaken again ( I tipped my bartenders very well, never woke up with anything painted our poured over me). the on friday to sunday morning I had normal sleep.

but the long term side effect that I have yet to shake, I’ve become a night owl, I don’t go to bed unless I get the urge. and don’t wake up untill my body tells me.

Mike

I swear by mints myself, if only because I could eat 6 penguins and be fine, but if I had 2 colas, I’d be peeing like a racehorse..

Warp cinnamon don’t have caffeine (guarana) but imho the taste is superior to Penguins.

Voxtreme are taking orders for virtual hosting plans and reseller plans again.

We have also unveiled our new website to correspond with our "re-opening".

Virtual Hosting plans start from $9.99 per month. Information on these plans can be found here.

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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, or any other member of the Voxtreme team.

Regards
Matt

We have started working on a new design for our webhosting company Sarvi Hosting. So far we have only had time to create the main page and would love to know what you think of the direction we are going with this website.

You can view our new design at: http://www.sarvihosting.com/betadesign/

Please let us know if there is anything you do not like or anything that we can improve. If you feel like it, give it a grade between 1 and 10* (10 being the best).

* = Offer only valid for people that are going to grade this website 8 or higher!

Thank you in advance.

Using too much of one color fixates the brain to that color and not the content.

Try changing the yellow in the white area to a different shade, or an entirely different color (Not garish), just change it.

When you attempt content seperation with a header, and then body but use a specific color signifigantly the content (The message) tends to fade, or get lost.

Its a clean site, but needs more contrast that suits the content.

Thank you for your suggestion, but I think you just reviewed our old design.. The adress to the new design is http://www.sarvihosting.com/betadesign/

Sorry about that.

It looks pretty good…….I love the arrows in the header……

Only thing I would recommend in the header is to avoid the pixelated effect……Would probably look nicer without it…….

There was something in the body putting me off……Initially I thought it was the fonts in the bottom boxes, but I realise that it is the blue color in the body……..I think something other than that blue will work alot better…….

Apart from that, I like it alot…….clean, some nice simple graphics…..well done….

cheers

I need app. 10 pages and one integrated logo. Need to be able to update text etc. by using FP. What kind of money are we talking about?

http://www.lararformedlarna.se/news/menu.asp

Thanks in advance!

Email or PM me if you wanta similar or better one done

Check it out and see what I mean I think it was a tempalte that is included in publisher.

Monte

E-mail me and I will give you a quote.

Regards
Mateo Meier

- Same style as the page above
- Integrated logo
- Contact form
- Someother grapic
- Ability to change text by FP.

He’s not ready to invest a lot for now, but will need furthur development pretty soon.

Budget: $150 - 200 for now.

Pls PM me and let me know what you have to offer for that budget.

I do a locate in shell for the file ikonboard, and it shows all the sites running it. Now what i want is a script that will do this and email me the results, so that it can be set as a cron job.

In other words i get an email every day telling me if ikonboard is installed on any sites on the server, without me having to physically check by doing a locate in shell

Just a quick script so go easy on me

#!/bin/sh
#
# Locate ikonboard
LIK=`locate -i -l 0 "ikonboard.cgi"`
# Tally up total matches
TM=`locate -i -l 0 "ikonboard.cgi" | grep -c "ikonboard.cgi"`
# Time Format
TIME=`date +"%D %H:%M:%S %Z"`
# The users whom will receive email notifications when script is run
# You can put a fully qualifed email address here or the name of a local user
RCPT="root"

mail -s "Automated report from $HOSTNAME" $RCPT <<EOF
This is an automated output report of the following command:
locate -i -l 0 "ikonboard.cgi"

Run on $HOSTNAME @ $TIME and sent to $RCPT
---
Total matches: $TM
List of matches:
$LIK
EOF

Thank you

Thank you

Does anyone else do this? Would it be worth the expense?

Basically, what do you do if your host goes down for a significant amount of time? How do you contact customers and let them know what is going on?

Sem

Create two accounts, one on your server and one on another both under the same domain. When registering the DNS, have ns1 & ns2 point to your server. Have ns3 & ns4 point to the other server. If your server goes down, the other one will come up.

The second account doesn’t need to be very robust. It can be your basic home page without all the fancy stuff. Just so poeple can see it’s your site and send you email.

I also think that the second Hosting Company (Providing the backup server) can simply provide 2 IP address as Name servers (ns3.resellername.com, ns4.resellername.com) to still remain annonymous.

I like the idea.. Any one tried this before ?

Thanks

I am focusing more on the development. Its an ongoing job, and I have been slowly but surely building additional support for new packages and additional modules … .

Its been almost 1.5 years since I started this and its began take shape

Also, we are looking for a control panel for Windows hosting, but it must support a FreeBSD mail server…

Cheers,
Paul

Peter

Plesk is *solid*. I’m hearing good things regarding interface customization for future revisions. I would use Cpanel, but I like being able to sleep at night. Customization is not worth that price. H-Sphere will make my TCO ridiculous, so it’s out of the question for me.

Thanks I’ll keep that in mind.

Whats the going rate for h-sphere on a windoze box?

I doubt they’ll entertain a small time developer

Putting together a generalized Window CP together is tricky. There’s so many packages out there and given the fact most of the Windoze Apps are commercial, and not open source even makes it more difficult to integrate them. Most of the times whatever API available for the package is scarce so to speak.

I’m actually looking forward into converting everthing in ASP.net when the time is right

Maybe thats a viable way around commercial products such as imail?

Paul

Here is the price listing:

$95.00 set up fee per server
$4.50 set up fee per account

Hope that helps.

Jim