Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!news.tal.de!news.wtal.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Tim Watts Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Cloud hosting - good groups or forums? Date: Wed, 20 May 2015 10:26:52 +0100 Lines: 100 Message-ID: References: <4sot2c-p9v.ln1@squidward.dionic.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net fcPCn0940z/rSJiEVxLCmgNb4fBSBSPmSk1n87jvW62TOhzLoF X-Orig-Path: squidward.dionic.net!not-for-mail Cancel-Lock: sha1:6hxJv5DQxWNp+zD5u+2RM+UiuIM= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.6.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:14810 On 20/05/15 09:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > Does it have to be VMware? That's rather old hat these days > Doesn't have to be - but it must be *as good*. Not much IME beats it (except on price[1]). Extremely reliable, hot migration of host (OK everything can do that) and hot migration of VM storage (not so easy). Good performance monitoring. Console access to VMs. Resource limiting - I have had a very busy VM burn 2000+ IOPS (from a budget of about 5000 that the SAN can manage). Legit work - but I could quickly impose an IOPS cap on the VM to prevent it mashing the others. As far as I know, Xen (for example) can't do all of those. > > plus a >> load of IPv4 addresses with the freedom to do what we like within the >> pool. Most of the time our VMs (web servers) are very low consumption, >> but periodically one will need to do some serious work. This works well >> now as it basically can access all the resource it wants that is not >> being used by any other VM. > > What you are describing can in my opinion be satisfied in two ways. > > 1/. Buy your own big tin blade/RAID server and get it hosted somewhere > physically, and then build WTF you like. Last time I looked it was about > £10k a year for a rack in a dark office with fat pipe and some IP > addresses. That is what we are currently doing and I agree - clearly the most flexible solution. The hard part is that the datacentre we are in may not be an option next year and it comes with a 10gig pipe to JANET. It's actually the connection that gets infeasibly expensive very quickly. > > 2/. Rent as many VMS as you like from someone who already has exactly > that. > > >> >> But I have no idea if there's a name for "buy a resource pool". Is that >> a private cloud? Hybrid cloud? Too much marketing bollocks and silly >> jargon obscuring something that is basically actually very simple. >> > > Forget the bollocks, identify your technical needs and approach a SMALL > VM porovider. > > Gridwatch is hosted on Gigatux, and marcs machines have a hundred off > VMS on each, and they fully can grab CPU and bandwidth when needed (up > to 100Mps I think) and each one has a private IP address. > You could probably run vmware on top of that as well, as the basic > hypervisor is Xen I think. But why bother? you can have as many linux > machines as you are prepared to commission, and IIRC he can load windows > server as well. > > http://www.gigatux.com/ With caveats about Xen noted (unless that has improved) - thanks, I will have a look. > > >> I guess I'll have to phone some sales weasels. > > > > Phone Marc. He is technical sales and everything. > > And because of that if you want to cut a deal for 100 machines of mixed > windows/linux flavour, he can probably get out his spreadsheet and give > you a price. > > > My experience is that disk is cheap, CPU is cheap, but RAM is expensive > so bear that in mind. > > What you have described is fully satisfied by one or more virtual > machines hosted somewhere with good connectivity. The only two decisions > are whether you own the physical kit, and what level of support you need. > > > I recommend a smaller player, because my experience is that whilst > prices are not rock bottom, neither is the service you get, and of > increasing importance 'big' hosting enterprises are targeted by > seriously unpleasant DDOS attacks far more frequently than smaller players. Yes - that (DDOS) is a very good point.