February 23, 2009 at 01:59Example (budget) Managed VPS: under-VPS or mega-VPS
Recently, a lot has been written about such a convenient tool as VPS (VDS, ROOTDS and others like them), about the advantages and disadvantages compared to hosting and dedicated servers, but somehow the discussion has left the attempts of different companies to combine the best or at least fix the bugs The three central hosting paradigms are shared, virtual and dedicated. Therefore, I would like to draw the attention of the public to interesting hybrids, usually labeled Managed VPS
The idea itself was born a long time ago - for a regular user, VPS is good at reserving resources and a bad overhead to support the system. Let's take the root from the user, give him a home-made panel and go. In practice, the idea turned out to be so non-innovative, and the implementation was so mediocre that it was difficult for the user to distinguish such an offer from a similar shared hosting, and it’s a pity to pay the multiple price for mythical advantages, it’s worth adding that the VPS themselves did not have today's popularity and were rather a curiosity.
The second attempt to hybridize VPS was the integration of client resources with the resources of the hosting company - remote MySQL / Mail / etc subsystems, one-button software installation, additional boot modes, for example, in graphical mode with VNC and other tricks. For ordinary users, this approach was somewhat successful, but for people who knew what they want from VPS, such options were not suitable either in terms of flexibility or ideology. The approach is exactly the opposite, sharpening VPS for a specific task, has become widespread, but as far as I know I have not found the general love of users
It all boiled down to the fact that the root was taken from the user on Managed VPS, they were given a (un) convenient panel, they set up automatic backup and system monitoring and asked to pay extra. And then, somehow, the era of cloud computing began and unexpectedly vertical scaling became important for everyone, the idea itself was far from new, so struck people's minds that they forgot everything else and the custom part of VPS technology did not develop, although there were more than enough unresolved problems. On the other hand, some interesting observations were made from the craze for clouds for VPS - so they “suddenly” noticed that VPS has a big problem with disk operations and scaling, resources do not want to be reserved, the swap works very strange, especially if it is shared, VPS turned out to be overkill for Users who are not experienced in administration.
I must say that exchanging the root for the installed Apache, muddy socket and backups seemed to me short-sighted then, and always relying on dedicated servers I just turned out to be a DreamHost client, which did not yet offer VPS, but it was very expensive. Without thinking twice and talking with support, I turned out to be the owner of 1Tb of space and 10Tb of traffic for $ 6.95 per month, I think it’s not worth saying that it is almost impossible to use these resources in my native config. Then they just announced VPS for clients and having agreed with administrators, I became one of the first users of this thread.
1. Price
10 MB of memory costs $ 1 and 10MHz processor was previously allocated to them. I took a minimum - 150 Mb RAM for 15 USD. For normal and even managed VPS, this price is too high, but here DH has its advantages, which I wanted to exploit brazenly
2. Features that justify the price or compensate for the lack of root
- The disk subsystem is organized through the SAN, it turns out very quickly and reliably, the "neighboring" VPS are practically Do not affect disk operations. This approach allows you to implement almost unlimited accounts, I personally stored 5 Mio small files with a total size of 200-300 GB without complaints, even active work with discs did not give visible brakes
- Traffic for VPS (not passing through their Apache) is not charged. Administration asksdo not use more than 50mbit / s channel around the clock, I successfully used 40-50mbit / s for a very modest total package cost of about $ 22
- Support is quick and competent, I hung online for a couple of hours with their admins, who gave me 3-4 different reverse proxies until I was satisfied
- Dedicated MySQL server, no need to spend VPS resources on database maintenance
- Ability to increase VPS resources in real time up to 4Gb RAM / 4GHz CPU, tariffication per minute, i.e. during resource-intensive operations or rush hours, you can buy resources. Burst is available for free for an additional 150-450 mb
3. Organization as a whole
All standard operations can be performed from the host’s proprietary panel. The hoster provides all the necessary tools for developers. By default, Apache2 is present on VPS, php supports both mod_php and fcgi, XCache, any number of domains with individual settings. For those in need there is a pearl, python, rubirels, for those who like to pervert CGI and SSI, well, for developers (obviously at the request of workers) CVS and SVN. Soap servers and also DB, DNS are taken out. Debuggers for PHP are enabled through the caliper. I personally stuck nginx and asked the support to arrange for me the 80th port, without root, unfortunately, nothing. For lovers of more complex configurations, you can collect your software by hand and just kick the support to assign priority ports to it
4. Of the useful services, I noticed WebDAV (unfortunately, the implementation does not allow the use of files downloaded in this way from VPS, all through work-rounds), a streaming server, and a Jabber server. Three-month money back period if you are not satisfied with the service
The second interesting hybrid is Mosso, the predecessor of SliceHost. These guys, by the way, also from RackSpace, went the other way - clustering everything that was possible. Until recently, they provided this in the form of shared hosting, but now they promise to release a product based on the VPS model. Here, unfortunately, there is still very little information, but given the common roots with SliceHost, the product will soon be available to the masses, I recall their main product was allocated using SAN, transparent clustering of the web server and databases and was charged according to CPU cycles, for $ 100 per month they were given a call - in cycles corresponding to Xeon 2.8 working a whole month at full speed. Burst in this case is almost endless and stepless, that is, the habra-effect could lead to the use of 10-20 GHz at the peak,
Despite some unbalanced prices in the managed hosting segment, in the end, the tariff turned out to be quite budgetary. With a basic hosting price of $ 7 and a surcharge for VPS of $ 15 plus a surcharge for increasing the resource when you need it for less than $ 30, I got a fairly high-quality product with 1Tb of space and 10Tb of traffic, in which all the revolutionaries wanted so much. By the way, in DreamHost you can give out invites with a discount of $ 97, if you are interested in trying, you can strike out, this discount should cover the setup and 1-2 months of free testing of the
Demo panel and in general you can look at the animal in more detail on the authors website
Update: for those who wanted to try it turned out to create The following invite codes with a discount of about $ 95:
4HABR_YEAR - when subscribing for a year (119 USD), a discount of 97 USD is given, that is, the basic hosting price is removed almost
4HABR_MONTH - monthly payment, a discount of $ 51 pays setup, an additional domain is free, an additional IP is free
If you pay by paper, money back within 97 days
The idea itself was born a long time ago - for a regular user, VPS is good at reserving resources and a bad overhead to support the system. Let's take the root from the user, give him a home-made panel and go. In practice, the idea turned out to be so non-innovative, and the implementation was so mediocre that it was difficult for the user to distinguish such an offer from a similar shared hosting, and it’s a pity to pay the multiple price for mythical advantages, it’s worth adding that the VPS themselves did not have today's popularity and were rather a curiosity.
The second attempt to hybridize VPS was the integration of client resources with the resources of the hosting company - remote MySQL / Mail / etc subsystems, one-button software installation, additional boot modes, for example, in graphical mode with VNC and other tricks. For ordinary users, this approach was somewhat successful, but for people who knew what they want from VPS, such options were not suitable either in terms of flexibility or ideology. The approach is exactly the opposite, sharpening VPS for a specific task, has become widespread, but as far as I know I have not found the general love of users
It all boiled down to the fact that the root was taken from the user on Managed VPS, they were given a (un) convenient panel, they set up automatic backup and system monitoring and asked to pay extra. And then, somehow, the era of cloud computing began and unexpectedly vertical scaling became important for everyone, the idea itself was far from new, so struck people's minds that they forgot everything else and the custom part of VPS technology did not develop, although there were more than enough unresolved problems. On the other hand, some interesting observations were made from the craze for clouds for VPS - so they “suddenly” noticed that VPS has a big problem with disk operations and scaling, resources do not want to be reserved, the swap works very strange, especially if it is shared, VPS turned out to be overkill for Users who are not experienced in administration.
I must say that exchanging the root for the installed Apache, muddy socket and backups seemed to me short-sighted then, and always relying on dedicated servers I just turned out to be a DreamHost client, which did not yet offer VPS, but it was very expensive. Without thinking twice and talking with support, I turned out to be the owner of 1Tb of space and 10Tb of traffic for $ 6.95 per month, I think it’s not worth saying that it is almost impossible to use these resources in my native config. Then they just announced VPS for clients and having agreed with administrators, I became one of the first users of this thread.
1. Price
10 MB of memory costs $ 1 and 10MHz processor was previously allocated to them. I took a minimum - 150 Mb RAM for 15 USD. For normal and even managed VPS, this price is too high, but here DH has its advantages, which I wanted to exploit brazenly
2. Features that justify the price or compensate for the lack of root
- The disk subsystem is organized through the SAN, it turns out very quickly and reliably, the "neighboring" VPS are practically Do not affect disk operations. This approach allows you to implement almost unlimited accounts, I personally stored 5 Mio small files with a total size of 200-300 GB without complaints, even active work with discs did not give visible brakes
- Traffic for VPS (not passing through their Apache) is not charged. Administration asksdo not use more than 50mbit / s channel around the clock, I successfully used 40-50mbit / s for a very modest total package cost of about $ 22
- Support is quick and competent, I hung online for a couple of hours with their admins, who gave me 3-4 different reverse proxies until I was satisfied
- Dedicated MySQL server, no need to spend VPS resources on database maintenance
- Ability to increase VPS resources in real time up to 4Gb RAM / 4GHz CPU, tariffication per minute, i.e. during resource-intensive operations or rush hours, you can buy resources. Burst is available for free for an additional 150-450 mb
3. Organization as a whole
All standard operations can be performed from the host’s proprietary panel. The hoster provides all the necessary tools for developers. By default, Apache2 is present on VPS, php supports both mod_php and fcgi, XCache, any number of domains with individual settings. For those in need there is a pearl, python, rubirels, for those who like to pervert CGI and SSI, well, for developers (obviously at the request of workers) CVS and SVN. Soap servers and also DB, DNS are taken out. Debuggers for PHP are enabled through the caliper. I personally stuck nginx and asked the support to arrange for me the 80th port, without root, unfortunately, nothing. For lovers of more complex configurations, you can collect your software by hand and just kick the support to assign priority ports to it
4. Of the useful services, I noticed WebDAV (unfortunately, the implementation does not allow the use of files downloaded in this way from VPS, all through work-rounds), a streaming server, and a Jabber server. Three-month money back period if you are not satisfied with the service
The second interesting hybrid is Mosso, the predecessor of SliceHost. These guys, by the way, also from RackSpace, went the other way - clustering everything that was possible. Until recently, they provided this in the form of shared hosting, but now they promise to release a product based on the VPS model. Here, unfortunately, there is still very little information, but given the common roots with SliceHost, the product will soon be available to the masses, I recall their main product was allocated using SAN, transparent clustering of the web server and databases and was charged according to CPU cycles, for $ 100 per month they were given a call - in cycles corresponding to Xeon 2.8 working a whole month at full speed. Burst in this case is almost endless and stepless, that is, the habra-effect could lead to the use of 10-20 GHz at the peak,
Despite some unbalanced prices in the managed hosting segment, in the end, the tariff turned out to be quite budgetary. With a basic hosting price of $ 7 and a surcharge for VPS of $ 15 plus a surcharge for increasing the resource when you need it for less than $ 30, I got a fairly high-quality product with 1Tb of space and 10Tb of traffic, in which all the revolutionaries wanted so much. By the way, in DreamHost you can give out invites with a discount of $ 97, if you are interested in trying, you can strike out, this discount should cover the setup and 1-2 months of free testing of the
Demo panel and in general you can look at the animal in more detail on the authors website
Update: for those who wanted to try it turned out to create The following invite codes with a discount of about $ 95:
4HABR_YEAR - when subscribing for a year (119 USD), a discount of 97 USD is given, that is, the basic hosting price is removed almost
4HABR_MONTH - monthly payment, a discount of $ 51 pays setup, an additional domain is free, an additional IP is free
If you pay by paper, money back within 97 days