OK, my server hosting is due for renewal and I'm looking at options for an alternative. Currently I'm on a virtual server setup, but this is too limiting for some things I want to do, so does anyone have any recommendations?
Obviously I need a good price and solid support where needed, but beyond that I have some flexibility:
1. Just rack space and bandwidth costs - I can look at building my own box - quite happy to do this.
2. Server with bandwidth costs - and I'll install my own software.
3. Server preinstalled with bandwidth costs.
Obviously these involve way different costs, or can do.
My main stipulation is that it will be running Linux (no ifs no buts, I need flexibility and reliability and Windows just can't provide this - not to mention being cr*p for remote administration).
My other stipulation is that it has to be Debian (I'll discuss this, but this is for business usage which means it has to be easy to administer with security updates and software installs - sorry to other distro users, but Debian is the only choice here - yes, I know Gentoo could possibly be another choice, but I have no experience with that yet. I've tried RPM based distros, but I can't face going back to 'dependency hell' again.)
Sorry to all non-Debian users out there, but after a brief period of bliss when I first started with Linux on an RPM distro, I spent too many hours chasing dependencies to be bothered going back and seeing how things have improved. That said, I don't care what distro anyone else uses, and I'm not going to enforce my views on you - apart from the odd light hearted dig ;-)
OK, my server hosting is due for renewal and I'm looking at options for an alternative. Currently I'm on a virtual server setup, but this is too limiting for some things I want to do, so does anyone have any recommendations?
Obviously I need a good price and solid support where needed, but beyond that I have some flexibility:
- Just rack space and bandwidth costs - I can look at building my own
box - quite happy to do this.
Server with bandwidth costs - and I'll install my own software.
Server preinstalled with bandwidth costs.
Obviously these involve way different costs, or can do.
We have rackspace in London (Radbus) and host our owe servers + some dedicated servers, we also have some in Manchester as well as lots in the US
However our colo costs are located @ http://www.php4hosting.co.uk/ukcolo.htm
We can also help with part numbers from Dab's etc.. to build your own Linux box as a very good rate plus let you know where to buy 1/2u cases from. 2u's are always better in my opinion for cooling + space for spare hardware etc..
I would also recommend using Norton ghost to ensure you have an image handy on cd should the hard disk fail so you can have it backup asap and use something such as rsync to ensure you have an hourly or at worst daily backup of key files. If using mySQL its nice to run mysqldump and scp it to a secure location as often as possible.
We can help with all if this we can even for colo customers build/install servers to their spec. Although as a rule we use slackware. But anything is possible. We have ghost handy and should any customers wish to put their server in our racks we can ghost it before it goes in and keep a copy of the cd at the rack or give it to the customer.
Regards Darren
Darren Casey (Personal) darren@darrencasey.co.uk wrote:
I would also recommend using Norton ghost to ensure you have an image handy on cd should the hard disk fail so you can have it backup asap and use something such as rsync to ensure you have an hourly or at worst daily backup of key files.
Anyone like to comment on that compared to LVM, RAID or other normal backup methods? rsync is going to cost on data transfer if used for much, surely?
Darren Casey (Personal) darren@darrencasey.co.uk wrote:
I would also recommend using Norton ghost to ensure you have an image
handy
on cd should the hard disk fail so you can have it backup asap and use something such as rsync to ensure you have an hourly or at worst daily backup of key files.
Anyone like to comment on that compared to LVM, RAID or other normal backup methods? rsync is going to cost on data transfer if used for much, surely?
We use it for all our servers onto the local network so there is no data transfer costs, the other option is to put 2 Nic's in or the dual Inet Nic's
There are other ways but this one works very well. We currently rsync onto another server, this in turn compress's the data and archives it.
That way there is very little load on the main servers, and with rsync only copying changes there data transfer is very low
Regards Darren
MJ Ray wrote:
Darren Casey (Personal) darren@darrencasey.co.uk wrote:
I would also recommend using Norton ghost to ensure you have an image handy on cd should the hard disk fail so you can have it backup asap and use something such as rsync to ensure you have an hourly or at worst daily backup of key files.
Anyone like to comment on that compared to LVM, RAID or other normal backup methods? rsync is going to cost on data transfer if used for much, surely?
We use a tool called rdiff-backup (over ssh) which is, essentially, a wrapper around rsync which does incremental backups. It's extremely bandwidth-friendly and as far as we can see, works a treat. No problems so far...
See http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/index.html
Cheers, Laurie.
MJ Ray wrote:
Anyone like to comment on that compared to LVM, RAID or other normal backup methods?
Anyone else uncomfortable with the use of the words "LVM, RAID" in a sentence about normal backup methods?
Disk mirroring or striping is NOT backup - it's failover/redundancy.
Andrew.
Andrew Savory lists@andrewsavory.com wrote:
Anyone else uncomfortable with the use of the words "LVM, RAID" in a sentence about normal backup methods?
I think your parser is buggy. The sentence is no more about "normal backup methods" than it is about "Anyone". Indeed, "Anyone" is nearer the top of the phrase structure tree. Maybe "and" would have been better than "or" there but I don't think it was that different here. Please take that level of debate to alt.syntax.tactical
That said, I probably missed some context. Clever tricks with LVM snapshots and RAID mirroring can be used to prepare a device for backup, as has been previously discussed. That was definitely at a Norwich meeting and I think on this list shortly after.
Alone, they're better than rsyncing to another disk on the same machine (avoids the old changing-files-during-copy problem) but a little worse than rsyncing to another machine in the same facility. I agree it's not a proper backup, so you're shouting against an imagined point yet again...
** Andrew Savory lists@andrewsavory.com [2003-07-21 13:36]:
MJ Ray wrote:
Anyone like to comment on that compared to LVM, RAID or other normal backup methods?
Anyone else uncomfortable with the use of the words "LVM, RAID" in a sentence about normal backup methods?
Disk mirroring or striping is NOT backup - it's failover/redundancy.
** end quote [Andrew Savory]
Aboslutely, and never let a Compaq (oh, they don't exist anymore, I wonder if HP are the same) engineer near your server without very close supervision. I had a situation a few years back where a drive had gone on a server and another was on the way out, so as it was still under warranty the Compaq engineer came in to 'fix' it. This should have been very straightforward as it was hot-pluggable hardware RAID. The complication was that the engineer and server were in the US and we were in the UK.
It should have gone:
- Remove duff HD and wait for rebuild of drive - Once rebuild complete we notify the engineer rebuild complete - Remove flaky unit and let that rebuild
It actually went:
- Remove duff HD and wait for rebuild of drive - Lights stopped flashing on the front of the machine so the engineer decided it had finished - Remove flaky unit and let machine die horribly and corrupt all data
Now if he had waited for our confirmation all would have been fine - I mean surely he shouldn't have assumed that if the lights stopped flashing it was complete!
Hence we resorted to backup to rebuild the server - iirc the local support person put NT (spit) back on and we finished the config over the WAN, I don't think we ended up flying anyone out there!
Of course unless you have at least 20 levels of backup things can still go wrong - I've been unlucky enough to have 3 levels of backup fail on me at the same time:
local HD for quick recovery of deleted files - this drive died locally attached HD for backup - this drive also died, but differently tape backup - this was no longer readable as the index was on the dead HD and the new installation (Win2k I'm afraid) was unable to rebuild the contents because it couldn't read the tape (same drive, checked and verified backup, unable to read following rebuild and reinstall of server on new HD - no other hardware changed or in any way reconfigured). Thankfully apart from being significant in volume it wasn't significant in content - just requires a good amount of downloading to recover it when I need access again :-(
This is another company I have come across and looking into coloco with http://www.crosswired.co.uk/products/colocation.php
Prices are very good!
Regards,
Michael
-----Original Message----- From: main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-admin@lists.alug.org.uk]On Behalf Of Paul Tansom Sent: 21 July 2003 14:04 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [Alug]CoLo options
** Andrew Savory lists@andrewsavory.com [2003-07-21 13:36]:
MJ Ray wrote:
Anyone like to comment on that compared to LVM, RAID or other normal backup methods?
Anyone else uncomfortable with the use of the words "LVM, RAID" in a sentence about normal backup methods?
Disk mirroring or striping is NOT backup - it's failover/redundancy.
** end quote [Andrew Savory]
Aboslutely, and never let a Compaq (oh, they don't exist anymore, I wonder if HP are the same) engineer near your server without very close supervision. I had a situation a few years back where a drive had gone on a server and another was on the way out, so as it was still under warranty the Compaq engineer came in to 'fix' it. This should have been very straightforward as it was hot-pluggable hardware RAID. The complication was that the engineer and server were in the US and we were in the UK.
It should have gone:
- Remove duff HD and wait for rebuild of drive - Once rebuild complete we notify the engineer rebuild complete - Remove flaky unit and let that rebuild
It actually went:
- Remove duff HD and wait for rebuild of drive - Lights stopped flashing on the front of the machine so the engineer decided it had finished - Remove flaky unit and let machine die horribly and corrupt all data
Now if he had waited for our confirmation all would have been fine - I mean surely he shouldn't have assumed that if the lights stopped flashing it was complete!
Hence we resorted to backup to rebuild the server - iirc the local support person put NT (spit) back on and we finished the config over the WAN, I don't think we ended up flying anyone out there!
Of course unless you have at least 20 levels of backup things can still go wrong - I've been unlucky enough to have 3 levels of backup fail on me at the same time:
local HD for quick recovery of deleted files - this drive died locally attached HD for backup - this drive also died, but differently tape backup - this was no longer readable as the index was on the dead HD and the new installation (Win2k I'm afraid) was unable to rebuild the contents because it couldn't read the tape (same drive, checked and verified backup, unable to read following rebuild and reinstall of server on new HD - no other hardware changed or in any way reconfigured). Thankfully apart from being significant in volume it wasn't significant in content - just requires a good amount of downloading to recover it when I need access again :-(
-- Paul Tansom: - contact paul@aptanet.com for more information Internet and Intranet Solutions -- http://www.aptanet.com/
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To All,
Just in CASE (get it?) any one is interested I have found a supplier of 1u rackmountcase that takes a standard ATX motherboard for less than £150+VAT ?(includes rails!). http://www.acme-technology.co.uk/acm136.htm
Nice looking too! And if your really lucky as they are only half depth your might be able to get two in your 1 u allowance!!
Once again
Regards,
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Michael Sage lists@theangel.net wrote:
?(includes rails!). http://www.acme-technology.co.uk/acm136.htm
ACME cases are good. I've used them in the past. Happier with the rackmount case than I was with the bent rack it went in ;-)
I'll second that.
Bought 7 2u cases for a Co-Lo project a couple of years ago, had one PSU failure (happened during the initial bench testing prior to instal) and ACME were very quick to send out a replacement.
ACME cases are good. I've used them in the past. Happier with the rackmount case than I was with the bent rack it went in ;-)
On 20-Jul-2003 Paul Tansom wrote:
OK, my server hosting is due for renewal and I'm looking at options for an alternative. Currently I'm on a virtual server setup, but this is too limiting for some things I want to do, so does anyone have any recommendations?
How much bandwidth do you actually need? If it is reasonably low just put an ADSL line into your home or office. Demon, for isntance, offer you static IP and no bandwidth cap.
-
Andrew Savory -
Darren Casey (Personal) -
Laurie Brown -
Michael Sage -
MJ Ray -
Paul Tansom -
raph＠panache.demon.co.uk -
Wayne Stallwood