comments Written By: Scott Jangro
August 24, 2008

Trying out Virtual Private Servers

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August starts an exciting time of year for us at my company. Our biggest website is a Web 2.0-ey Social Costume Shopping Site, CostumZee. It does well all year, but we get some mad traffic come halloween time. October is sort of like our Christmas.

Of course that’s fun that we plan for and look forward to all year. But as the de facto CTO of the company, this is when I lose sleep worrying about server performance. Each season has brought us some new surprises. Two years ago, our site was written up on TechCrunch and LifeHacker. Last year we got a mention in Time Magazine, and even a mention on the Yahoo homepage. I’ll tell you, a mention on Yahoo dwarfs any slash-dot or digg effect. Our very beefy servers practically melted.

While we’ve learned a lot from those things and have put the appropriate server resources in place for this year, I’ve also learned that it’s always going to be difficult to prepare for everything that the Interwebs can throw at you. So in addition to being prepared, it is just as important to be able to adapt.

We’ve been running several dedicated servers for years now, and they do very well. They do, however, get old, and upgrading is a major hassle. Also, it is not very easy to throw additional hardware at a problem without having it provisioned ahead of time, consuming hosting dollars.

And even if you do have the extra hardware around and at the ready, it’s very easy to get complacent and start hosting lightweight applications on them. Then one of these websites gets busy, and it’s too much running on one set of resources, and a disaster in the making.

The other problem is that we’ve been developing more and more custom solutions. Using custom server configurations that the hosting tools like CPanel just aren’t made to handle. While I can get under the covers, it more often feels like I’m fighting against CPanel and it’s automatic configuration.

Long story short, I’m frustrated with aging and tough-to-customize CPanel-laden dedicated servers and I’ve started looking at Virtual Private Servers (VPS). VPS are based on virtualization software that takes a larger machine and slices it up into several fully virtual computers with smaller sets of resources, but act like a dedicated server.

The great thing about this sort of server is that it isn’t a single hardware box that, in order to upgrade, you have to install or move to new hardware. Instead it is very easy to just take the server image and quickly move it to a new bigger slice. A few minutes of automated goodness.

Investigating Virtual Private Servers

Mosso

MOSSO __ The Hosting Cloud - Home.jpg
My first look was at Mosso and their Cloud Computing. They have all the right buzzwords around scalability, virtual servers, etc. But as it turned out, the server was not very configurable. It had a web-only configuration interface with only a menu of options. I couldn’t even connect to the server via SSH. So, while I’m sure it’s a great solution, I dropped it. I need to fully configure my server, rebuild PHP, Apache, and other custom software. I will say that they were very good with their cancellation policy.

mediatemple

(mt) Media Temple.jpg
My second look was at mediatemple and their VPS servers. These are full VPS servers and boast the easy and seamless configuration upgrades as a website scales up. I’ve actually got a site running very happily on one of their (dv) Dedicated Virtual servers. What I don’t love, is the Plesk management interface. More of the same over-managed configuration that’s great for a hosting reseller, or someone who doesn’t have to do a ton of server customization. Like my current dedicated servers, I’m reluctant to over-customize because the Plesk management software is there with its own expectations of how the server will be configured.

SliceHost

Slicehost - VPS Hosting-1.jpg
Enter Slicehost. I noticed these guys a year or two ago when they just got started. They had a huge waiting list for their servers. I recently came around again to check them out. They sell “slices”, which are fully virtual servers upon which you can install one of several flavors of Linux. A slice can be as small as 250MB up to 2GB of RAM. You can have one big slice, or several smaller ones. Recently, they can even be networked together on the private network and intra-networ communications don’t use bandwidth. That’s perfect for a database server and one or more front-end web servers.

I signed up for their smallest slice (250MB) last night to check it out. To my delight, I had my server in literally a few minutes. I chose to install Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS (Hardy Heron). It was just a bare server installation with nothing on it. A blank canvas! Intimidating at first, but I know my way around Linux, so I was soon hardening the server security with iptables and public/private keys. I installed some standard applications, then installed the work-horses Apache and Mysql, all with the options that I need. Ahhh.

I chose not to yet install any of the mail transports and other additional things that servers do. I may just grab another slice to handle all the email for the many domains that we have. More investigation needed there.

Now what to do with it? Of all things, I decided to move this blog, Jangro.com, off of one of those aforementioned dedicated servers that are serving many purposes and migrate it here.

Done and done. I had it moved in just a few hours of work. I started with a test subdomain serving up a copy of my blog. It wasn’t at all difficult for me to bring this small slice to its knees by refreshing my browser several times. Apache is a big application and uses a lot of memory. 256MB was used up very easily, especially with mysql running.

So right then, I went into the Slicehost control panel and upgraded my slice to 512MB. It immediately started on the upgrade process, and when it was done copying the image over, it rebooted my server. The whole process took maybe 5 minutes with a minute or so of downtime.

At this point I was unable to get the server to buckle under my own manual stress test. While I figured that should be enough for this blog to operate well. There were still too many apache2 processes running and they used up all of memory. Instead of lowering the number of processes, which may have been fine, I upgraded to a 1G slice, again, a 5 minute operation. Very easy.

Linode
Linode.com - Virtual Server (VPS) Hosting.jpg

The other VPS hosting solution that caught my eye is Linode. They appear to be a very similar solution to Slicehost using Xen virtualization, and offer a bit more RAM for the same money. I think I may need to give this service a try as well.

Moving Forward

So here we are, on slicehost, performing well on a 1GB slice (thanks to the demands of apache).

Are you using scalable hosting services such as cloud computing and/or VPS technology? Which ones?

Viewing 18 Comments

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    Lately I have been looking at VPS hosting plans. These reviews surely helped in my research.
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    Awesome post, glad to have you with us. Please let us know if you need anything in the future.
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    Thanks Matt. I'm impressed that you guys keep an eye on stuff like this and post a quick reply.

    Is that you on twitter as well? http://twitter.com/slicehost

    I'm glad to see you guys (you and linode both) get that this matters. Well done.
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    I love Joyent's cloud computing services. Their Accelerators allow me to build out my infrastructure on an on-demand basis in small to large increments depending on my app's needs. It is and excellent platform for Ruby, Python, PHP and Java apps. They are also the official host for Ruby on Rails.
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    I had used the Mosson Virtual private server before, and I personally think that it's still lack of some sort of configurations...

    Since there are three more virtual private servers here, I will surely try them all and making a final conclusion to choose what is suitable to me...

    By the way, thanks for the great post, Scott :)
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    I'd like to toss in my two cents on VPS solutions out there. My experience with them ranges from one site on one server to today with 35 sites running on one VPS @ $39.95 per month. That’s right 35 sites! 12 of which are running SQL as well. Where did I find such a healthy scalable host you may ask? After three years of regular migrations due to lack-luster performance bouncing from host to host a good friend recommended I try Hostmysite.com- Not only are they great to talk to on the phone for any issue that comes about but they actually have inexpensive and easily scalable VPS solutions. My next move is to their Pro VPS plan with has 100GBs of disk space and a robust 2GBs of RAM! I have tested all their claims many times and they hold true. You will not find a better host, they even give tours. I wonder if I can get a credit for saying this from them?
    http://Hostmysite.com/vps
    Sales: 1-302-224-3978
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    Hi, we are trying OVH.co.uk, a french hosting company (english support in the UK division) reputed to be run by techies, for a new global boutique we are building. After a month support has been good. The more aesthetically pleasing gandi.net , is just starting to offer slice type hosting.

    As we are anticipating more traffic than before with this new client, I was wondering if you could toss out the traffic load one should be prepared for if in a best case scenario a post on Yahoo home did occur? (congrats!)
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    It's no secret that I'm a huge EC2/S3 fan. I've helped multiple companies w/scaling issues migrate over there (usually in emergency situations) to handle their load.
    With the surge in demand that comes with the Halloween season, it might be worth it to move over to something like that for the month or so of high traffic then back to your normal host for the rest of the year.
    If you're interested in managed hosting for the peak season, please let me know.
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    Thanks AltJ.

    we'll be investigating S3 for image serving soon. That's the first step. Then yeah, as we get to the point where we're running on clean, required-software-only server configurations, we'll be investigating EC2 as well.
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    Hey Scott -

    If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us.
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    Excellent. Thanks tom!
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    I use the Virtuozzo VPS on dedicated and semi-dedicated servers at ServInt.net. Each site I virtually install has its own cPanel (or I could have gone Plesk route) with full configurability. VPS gives me that upgradeability and portability that you've described and removes my hosting worries should a site take off well in seo or voilume from other sources. ServInt's got top notch support and a great forum community and has been earning great reviews for many years, but they do give you open access to so much of your server that it can be daunting for an inexperienced webmaster. Also, I'm crazy about backups, running my biz now more on risk measurements than absolute roi, and while I do all of my own off-site backups and more, ServInt also has solid backups and staff there who know what they're doing in case something does go wrong and I'd rather have them fix it than grabbing my own backup (like when i'm traveling).

    Most Affiliates likely need to look at the VPS route as they grow their quiver of sites, the mechanical advantages aren't the only plus of being on a VPS, hosting many sites for a flat fee can mean you get very powerful hosting for a single fee that's less than your aggregated, traditional per- domain hosting.
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    Looks Good, Pat, thanks for sharing what you use.

    Their specs do look good. I'm really looking forward to being able to get away from a server with CPanel or Plesk. As I mentioned, they are getting more an more in the way. For example, fairly recently CPanel took complete control over the apache configuration file. If you rebuild apache, it overwrites the httpd.conf virtual server settings based on the domains you have configured in Cpanel accounts.

    I like getting in there and adding vhosts and server aliases by hand. After having some of my hand-edits disappear on me, I've been a bit snake-bit.
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    I really like that you were able to bump the memory on slicehost that easily. I wish I could find a Windows VPS provider that would do that. All of the ones I have checked into and the one I currently use (GoDaddy) required me to purchase another VPS with more RAM in order to upgrade memory. That also means new IP's too :( . What kind of crap is that? I might have to give Mosso a shot since they provide a Windows platform.
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    I've been using the almost standard Plesk/Virtuozzo for several years now and they biggest problem with these types of VPS is the contention ratio (meaning how many other VPSs are running on the hardware). I have found that over time they get slower and slower as the hosting company adds more and more VPSs. So in the each I switched to a dedicated server!

    I suppose cloud computing could solve this but as yet it seem very expensive.
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    Expense is definitely a concern with these services. I don't think they're great for the blogger or hobbyist who doesn't have a revenue stream on their website or business.

    But, on the other hand, when you're making money with your website, the last thing you want is for it to go down because of success! That's why I don't get cheap with hosting.

    Good point on the contention. We'll see how they do there.
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    Jangro, great reviews. I was wondering if you could give a brief opinion / synopsis of http://www.gogrid.com/ compared to the ones you've looked at.

    I noticed Pud at AdBrite mentioned he was using them for one of his projects and I'm curious to know if it is similar in services to the ones you've described. (I'm not quite as savvy as you in regards to dedicated server offerings.)

    Thanks.
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    Michael, thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't come across gogrid yet. Here's what I gathered in my 5 minute look.

    Instead of starting from a bare system, gogrid has a set of basic configurations with a few different operating sytems. At first this looked discouraging as I've rarely met an apache/php configuration that I didn't have to rebuild in a CPanel environment. But, they do provide full root access, so it seems that you can customize to your heart's content with the exception of the Kernel (which is fine, even good if they keep up with security patches themselves).

    The server deployment and even built-in and free load balancing look very nice.

    The wild card is the pricing. They price by RAM/hour so it can be difficult to envision what the cost will be. They do have pre-paid plans that are very competitive with the other services that I reviewed, so I'm sure it works out.
 

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