[NCLUG] [Poll] VPS and web mangement hosting

[Sean Reifschneider]

On 02/20/2012 09:04 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> I have always reasoned that real ram is the biggest cost limiter in
> the VPS ecosystem.  It can't be overbooked, although some do overbook

RAM can be expensive, but it's fairly easy.  Storage is much harder...  We
almost never run out of memory bandwidth, but storage is easy to saturate
unless you go with SSDs, which push the price way up if you're talking TBs
worth...

I'm pretty sure we spend more on storage than RAM in our virtual
environment, even before the disc shortage...

> applications.  It is also possible to sloppily consume ten times more
> memory.

Or more.  We had a client once that, for certain requests, one of their
15MB processes would use up all 4GB of RAM on the system.  That was
wonderful!

> Yes.  Although RAID can be problematic in implementation it has still
> saved me more times than I can remember.  I wouldn't want to be

Agreed.  We don't have any machines we host that don't have RAID...  Unlike
a power supply when it fails, if a disc fails it is not a simple matter to
get back to where the system left off.  Though we are mostly running
redundant power supplies too.

> heavy.  Trying to scrub or fsck or restore a large filesystem is
> extremely painful.

Absolutely.  "What do you mean my system won't be available for 4 hours
because it's running an fsck?"  Then, 3 hours into it fsck decides it needs
to start over from scratch...  ext* is nice and reliable these days, but it
sure is hard to love.  :-)

Sean