How classy Webair/Mike, that company never ceases to amaze me.

right... why did I think I would get the anwser on GFY. I will go with "would you hit it?" thread next time.

it got a little side tracked at some point indeed but there is not really a definite answer to your question. It really depends on your needs and usage, without specifics it is kinda hard to suggest the best solution for in your case.

Generally speaking though I don't think you can go wrong with a dedicated server, you know on forehand what you get and you don't have any negative impact from other users on the same system. Especially when you don't need hundreds of terabytes storage or have extremely high concurrent streams you will be just fine :thumbsup

Thanks! I don't need a lot of bandwidth and storage so I guess dedicated will be better for me. Any specific features I should get to enable streaming videos from a small paysite members area (I am considering Wowza) ?

some things that come to mind:

- get a managed dedicated server without any control panel installed

- get a 64-bit OS

- you can do Wowza if you need specific streaming options, otherwise you can do pseudo flash streaming though nginx/lighttpd. Wowza costs $55 a month, depending on the provider you go with you might end up cheaper, nginx/lighttpd is free.

- oh and if it's your members area, get a decent provider and save yourself a headache.

Thanks a lot!

I'd go for the control panel if you dont know how to install your own, and go for a provider that doesnt try and rent you a free one either.

that's why i said, get a managed box.

believe me, a control panel is not something you want on your nats/members area box. It's great if you like things easy, if you don't have a lot of knowledge, if you like to add domains or mailboxes every day for fun, or if you are just used to your routines.

It installs a ton of stuff you don't even need, customization or performance optimization is quite hard if you don't want to break the control panel setup, creates new security risks and is just simply not necessary if you have a managed box.

Ask yourself if you really need 3 different stats software, skins and language packages for your control panel, 3 different webmails, etc etc when you run a members area. Just get plain box, have your host install apache and/or nginx, sql, sftp and everything you need, have them optimize the whole setup and you will have the fastest and most secure setup.

Honestly, how often do you add a mailbox or a domain? We offer our customers with hosted email which will still works if your server goes down (most people still don't realize that they can't email if their mailserver on their own server is down) and we offer hosted dns. Both come with a web-based admin inside our customer portal. Databases can easily be done through phpmyadmin on your server self. So the only thing left are vhosts for which you should then create a ticket.

What you get out of a good cloud server is redundancy. Your data is shared on high end shared storage. If one drive fails you will not lose your data. It is also on virtualization software. So if the physical server you are hosted on fails, your virtual machine can be moved to another physical machine. Your virtual machine is hosted on the shared storage so it doesn't matter where it boots from. Over time it will probably cost more money, and you will most likely want to have a backup server with another cloud provider. Maybe not running, but atleast replicated to it, so if there is an issue with the first provider, you can easily start up another server elsewhere.

With the dedicated server you have multiple single points of failure. Your entire server is a single point of failure. You can have multiple hard drives for raid, or multiple nic's for network. But its still only 1 server. If you go dedicated and want redundancy, I would say to get two servers at 2 locations and replicate from one to the other incase of hardware failure.

This is the a basic technical difference and explains why Cloud is technically a better solutions. It also depends on your budget.

Depends, do you like to share? Also Cloud has more points of failure, but better global access if done right.

Also Cloud for the most part is just a marketing term, in most cases you are just on a scalable shared server or blade at best. We have cloud on every server but don't play into the latest cheesy marketing ploys. Bottom line if we have one of the fastest and most reliable hosting services period.

I would do a dedicated for sure, and make sure they have good DNS and Quality redundant networks.

I keep seeing you recommending FusionIO, what is the difference I would see between FusionIO and a Raid10 using the Vertexz 3 max iops ssd drives with 4+1 spare drive setup?

fusionIO is just a company that makes really really fast storage at a STUPID high premium and its IO bus is a PCI-E vs a sata/sas at 6Gbps.

Vertex 3/Vertex line is a horrible drive, V2's were way better but V3 has gone tits up and fall over all over the place.

A true cloud.. is something like pistoncloud.com where it is completely autonomous and can run itself/heal itselfand has really no single point of failure.

A "cloud" has its uses but needs to be setup correctly the average person running a "cloud" server is going to get worse performance across the board. Now if you have a system in place that can replicate itself, push code to new nodes, self deploy and scale.. i.e load balancer/redundant frontend then yes it can scale and work wonders... its all how its built just like everything else in life.

Please let us know how clous has more points of failure? A goid cloud should only have 1 single point of failure. That is a complete power outage. Are you talking about CDN? There is nothing global about a cloud unless it is built that way, which i doubt most are. If they are, you have to pay double for replication. I know you have responded in other threads about cloud with the same answer and you still dont have much of a clue.

Kolargol,

If you want to try out out our cloud 'risk free' to see if it fits your needs, shoot me an email and i'll make it so.

As for the rest of the drama, I'll take a pass, seems like the same guy replying over and over anyhow with different screenames ;)

Have fun!

Actually the exact opposite is the case - if you go with a company that KNOWS how to properly do VPS ...

All of our VPS servers are running 6-disk RAID10, and are able to handle several times the disk I/O than a dedicated server with software RAID or RAID0/1 ...

VPS technology has vastly improved in the past 3+ years, and we have seen many clients previously on dedicated servers that have switched to VPSes - as a cost-effective way to increase disk I/O and data redundancy - as RAID10 is almost "self healing" ... it senses problems with any one of the disks in the array, and notifies the system administrator so that the faulty disk can be hot-swapped out of the array - without any loss of data or performance - and the system will automatically comb and format the newly replaced disk during system idle time, without any intervention ...

FF,

Agreed!

Let me ask you though, how many IOPs can your VPS handle? What do you cap it at? I'm assuming from your post that's using local storage, NOT a SAN correct? If so then i would have to say there is no more redundancy in that scenario than with a dedicated server with a RAID set. A true 'cloud' server is not going to have any single points of failure. Not a bad thing mind you & probably more redundant than most providers.

However, by using shared storage (most likely SAN) residing in a clustered environment, where any single physical server goes down, there is no loss of service to your cloud instance (as with the Webair cloud). The definition of 'cloud' can be very vague, and many providers capitalize on that to their advantage. We make very clear what our implementation of 'cloud servers' are.

Specifically... A Webair cloud server has 0 single points of failure. SAN storage, cluster of multiple physical nodes setup as N+2, network redundancy, power redundancy, and the ability to scale horizontally quickly and easily. Furthermore, with our FusionCloud, we REALLY do provide a cloud server that can do more than a physical dedicated server.

Ummm ... a 6-disk RAID10 setup is by far more redundant than RAID0/1 or Linux RAID, and is favored by world class datacenters for it's ability to almost be self healing ... if you could program the server to physically eject the bad disk and grab and install another one (maybe a new use for the now retired Canada Arm?!?), then it would truly be self-healing.

I am not in a who's penis is larger contest with you, nor am I in any competition for clients ... so I am not about to go head to head with you and rebut the pros and cons of your setup (which yes is quite impressive BTW ....) and our own setup.

Our philosophy is really quite simple. I believe that there are a lot of hosting clients being taken in by hardware "impressiveness" and overkill. We target the client that wants the best performance their budget can buy, without the bragging rights of the biggest baddest hardware setup.

If you only need a car to grab groceries a couple times a month, there is a good chance you really do not need a HUMVEE, but there are lots of HUMVEE salesmen that will try to sell you on the benefits you would get from a Humvee.

(Likewise ... If you are absolutely set on a Humvee, sure we can provide one for you -- but we'd rather sell you a hatchback, and let you grow into your humvee, if you you decide one day that you really want one ... )

seriously, are you that desperate for a customer of like 100 bucks?

Why are you guys wasting your time with retard Mike is the better question?

I heard mixed reviews on them, from what I hear it's primary issues with them being DOA.

Are they dying when being in production ? We use a raid10 with spare setup now, I picked the OCZ drives due to their speed, I didn't have issues with them in the server environment only had some issues with 1 drive during the installation in a laptop. It worked fine after all drivers / bios etc got updated.

I tried to find comparison between PCI-E SSD vs fusionIO that is also PCI-E based vs Raid10 setup from PCI-E controllers but couldn't really find anything anywhere.

You're a funny guy. You can have one of your admin buddies check IPs. I do not use a proxy and login from my house in NYC. Sorry that I do not have any fake nicks. Are you saying me and Spudstr might be the same person? Because we are both responding here and that is obviously not the case. And it just so happens we both promote hosting. Good way to 'pass' on the drama, but putting in your two cents on the rebound for some more drama. Basically putting down every other host in this thread to try to get a couple hundred bucks a month customer.

Next you will say you weren't talking about me. I can vouch that Spudstr, Rothstein, AdultEUhost and Myself are different people. Any admin on here can tell you that. And we seem to be the people not trying to force our services down the customers throat.

Didn't you tell someone I know that GFY doesn't mean anything to your business that you guys are barely on here?

Keep spamming.

ha! I didn't put anyone down, who's spamming? I don't know what's funnier, your obvious admiration for me, or your complete lack of knowledge of the topics at hand. I am not trying to push anything down anyone's throat, I am simply comparing services that we offer. If you have nothing to add to the conversation stay out of it =) And please stop making up things and putting words in my mouth. You and Ray can go FUCK yourselves :321GFY Move on already...

and yea you are not spamming:

"If you have ANY questions about these 10Mbit UNMETERED SERVER SPECIALS![; ie: Extra RAM, Extra IP's or if you would like to place an order of one of these servers please contact me directly at [email protected]" Troll


FF:

I was not attacking your setup at all, I agreed with you!

In specific: "Actually the exact opposite is the case - if you go with a company that KNOWS how to properly do VPS ..."

Great point!

I just asked for clarification as to the actual setup, and you gave it to me. Don't let these guys spin it into a nasty discussion. They have nothing else to do but create drama.

"a 6-disk RAID10 setup is by far more redundant than RAID0/1 or Linux RAID, and is favored by world class datacenters for it's ability to almost be self healing ... if you could program the server to physically eject the bad disk and grab and install another one (maybe a new use for the now retired Canada Arm?!?), then it would truly be self-healing."

Nice setup! Completely different from what we offer regarding our cloud, but seems legit to me.

You are quite the smug prick now aren't you.

Mike is one of the nicest guys in the industry. I would be smug if the same people were constantly bashing me. Obviously they are envious mike! Just ignore.

Get back in the kitchen whore.

Well there was some good info here about cloud setups as well as wowza from various people including the webair cloud solutions which look very promising. then in typical gfy fashion the wheels came off when bashers start posting shit and ruin the thread. :disgust

FusionIO and SSD are one in the same, both run on NAND technology the only difference is the fusionIO system has its own builtin array for redundancy and controlling. It utilizes the PCI-E bus for the throughput, normal SSD drives are locked into sata/sata3 3/6Gbps throughput where a PCI-E x4 link will push 16Gbps and has a controller that can handle the IO.

So yes in theory a good enough raid card that has 4 drives should be able to out perform a funsionIO setup, say each drive is a 6G/s drive and 4x = 24Gbps given the raid card can control the IOs.. the advantage over this a 3ware/LSI raid card runs on PCI-E x8 which is 32Gbps so the raid card/drive to PCIE bus is no where near saturated at 24Gbps.

So could ssd/sata3 drives outdo a fusionIO setup? sure if you throw enough drives at it, but at what point does the storage vs cost + performance become your break point?

Every tool has its job.. Just keep that in mind.