Thread: VPS Software

Pros and Cons of each solution are relative to their use within your business. We are heavily reliant on Virtuozzo, running it on about 95% of our linux servers primarily for web hosting. If we were a non-profit wanting to host a few sites we'd probably use OpenVZ or Xen. If I wanted something to install on my PC to run linux, unix and windows on the same system to play about with a bit I'd probably use Parallels or VMware.

If you elaborate a bit more on your requirements we should be able to help more.

Which host OS and guest OS/OS's and how well do you know the host OS?
Why do you need VPS's?
What's your budget?
Do you need commercial support?

Originally Posted by LeaUK2

Without wishing to hijack.... I'm also looking at VPS software (maybe the wrong solution) to provide some type of fail-over technique.

Here's the situation. I would like to collocate a small dual proc machine to allow hosting of upto say 50 family/friends web sites, but the worry is when things go wrong! ie if I should loose remote contact I will either need to travel into London or suffer the expense of service personnel at £30/0.5 hour.

I will have remote APC power provided by the collocator but, say the software firewall erroneously begins to block all incoming (or I've blocked myself somehow) - I'm scuppered!

So, maybe I can use a VMWare Server or similar to help. I was thinking along the lines of if power is cycled then either:

restore the OS automatically to previous known working OS config (maybe using something like Acronis)

or to automatically reboot into some Virtual OS that I know doesn't have firewalls etc and therefore I could be confident of an RDC connection and be able to repair the second 'hosting' OS.

or can collocators provide some type of full keyboard/mouse emulation?

Or maybe this isn't the way forward at all. I would really appreciate your advice as this possible lack of remote control is currently stopping me from going for collocation.

What do you 'big guns' do?


Cheers
Lea

It's not available yet but Virtuozzo 4.0 will have automated failover with DRBD and heartbeat so you can have 2 servers working together and the 2nd automatically taking over if the primary server dies.

There's many other types of solutions to redundancy available without the use of virtualisation software though.

Many providers offer KVMoIP which gives you a virtual keyboard/mouse as you mentioned but if your hardware fails this is going to be pretty useless at restoring service for you.

What sort of budget do you have? Does this need to be 100% uptime (no budget) or near-100% (cheaper and less complex)?

Originally Posted by fov

Im not planning on actualy creating the VPS's im meaning from the perspective of a small company (mainly non web related) just merged with a web design company looking to move from reseller hosting to a VPS. Guest os will be Cent, host wont really be my problem so long as it works.

From what i have found out Xen gives absolute amounts of ram so 512 mb no more no less and shares of cpu where vurtozzo or openVZ give minimum amounts and burstable amounts or ram and CPU time. One concern is whether the absolute vaules are good or if the lower amount and burstable amount is acceptable.
Its going to be running Plesk with around 50 domains (eventually - 30 odd right away) current transfer is around 200gb out (in is not recorded at present).
Spec i was thinking was something along the lines of 256 mb ram or possibly 512 in Xen but im not confident im my knowledge of how the virtualisation works to commit.

We've been using Virtuozzo with Plesk for around two years now and as long as it's correctly configured it works great. You can't really compare virtualisation technologies based on "is xen with 512MB guaranteed memory the same as virtuozzo 256MB guarantee plus burstable" as it depends entirely on the configuration of the server, the amount of VPS's on the server, how overloaded it is, what other VPS's on the server are doing and similar.

Plesk does work very well under Virtuozzo and I suspect it always will do - as it's the same software vendor, but that's not to say some Xen providers will be offering a poor service compared to Virtuozzo providers - it depends entirely on the provider. Personally I'd always go for Virtuozzo+Plesk, but I'm sure there's some good Xen+Plesk providers out there and lots of bad Virtuozzo+Plesk.

Your best bet would be to ask around to see the opinions customers have of providers offering Plesk VPS's, or to ask a provider for a free trial or pay for a 1 month trial and cancel it after if service is poor.

50 domains doesn't really mean anything - you can run thousands of domains doing very little traffic in a 256MB VPS where 1 busy domain couldn't possibly live. I would recommend starting at 256MB memory minimum for Plesk with 30 domains, then you can upgrade from there if needed. Check with the provider that upgrades are as simple as they should be before signing up.

You may be better leasing a server, or taking a service contract with your colo provider so that if a hardware problem occurs they fix it for you. Alternatively, you could look at a more local datacentre (although this may increase the costs making a trip to London more justifiable).

If you're running Virtuozzo, Plesk is significantly cheaper, but I suspect if this is for a family project you'll be better off with something like OpenVZ or Xen. There are many free CP's out there but I personally feel Plesk is the best for our shared hosting and VPS services and if you can justify the cost then probably for you too.

Another benefit of leasing a server (or indeed a VPS) would be that you can lease Plesk from your provider, assuming they offer it, at a much lower rate than leasing/buying your own single license. If you take a VPS/DDS from a provider you have low ongoing costs, and Plesk is very cheap (and many providers include it free).

But if you already have the colo server perhaps leasing isn't any use.

If you have a look at the datacentre list that one chap off here compiled (http://www.datacentres.org.uk) you might find a datacentre more locally to you (as mentioned above), which would obviously cut some travel cost.. If you're starting out with friends/family webhosting, then being based in London probably isn't your main concern, unless of course you live in London

Once you've found a local datacentre, perhaps post in the requests forum for co-location near you?

Multihoming obvioulsy increases your redundancy "your end", but the costs, planning, and knowledge of setting such a platform up isn't suited to just allowing one server to stay up.. If you choose a host wisely, and don't go for the cheapest option then you'll most likely be in good hands, and based on a reliable network.

Get information on the SLA (Serivce Level Agreement) - such as some providers may offer 100% or 99% uptimes (network wise), and power SLA's etc.. Information on what is offered when the SLA levels aren't met can be found within their SLA/ToS sections on the respecitive websites.

The "Discuss a Host" section on here could help there, post questions about your chosen companies, as many clients who use the forums probably are hosted on the majority of the hosts here.

At the end of the day, in this industry you really do get what you pay for... The majority of the hosts here will be able to run your sites reliably, as at the end of the day they have to keep their kit up as well!

Reading through this i really think you might be over complicating the solution for you first time of colocation.

Your server hardware needs some redundancy ie. dual power supplies & RAID 1

Your Host should supply Remote reboot ports and you need to make sure the machine is set to power back on when the power is cycled.

You need some Out Of Band access. This depends on your server with dell you can use DRAC, Supermicro have IPMI or your host could be able to supply you with KVM over IP