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Topic: HA Hosting knowledge (Read 5156 times) previous topic - next topic
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HA Hosting knowledge

Hiya...

I just wondered if I could get some knowledge from the HA admin guys.. HA is a great and responsive site.. I can only assume that you are paying good money for that kind of quality.. My binaural recordings site has recently hit a few hiccups and i am looking at finding some new hosting.. sadly no one seriously offers high bandwidth, or even unlimited bandwidth as crosswinds (my current provider) used to claim... they've now capped it harshly and anyone else overselling is usually asking for trouble..

I am contemplating offering my downloads as .torrent downloads just to try and help ease the bandwidth hits.. I'm guessing this requires a dedicated machine but I'm also wondering how CPU intensive it is to seed.... have you guys fully cracked your torrent setup.. presumably when there is no one else online then you still have to serve the file directly as if it wasnt a torrent almost... its a shame with torrents temporary nature as really it'd be great to offer yourself as a client to help a pool of files without having to think too much about it... for now though torrents seem the only way.. and for my setup where upon updating content i get most of my hits in a concentrated burst they could be ideal at keeping the files online for everyone whilst still keeping bandwidth fairly low..

Anyways any comments on this and general hosting wisdom would be appreciated..

Thanks

Jim

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #1 –
Unlimited bandwidth is possible on some webhost.
I know one, but the drawback is that it is virtual hosting, so you will be limited in space and in the software you can run (you are not admin).

If you just need to host some files and have bandwidth, it might be an answer.
http://online.net/index_us.html

As an example, my bandwidth use the last week has been 7 689MB (not Mb), and since I am hosted there I consumed  812 195.38 MB without any complain.

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #2 –
There prices page is a bit unclear what are these units

100ko 100mo 250mo 500mo 1024mo

k, meg ?

I do need a fair amount of size... truly unlimited bandwidth though is surely impossible but its true that you can offer a lot.. they are paying for it ultimately though..

I'm assuming you require a dedictated server to do stuff like .torrent hosting at the moment..

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #3 –
HA has a very similar internet address to my stuff, so it is on Rackshack.net, which is $99 usd / month for 800Gig xfer per month, dedicated server.

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #4 –
rackshack who are now

http://www.ev1servers.net

I am looking at them.. the irony of it all

Aren't you and some HA people based in europe?! this company is US!? this was what i wondering about.. whether having a server in a different country is a problem.. What is their policy when going over that bandwidth.. is it billed (if so at what? can't find this on their site) or is it capped...

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #5 –
I just spoke to someone in their sales team... they DO charge over the bandwidth limit (which is now 700gig per month) ... they charge $0.75 per gig ... i'm worried about that but for slight use this limit would be VERY VERY difficult to reach... its the fact that their servers are unmanaged that i'm a bit worried...

Servermatrix.com
Nocster.com

seem to be quite good also... and nocster are basic managed..

Could someone from HA definately comment on their provider that they are using... if you would like to anyways  its just any server that can host HA really does speak volumes to me as far as recommendations go..

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #6 –
Quote
Could someone from HA definately comment on their provider that they are using... if you would like to anyways  its just any server that can host HA really does speak volumes to me as far as recommendations go..

Currently ev1servers (former rackshack), but this may change to 1&1 in the future because of lower prices.
Juha Laaksonheimo

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #7 –
Thanks John...

Both those are unmanaged aren't they... how much of a time issue is this for you guys.. being unmanaged compared to semi managed or full management... they seem to be pretty neat and fairly affordable.. I'll check out 1&1 now.. have spent a lot of time over the last couple of days at

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

worth a look to get a low down on any and all hosts...

Cheers

Jim

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #8 –
1&1 would be managed..
Juha Laaksonheimo

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #9 –
Quote
HA has a very similar internet address to my stuff, so it is on Rackshack.net, which is $99 usd / month for 800Gig xfer per month, dedicated server.

We are using rackshack (with 700GB limit as was pointed out), but we are not using the Celeron package.

At the moment, the server is unmanaged.  Part of the reason I'm starting to look at other options is because I have so much less free time these days that server management is becoming an issue.

For a server not hosting as many sites or serving as many functions as HA does, having a managed service may not be a big deal, especially if you know a decent bit about server management and have the time to do the work.  Really depends...

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #10 –
Quote
At the moment, the server is unmanaged.  Part of the reason I'm starting to look at other options is because I have so much less free time these days that server management is becoming an issue.

It is almost a full time job just keeping a server from being hacked (was hacked last year 4 days after a buffer overflow exploit was announced, both servers - couple that with hardware problems, each server went down and required a fresh install 3 times), not to mention many of the patches when they are released can arse up a server (Ensim control panels are awful, Plesk seem better). I would hate to think how often a Windows server goes down in comparison to Linux (lots more exploits, seems every joe bloggs computer is pinging every other windows computer with exploits - just got a new portable, was a virgin XP install, so went online to install Zone Alarm and in that 40 seconds whilst downloading it contracted a virus!!).

A managed server might not initially spot and stop a DOS attack (once had an Indian Guy who from behind his companies fast T1 line single handily ran his own DOS, just had a script that would constantly download the biggest file on my server - he was pushing 400 Gig on his own, his company took a bad view of it also and fired him  ), the first thing you might notice is a big bill for bandwidth usage, but if the company is any good they should atleast keep it patched.

My ideal server would be a redhat install with a control panel that does not sulk when something like up2date is run, run that once a week and should be ok to hacking. But most of the control panels install special packages, which will break with an up2date.

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #11 –
Quote
There prices page is a bit unclear what are these units

100ko 100mo 250mo 500mo 1024mo


A ko is a kb and a mo is a MB (in french bit=bit and byte=octet)
Online.net offers are related to the webspace, not to the bandwidth. So you have a big bandwidth with unlimited traffic, but a restricted space.

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #12 –
No such thing as unlimited bandwidth, I can't beleive that there's peoples who still recommend such host
Let me know where I can buy hardrives with unlimited ammount of space, the same applies to bandwidth, it's limited at the line speed
If a host claims to have unlimited bandwidth, they must have a small print in thier TOS, something in the lines of: "We reserve the rights to delete your account if your site use "too much ressource"" wtf is too much ressource? I prefer having preset limit than unknown ones

Yeah some may say that they used over xxgb and that ther're still with xx, but that's just a matter of time before they get kicked out
When you play at overselling too much bandwidth, you'll have to cut somewhere at some time

We we're hosted at phpwebhosting.com (well known webhost who offer "unmetered bandwidth")
The "normal" usage for them was/is 5Gb, so they simply desabled our HTTP/FTP account without even a word because we used like 1xxGb (NOT HOSTING ANY DOWNLOAD!)
Hopefully they we're kind enough to give us SSH access so we can backup our db...
1 month after, the same happened to our rival website...

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #13 –
Quote
Yeah some may say that they used over xxgb and that ther're still with xx, but that's just a matter of time before they get kicked out
When you play at overselling too much bandwidth, you'll have to cut somewhere at some time


Well, it depends on what you want to do. If you just want to host files that are not so big  (space is limited to 1GB), then there are some cheap solutions where bandwidth is not actively limited. Of course bandwidth is still limited to bandwidth available for the webhost, then can not offer more than what they have.

I am personnaly using 256Gb per month, which is not that big. After all it is just 2 minutes of full bandwidth use for my webhost.

And yes, they have to save money somewhere. In my case it is mainly in administration as they have no Windows systems.

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #14 –
jrbamford:

I'll help you host the files, I can give you an FTP, php, mySQL - hosted with site5 - definately the most reliable host I've used!

How much space / bandwidth do you need? I can probably help!

Send me a PM, or if you're on any IM networks please add me!

Cheers,

Ruairi
rc55.com - nothing going on

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #15 –
Quote
I am contemplating offering my downloads as .torrent downloads just to try and help ease the bandwidth hits... presumably when there is no one else online then you still have to serve the file directly as if it wasnt a torrent almost...

Going back to the original question, for my own needs I'd love to be able to set up a "self-seeding" torrent, where the server would act as a permanent seed such that if no other BT clients are online the server seeds the download directly, and in times of peak demand the serving is shared among the BT users. I have not figured out how to do that (use my server as a seed, so that my home computer doesn't have to sit there waiting to seed, which I can't do) - has anyone achieved this, and how?

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #16 –
Quote
Quote
I am contemplating offering my downloads as .torrent downloads just to try and help ease the bandwidth hits... presumably when there is no one else online then you still have to serve the file directly as if it wasnt a torrent almost...

Going back to the original question, for my own needs I'd love to be able to set up a "self-seeding" torrent, where the server would act as a permanent seed such that if no other BT clients are online the server seeds the download directly, and in times of peak demand the serving is shared among the BT users. I have not figured out how to do that (use my server as a seed, so that my home computer doesn't have to sit there waiting to seed, which I can't do) - has anyone achieved this, and how?

This is what I was initially doing with the foobar2000 BitTorrent tracker.

Here are the current problems:

- There is no good, daemonized tracker, which you treat as any other typical service (smtp, http, dns, etc.).  Almost all of them have poor management interfaces and are not customizeable very easily without a lot of manual hacking.

- Most of the existing trackers have rather poor interfaces for adding .torrents, especially if you want to do special things like seed with the server itself (requiring in some cases some copying certain files to certain directories or performing other unusual operations).

- There is no good, daemonized seeder.  Especially not one which lets you conditionally seed like you can in most good clients.  Azureus for example, lets you seed until a given share ratio is reached; or until there are x seeds per y peers; or if you are not seeding, and the given seed count falls below a certain level, begin seeding.  If you just setup the server as a seeder without this sort of thing, the fast server will more often than not end up being the primary seeder, and you won't actually spread the bandwidth load as much as you'd like.

Unfortunately, most of this points to the fact that if you want a really robust solution, you have to code it yourself.  This simply isn't practical for most people unfortunately.

You can still do this stuff at a non-daemon level, but then you always have to worry about processes dying or things like that.  You can write some scripts to help manage some of this, but it's really nothing more than a hack..

FWIW, there may be a better solution out there that I simply don't know about, but after spendinga decent amount of time looking, I kind of doubt it.
 

HA Hosting knowledge

Reply #17 –
Quote
This is what I was initially doing with the foobar2000 BitTorrent tracker.
You can still do this stuff at a non-daemon level, but then you always have to worry about processes dying or things like that.  You can write some scripts to help manage some of this, but it's really nothing more than a hack..

Good/robust/elegant aside, I'm looking for a solution that can be made to work at all (for non-critical stuff). I have a PHP-based tracker (seemingly) working, but I haven't found a way to get my server to seed. I don't really care if the server does most of the seeding, as long as it can be made to work. Can you point me to a solution that you tried that at least "kind of" works, please?