VPS Hosting vs. Verio VPS, BIND on VPS & Superb Internet SPS

[alt.therapy]

I'm considering a couple of Virtual Private Server accounts as meeting my needs for our web development/hosting reseller company. As I understand it, Verio has trademarked the term VPS.

1) Obviously, Verio, the 9 million pound gorilla of the hosting world, has significant overhead, advertising and customer acquisition costs. The costs of the ViaVerio VPS accounts doesn't quite equate with what reality should be in my mind, specifically server B/C and Solaris/Pro - and I'm not thrilled that the 800 MB server costs more than double what the 400 MB server does (though I do understand the technical advantages/reasons behind this)

Also obviously, the iServer folks developed a generic product description and handbook for the VPS accounts. This would explain a lot of why the VPSHosting.net website and it's VPS accounts are IDENTICAL, word for word, with ViaVerio's site, (MOD EDIT - Link no longer working)

Now, while I've read the negative posts about ViaVerio's service (which seem to be from around the time they purchased iServer - an understandably difficult time), I also have seen/heard several recent recommendations of superior tech support/service from Verio - comfort and security in knowing that problems will be quickly handled.

The attraction of VPSHosting.net is price - they give a 30% plus discount (slightly more than ViaVerio's silver reseller) on all orders - no minimum required - especially important when ViaVerio changes their reseller program in 10 more days. I haven't been able to find anything negative (or positive for that matter) regarding VPSHosting.net - and their competitiveness with ViaVerio is unreal. VPSHosting.net's "FreeBSD Pro" is a good option, at $100/mo less than ViaVerio's identical product. In trying to find some difference, I see that ViaVerio has developed a ChiliSoft! port for the VPS Solaris, which VPSHosting.net doesn't offer... Also on VPSHosting.net's site, they cryptically say that the Solaris Pro account "is not available"

THE QUESTIONS ARE:
Does anybody have any information on VPSHosting.net?
How about comparisons with ViaVerio?
Experience with support at VPSHosting.net?
Any indicators that would make you steer away from VPSHosting.net?
Is there more to the VPSHosting.net/ViaVerio relationship than I know?
Feeling for long-term viability/product development at VPSHosting.net?

Yes, I know I'm going on here, but trying to keep it clear, too... Two more questions in this thread are:

2) --- BIND ON VPS ---
In order to create a simple, live backup system, I'm planning to do DNS pointing on the VPS itself, NOT on the hosting company's name servers. By creating a tertiary Name Server with my registrar, in the event of extended downtime, another VPS account somewhere physically separate can handle mail/web service. (Yes, I'm aware of caching issues surrounding this, but it's not bad for a simple plan)

While I realize that I can create mail redundancy with multiple MX records in the root tables of the hosting company's name server with a secondary POP at another IP, web server redundancy is more difficult to accomplish.

However, assuming I've got one domain name (mine) mapped to the VPS, THE QUESTION IS: Does anyone have knowledge that some sort of Name Server service (like BIND) can be successfully installed/config'd/run given the resources actually under your control with a VPS account? If so, then I'd have a second VPS account in a physically diverse location and run another name server off it - it would be a tertiary entry with registrar - and in the event of extended primary server downtime, the second VPS account could help.

3) --- SUPERB INTERNET'S VIRTUAL PRIVATE SERVER PRODUCT ---
Given the rather limited resources alloted by the options in #1, (Note that VPS Hosting, unlike Verio, DOES release the physical specs of their VPS machines at (MOD EDIT - Link no longer working) and I'm assuming that Verio is running a very similar configuration -- Also, VPS Hosting reveals how many VPSs they're running on a single machine, about 60-80 see (MOD EDIT - Link no longer working) - again I'm assuming that Verio is doing the same thing) above, for those sites that have larger disk space and throughput requirements (though not necessarily more site visitors), I'm considering another account - a Superb Power Server Standard (2 GB/25GB/RedHat - $149/mo - (MOD EDIT - Link no longer working).

The reviews on this site are positive on Superb - and I haven't found anything negative - seems the industry rather likes them. And, Superb's features for the price seem to more in line with this person's idea of reality...

Any comments on going with them?

Thanks for your patience with these 3 involved questions!

[alt.therapy]

Does anybody have any information on VPS Hosting? Here are two articles on Virtual Private Servers that you might find useful for your research. Let me clarify - I don't mean information on VPS Hosting the concept, I mean "VPS Hosting (vpshosting.net)" THE COMPANY (and thanks for the offer URL - remove the trailing . and it works - get one free month with 6 prepaid, or 2 with 12 - contract length discounts at hosting companies can be questionable though - note that is a tactic widely used by Interland/Hostpro - so they can lock you in to staying with them even though they're a terrible solution for most)

[Tommy]

Whoops :)

and

remove the full stop from the url I posted. As in:

(MOD EDIT - Link no longer working)

My bad :)

[James]

I can speak from personal experience when talking about Superb. Their CEO, Haralds Jass, is a customer service fanatic, so it doesnt suprise me that youve not come across anything negative about them on these or other forums. I visit the Web Hosting Expo in August where Haralds was one of their guest speakers. His topic for the show was on the subject of customer sartisfaction and how to monitor how your web hosting business is delivering a quality service...... like i said he's fanatical about service.

When a companys management are that focused it naturally flows down throughout the rest of their business.

We've worked closely with Superb for over 2 years now, and have an excellent business relationship. I'm confident that if you gave them a call and mentioned Web Host Directory, they'd be able to work on a competive deal for you.

[Mr Chunder]

Originally posted by alt.therapy

2) --- BIND ON VPS ---
In order to create a simple, live backup system, I'm planning to do DNS pointing on the VPS itself, NOT on the hosting company's name servers. By creating a tertiary Name Server with my registrar


Hmm...interesting idea. Certainly not conventional - do you know it will work in practice? I can see it working in theory. You will have to ensure that the TTL is very low to minimise caching difficulties.

A more corporate solution would be to do a dual-redundant high availability config with a single hosting company. However, I respect that you may be working to a tight budget. I am wondering if you are better of with one those free or very low cost DNS aliasing services which will route all your traffic to a selection of IP addresses (each of which could be a separate VPS). I forget the names. Someone else can probably help.

These services could deal with the multiple MX records as well.

Otherwise, I would expect that you could run Bind on a VPS (sorry - is that term copyrighted ? :)) but I've no experience with VPSs yet - only just getting used to the idea.

[alt.therapy]

Certainly not conventional - do you know it will work in practice? Yes, though you're right about TTL. Actually found this out by accident - had a site on a server that had the DNS on the same server. The old version of the site was still showing up as a tertiary DNS lookup. In an extended outage (over 12 hours), where the web/DNS new server was down, the site continued to work (pulling IP from the old server via tertiary DNS entry)

Also right that the budget is a restraint, so dual-redundant load-balanced solutions aren't quite in our league yet.
I am wondering if you are better of with one those free or very low cost DNS aliasing services which will route all your traffic to a selection of IP addresses Problem with this, as I see it is that the IP address immediately appears in the location bar, so bookmarked sites would be a problem. If that IP was down, and they tried to get there - no deal. It would only work if they then hand entered the domain name (doubt that would happen) - so it's not a good solution to our little problem.

Now, here's what I've found out in the interim... Superb says that with their SPS (VPS product), you can run BIND for DNS serving.

ViaVerio when queried the same thing says that the VPS offerings on both FreeBSD and Solaris don't support ENOUGH root access to actually run that type of thing.

I think I'm going with an account each from ViaVerio and from Superb - and will report findings back here!

[Mr Chunder]

Hey alt - howsit going with your plan ?

[alt.therapy]

Plan seems to be going well... Here's an update and my take on all of this:

Since I wrote this letter (3 months ago), it seems that Superb's recommendation now is to run BIND on your SPS (their Red Hat version of VPS). This perfectly addresses my plan.

As long as I keep my Superb SPS based nameservers as a domain's primary and secondary I'm good. If the SPS machine goes down at all, I've already got propogated tertiary and quaternary nameservers... which point to a replicated site on another server. The replicated site isn't a full copy, but does contain a "Having Technical Problems" message, as well as contains all email forwarding configuration - which is usually the biggest problem when a site goes down. In testing twice, this has worked perfectly... and appears to be a redundant solution done on the cheap.

In experience working with ViaVerio and Superb over these past few months, I have to say that ultimately I'm actually happier with ViaVerio from a customer service standpoint.

First, the ViaVerio VPS report:
The ViaVerio documentation is for the most part very clear and easy to understand. Because their servers are FreeBSD and Solaris, machine configurations can be up/downloaded by FTP rather than having to be logged in as root and edit in pico - an enormous convenience for those of us who don't want to be restricted by a web appliance administrator application. ViaVerio responds to both normal email and phone calls in addition to questions submitted through their web based support system. The ViaVerio server is fast and easy to configure. One big advantage that ViaVerio has is savelogs - the ability to archive and compress log files in a cron job - and to parse httpd.conf for log files to archive. Savelogs is a necessity at ViaVerio because disk space is so limited. My biggest problem with ViaVerio is the cost of the space... $95/month for 400 MB is bordering on highway robbery. Server C, which doubles that space is 2.5 times as expensive! Last complaint with ViaVerio is that every domain has to be setup on their DNS servers, and there's a $25 charge per domain to do that - quite expensive for an automated process.
ViaVerio provides a shared SSL certificate, which is essential with these small disk space VPS servers... or you'd spend a fortune in SSL certs.

Now the report on Superb's SPS....
While I couldn't find any online comments negatively about their support, I have to say that my personal experience has not been good. To some extent, that's my unfamiliarity with Red Hat, though I didn't think it would be as big of a problem. I do not like being forced to be root in order to change anything at all, and being forced to do it only through pico. Guess I'm not a good geek at heart, but I've got things to do with my time, and configuring servers shouldn't be a pain in the ass. Superb's pricing is good, and their disk space has doubled in the interim. Unlike ViaVerio, Superb does count all space used by system files for your space allotment... so I got the Superb Power Server (SPS) Standard with 4 GB, only to find that the day I ordered it, over 500 MB were already used! Not that I'm complaining - 3.5 GB for $155/month is a great deal.
Some problems - the support documentation at Superb, while exhaustive, is not always very clear. The documentation references obviously outdated information which doesn't match up with the config info you've been provided by email. Setting up the nameservers on an SPS is a big problem - the directions are completely wrong. I have had to wait 3 weeks for them to get name-based servers working. And, a link from webhostdir.com provided a supposed discount of one free month's hosting with a six month contract. I received the bill and invoice from them, as well as my credit card statement - and have not yet seen any credit for this deal. Additionally, it's taken almost a month to really get this server in any semblance of usable configuration - all of which time I have had to pay for. I definitely feel that I'm getting 5 months of hosting for the price of 6, when I should be getting 7 months of hosting for the price of 5.

Something is definitely wrong with Superb's tech support department.
Superb tech support is not available by email. This is a major drawback. Tech support is available only by logging into their web based support area. When you respond to an existing support issue, only your responses are quoted, not those of the tech support, and there's no ability to quote previous info - very kludgy and poorly implemented. While Superb supposedly offers phone tech support, on 7 different occasions, I've called and only gotten voice mail. I've never had any support person return a message left on voicemail. To further complicate things, many times with tech support responses, I've had three disturbing things happen: 1) The tech support does not answer the question I've asked, even when I say "The Question is this" - they tend to refer to their FAQ/online tech support - which is the problem - it's outdated inaccurate information which caused the problem in the first place; 2) The command of English of the person writing the response is questionable. This does not make me feel like I've got good customer service, when the grammar is so bad as to be unreadable; and/or 3) Typing/misspellings and bad grammar by those who obviously do have a better command of the English language reinforces the feeling. I realized that typing quickly on a keyboard is prone to error, but when you see 10 typos in a 4 sentence message, AND you've got 3 sets of IP addresses in those messages, it makes you wonder if there are typos in the IP addresses.
The configuration of the Apache server at Superb on the SPS system is very overly redundant and convoluted. The web appliance is not written very well - while comprehensive, it creates a mass of unneeded directories and many, many copies of already existing files for every configuration option. Not to mention that the name-based server naming convention is pretty dumb - site1, site2, site3 instead of the individual virtual site user names or primary domain names. Not easy to find stuff when you're in a hurry.
Superb does NOT provide a shared SSL cert, so you need to obtain your own for the server... no biggie.

Most problematic with Superb's SPS are the two following items:
1) Throughput of their servers. This is an open issue at the moment, and unresolved, though it's been two weeks that I've been asking about it without a good response. It _may_ just be my machine, but:
- While I max my ADSL connection uploading (800 Kbits/sec),
- Downloading either by FTP or web server is VERY slow, on the order of 80 Kbits/sec. (That's ~8 KBytes/sec)
This throughput speed is unacceptable, and I may have to get Superb to refund all of my money if this issue is not resolved immediately.
2) There's no backup. Unlike every other shared hosting solution out there, and yes, SPS/VPS is shared - since there are many more people on a machine, the company is making more money per machine than managed or co-lo servers.
Superb does not include any automated backup - either live (RAID drives) or tape or off-site.
Superb does not offer backup possibilities as an option to the SPS configurations, as shown on (MOD EDIT - Link no longer working)
In their defense, Superb's Web Appliance does allow you to administratively initiate an FTP based server backup. This is a less than good customer service solution in my opinion, though. Especially when the 4 GB server has a 40GB bandwidth limit, and your backups count on this... if you backed up every day, you'd be maxed at 10 days. Even if you back up once a week, you use up almost half your throughput just in backup.
I think that Superb really needs to consider offering RAID drives on the SPS system - I'd easily pay another $100/month for that. Additionally, I'd really like to see an on-site tape based weekly backup option.

[alt.therapy]

Very interesting...

Continuing to work with Superb's technical support on the SPS download speed problem, some very interesting bad problems are occuring...

Support sent a brief message to the effect of "Please check the download speed on your server now, we have just made some changes." After checking the "changes," I see that download speed maxes at 157 Kbits/sec (~17 KBytes/sec)

Upload speed (to the server) does not appear to be limited.

It would appear that Superb has some sort of bandwidth limiting in place (I'm sure many servers do), but that it is normally set to a very low throughput speed. They advertise on their site that the servers are connected by minimum 100 BaseT connections (implying possible throughput up to 33 Mbits/sec), but that appears to have no bearing on their performance limiting.

Even, giving Superb the benefit of the doubt, with an SPS standard account, you're given a guaranteed resource availability of 1/15 of a server. Even if you were on a full machine, and every other SPS were running at absolute maximum capacity, you still shouldn't hit any bandwidth problems until 2,000 Kbits/sec (1/15th of 30 Mbits/sec). My performance is less than 8% of THAT.

The download rate above (157 Kbits/sec) isn't even enough to support any standardized medium bandwidth web video or to get respectable FTP download/transfer speeds for a website.

Again, unless this is a fluke on my particular server (tech support has said nothing to that effect), this would be a major negative reason not to consider Superb for any web hosting needs.

(UPDATE 3/26/02...) Since elevating this support issue and after my prior experience with the initial support response person who said that this bandwidth was "pretty fast," Superb has since been working on this. Nothing positive to report regarding resolution, but at least Superb is beginning to communicate more. Note that it took 4 weeks from when my server was setup and over 2 weeks after the bandwidth was questioned before I got to the point of being in good communication with support.

[alt.therapy]

Unfortunatly the registry makes no priority on the name servers, it doesn't matter in what order they are listed:


"The Registry database doesn't maintain any notion of name server primacy. That is, there's no importance attached to the order in which the servers are associated with a domain at the Registry level. Association of "primary" and "secondary" name servers happens at the local DNS server level and does not need to be reflected within the Registry."

Bummer! :cry:

This would be a big flaw in the redundancy plan if you only wanted the tertiary server to come up only when the primary/secondary machine is down.

It still provides the easy/simple redundancy, but a site must be fully mirrored on the tertiary DNS listed location.

[ccurtis]

Greetings to all,

I am the VP of Marketing for Superb and I have been following the dialogue here closely, however I feel that people especially our customers should have the right to express their disappointment in our service should it exist. What I did want to communicate to this forum is that we are exhaustively pursuing solutions to the matter at hand and that we are doing everything possible (within limits of our technology) to put things right.

I am requesting that anyone here having issues with us, please communicate directly to me and I can assure that I will do everything possible to correct the problem. My only request is that in any communiqué that the writer not flame me but instead clearly and concisely state their issues to me.

Thank you,
Curtis
CCurtis@Superb.net

[alt.therapy]

Good News!

Once the throughput issue was sufficiently elevated, response came down that the speed was not normal. Although, other responses also came down from other support people that the issue wasn't how I saw it.

Anyway, a few machine and config moves/changes and 25 days (since the server was ordered) later, the download speed from Superb is now resolved. Today is 18 days since I submitted the problem to support. The problem came as a result of an upgrade to the Ensim control product that Superb uses to control all SPS virtual servers. Throughput is now definitely reasonable... maxing T1 and DSL connections.

SPS BACKUPS
I have it from the rumor mill that Superb is looking at implementing in the near term (less than 60 days?) options for backup of SPS data files - which is great news. That will take care of my two major negatives with Superb.

KILL ENSIM
I've found that I very much dislike the Ensim web based management system for anything other than initial configuration and setup. Also working on some issues with disabling suExec (CGI wrapper that's in place, which is very limiting) and procmail mail handling. I'll be moving to manual configuration asap.

VERIO DISK SPACE
The rumor mill on the other end of things has it that Verio will be implementing in the near term (less than 60 days?) an increase in disk storage space allotments with the VPS products.

And, the squeaky wheel gets the grease! I'm now getting very good support from Superb by phone. The web based application is still questionable, but things are closer to being a finalized, workable solution!

[Phoenix]

Even, giving Superb the benefit of the doubt, with an SPS standard account, you're given a guaranteed resource availability of 1/15 of a server. Even if you were on a full machine, and every other SPS were running at absolute maximum capacity, you still shouldn't hit any bandwidth problems until 2,000 Kbits/sec (1/15th of 30 Mbits/sec). My performance is less than 8% of THAT.

I took a look at Superb's site, and they guarantee 1/15th of server resources That's clearly stated to mean the CPU, RAM and disk space. Bandwidth isn't a server resource, and it's not stated as being guaranteed as part of that 1/15th.


They advertise on their site that the servers are connected by minimum 100 BaseT connections (implying possible throughput up to 33 Mbits/sec), but that appears to have no bearing on their performance limiting.

I looked over their network architecture page, it shows that the servers are each connected to a 100Mbps port on their switches, and beyond that it's all Gigabit ethernet.

This does not imply any possible throughput, or any available bandwidth per server.

[alt.therapy]

Implication is certainly there for both of these things, regardless of your understanding or reading into the specific wording on a website.

In fact, multiple people at Superb insisted that I should be getting something at least in the range of 1/15th the amount of throughput. I didn't say that I needed to get 1/15th, but it is definitely reasonable to expect something better than the 1/210th speed that I was getting.

100 BaseT throughput maxes at practical speeds that I believe top at about 33 Mbits/s - so yes, that is also implied, and Superb also acknowledged that I was correct with this. In fact, some of the tech support thought that 100 Mbps ports really meant that the max should be 100 Mbps (which isn't true)

So, I had confirmation of these things independently and also from Superb in addition to the implications through the wording on their website and in advertising. Furthermore, in speaking with them about these items, Superb agreed with me on all of these points.

As I mentioned in an earlier, post, this was a machine specific misconfiguration and has since been resolved.

[DavidM]

Seems to be a comparison of the VPS Hosting Product Line and the Verio Product Line. Please note, a VPS Hosting Virtual Server is a Verio Virtual Server.

VPS Hosting is a Premeir Reseller for Verio VPS Product line and as such you receive the same server, and a VERY SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED PRICE.

How is the Tech Support? No complaints here. Because Verio is behind them, the support is as good, and the Verio team is still providing the 24/7 server monitoring to ensure the servers are online.

So, Save Money, without sacrificing quality.

(Sorry for posting this 9 months later, but I just signed on as a user)

VPS Hosting Web Site (http://www.vpshosting.net)

[alt.therapy]

Yes, the initial question was about the difference btwn Verio and the Verio Reseller, VPS hosting.

Ultimately, I came down to going with Verio, to have the established, known entity on the other end of the phone for the hosting.

The Verio hosting has been very good, but not without it's significant faults and constantly repeating downtime. 3 of my Verio VPS' have been unreachable due to network problems for 30 to 50 minutes once a day for at least the past 5 weeks straight. I'm told that the servers are up and running, but they repeatedly become unreachable.

Since I needed at least 4 VPS servers, I receive Verio's reseller discount on pricing and the cumulative price isn't bad at all compared to competitors.

If you only needed one or two VPS, then yes, you could go with VPS hosting.

I'm very pleased with the ease of use and accessibility of the FreeBSD VPS product developed by iServer that Verio uses for these servers. They also doubled the disk space allotments this year, making the servers a bit more reasonable when compared with competitors.

Verio tech support has been super-responsive, answering and resolving most email (NOT a ridiculous online support tracking system, thank god!) inquiries within 10 to 15 minutes. The only technical glitch with the VPS which has been a problem for me is the fact that I can't chmod hard links... pretty insignificant when compared with everything else we're doing.

As for Superb, their price/disk space ratio just can't be beat, and they have almost no negative postings anywhere. I've found the support staff to be spread a little thin, and not always aware how to solve problems, causing me to go out on a limb occasionally and just have to close my eyes while trying some new configuration and hope the whole thing won't blow up in my face. Luckily, I've had no serious problems once the original setup issues were ironed out. However, many trickier configurations I've had to just do on my own with no safety net.

Superb now makes you sign a release for the virtual root access, and give them a credit card number in advance for the support requirements of anything that you do as root may cause. I've not run up against that.

Also, Superb doesn't have available backups for it's SPS product, causing a drain on outbound bandwidth and some inconvenience. Verio's backup system just can't be beat... triply redundant RAID mirrored disks for immediate online recovery from major disk problems, and archived daily backups to extract any specific files or directories from.

The Ensim appliance at Superb is pretty infuriating for the more advanced user, and the initial server configuration is more redundant and ridiculous than it should be. Once set up though, it works fine!

Another Verio advantage on the VPS is the auto-configuration of multi-site, separate and pre-configured, automated urchin stats reporting.

The Superb default stats reporting is essentially useless, and the default log rotation is mind numbingly dumb, so you need to setup and configure log rotation and stats for each subsite.

[mdmatney]

the Information initially provided in the post, while informative, are somewhat in-accurate. Specifically, I would like to address the issues:

Incorrect Statement
I see that ViaVerio has developed a ChiliSoft! port for the VPS Solaris, which VPSHosting.net doesn't offer

Correction
The above is incorrect. Anything Verio is offering is also offered by VPS Hosting. All the Solaris Servers support not only ChilisoftASP, but also Coldfusion.

Another important issue when selecting a host provider is network connectivity. Since VPS Hosting is a Reseller of Verio, all the VPS Hosting account plans are provisioned in the Mae-East or Mae-West Data Center which is directly on the NTT/Verio International Internet Backbone. Not 2-3 hops away, and there are multiple redundant OC48 connections to these data centers.

NTT/Verio International Teir I Backbone is the largest on a global scale and this equates to an ensurance of speed no matter where in the world you are located or where in the world your site visitors are located.

Also, VPS Hosting provides a 100% uptime guarantee. How many providers are doing that???

[alt.therapy]

Here we are, much later into this... and yes, it's true, obviously Verio resellers will have the same thing that Verio does. In the years since the post was opened, we've had many good and many bad experiences with all of the providers - as would be expected of course.

To Verio's credit, they doubled the disk space available on the original VPS servers, and have since developed a VPS v2 product which seems to be much better balanced in price and performance. Additionally, Verio's response, uptime and support are very good.

One problem with Verio that we've seen in multiple implementations on many servers is a severe limitation on burstable resources and bandwidth. As an example, we have clients with HTML newsletters. An HTML newsletter with references to images places a strong load request on the server as thousands of people open their mail clients within a short time of one another.

While our Superb servers are able to handle list segments and sending/opening of HTML newsletters with as many as 250,000 simultaneous recipients per mailing, we see that the Verio VPS servers come to a complete standstill for all services (mail, database, ftp, normal website operations/apache) with mailings as small as 5,000 recipients, and each mailing referencing only 2 or 3 images on the Verio VPS. This is basically an unacceptable hosting situation.

Verio's response, which is fair according to their policy, is that you get the resources, threads and child processes that you get and that's all you get. Even if it's a once a month mailing, too darn bad. Realize that though we may send to 5,000 people, the actual max load on the server is probably from at most 500 people within a few minutes opening their mail.

This would also translate to busier websites or busier days of the year... the Verio VPS simply can't handle even a reasonable load.

We have yet to test this on VPS v2, but will post findings here.

[mdmatney]

An what happens to the server when one user abuses all the processes at supburb? I would much rather know that processes are managed then left wide open for anyone and everyone to abuse which then hurts others on the server.

With the VPS, the truth is there are limits of processes, but you are not limited in sending e-mail messages. Let's remember, the VPS is a "server" not an e-mail system as such e-mail has a lower priority on the server than what is considered "interactive" so of course, e-mail is going to queue up and relinquish cpu power to interactive processes. That's just a simple fact of job management you will find on any PC, Midrange system or Mainframe. Without the job management, priority levels, etc. set and process limits, you can bring a machine down, bring it to a halt, hurt other users on the same machine, and a miriad of other problems.

If you are sending 250,000+ e-mails and you want them to go simultaneous, what you actually need is multi-teired dedicated server Network - even Yahoo's network cannot handle that kind of load and I doubt supberb can handle it.

We have an AS/400 (multi-million dollar multi-user machine) that cannot even handle it.

The VPS is a whole server solution, not simply a "e-mail" soltuion, not simply an "ftp" solution, not simply a "http" solution.

[alt.therapy]

The emails themselves are being sent by an independent third party who does the list hosting on dedicated Lyris networks (using sparklist.com and netatlantic.com, BTW).

The only issue with the VPS is that the request for about 1,500 1 to 5 KB .gif images over the span of 15 minutes brings the VPS to a complete halt.

Is that realistic?

What if a client ran a TV or radio ad, or was on a talk show and had some high number of visitors visiting the site? The VPS couldn't handle it.

VPS solutions are for small sites with very few visitors and no expectation that a higher number of visitors can ever be handled - even if only for a few minutes.

The Superb shared server (1/15th of a Celeron machine running Red Hat) can handle at least (we have not yet run into an upper end limit) 300,000 requests for 3 to 10 KB images in those same 15 minutes, and other sites on the same machine still respond with what feels to be normal (millisecond) latency. Other shares of the same server also respond the same way. We do this once a month for these same clients... their sites are on VPS, but the images for their HTML emails have to be on the more robust Superb SPS server.

A VPS solution just chokes on the whole thing and all services come to a crawl for an hour or so.

[mdmatney]

You must be doing something quite weird if you cannot serve 1500 GIF images in a matter of 15 minutes. I have a server that pushes almost a 300 GB of bandwidth every month and it is on a VPS Server B plan. I have another that streams Real Audio Radio Station out of Colorado. I have yet another that serves up 90 different virtual host web sites, using PHP with MySQL running at the same time for about 40 of those sites.

I don't know where your benchmarks came from, but I don't see what you are seeing. I would really be anxious to know the last time you had a VPS server to be communicating this informtion in public forums.

I would also challenge to know what else you had the server doing that may have caused images to serve slowly.

I was going to create a test page with 1500 unique 2kb images, however that is a lot of work to proove a point. I think to put an end to this discussion, anyone interested in a VPS server can always test drive one for free. They can judge the performance of the server without paying a dime. This is not available from Verio (as far as I know) but I know 2K Communications offers it:

https://secure.2kweb.net/2korder/free-trial.asp

I think the real issue is that someone who understands the VPS environment, what you are doing with it's CPU, processes is important to analyze what your problem of serving 1500 images over a 15 minutes time period is.

One aspect that you may not have considered is this:

A Client requests a web page, that client is connected at 28.8 - and that web page is going to "serve slow" not becuase the server is slow, but because the server cannot serve any faster than the client can accept data. So, even though the VPS can server thousands of pages a second, you are still limited by whomever is connecting to the server and what their connection speed is.

[mdmatney]

The following VPS pushes several hundred graphics every minute of the day. It has over 50 domains hosted on it. Serves hundreds of images, and the server is being constantly updated by the NASA Space Science center servers in Alabama every hour.

So, not only is it constantly running, online, not a gliche, but it is serving more than 1500 2kb images in 15 minutes time. You can see the performance for yourself by going to the site:

http://www.spacesciences.com

[alt.therapy]

Nope, nothing weird or special - and we have several clients on different VPSs that all have this problem right now, it is not isolated or dated.

PHP 4, MySQL, FreeBSD, mod_gzip - all the usual stuff. One of these particular VPS Bs, which is still in current operation (we have a number of VPS machines which we still and currently use) serves only one site - no additional virtual hosts.

It's a retail e-commerce site, and when we send out a newsletter to 60,000, we expect to be able to serve the newsletter images from the server as well as handle people coming to the site to make a purchase. We tried even just serving a couple of small images from the VPS and the rest from Superb - but the VPS still can't take it.

We have other VPS Bs, setup at various times for different clients, with similar requests... including one with just 14,000 people on the mailing list - and the VPS still can't handle serving the images without dying from the load. I believe we had a non-fatal-but-still-slower-than-normal test on this list when we served just one image (of the many that comprise an HTML newsletter!) from the VPS.

The VPS just can't handle it, and it's not a relatively large load.

Do NOT get a VPS if you expect to have simultaneous requests, such as from sending an HTML newsletter or from advertising which may cause a lot of people to go to your site in one small time period.

The Superb SPS (VPS type product) can and currently does handle it without any problem or signs of slowing down.

The VPS is a good machine for small websites that are not and will not be successful.

[megri]

I am of the opinion that VPS is for small hosting sites it is not for big traffic. It is good only for small hosting accounts which only want there presence on the internet

You cannot run the big application on it It will die. I think it is only for the clients who need security and have not much big application or data to serve.

[alt.therapy]

megri wrote:

I am of the opinion that VPS is for small hosting sites it is not for big traffic. It is good only for small hosting accounts which only want there presence on the internet

Megri,

I'd absolutely agree with you. Further tests on this issue confirm that the VPS is unsuitable for serving more than a few images at a time.

Additionally, we've tried some basic perl and PHP/MySQL product database / shopping cart systems and the VPS just loses integrity once traffice gets above a very low level.

VPS has proven to be a very stable, reliable and robust platform - but only if you've got a very simple site or very few visitors.

[Imago]

alt.therapy, thank you for your most helpful reviews and overview.

I don't know what is you idea of very small traffic and amount of users, but if we consider 2000 unique users and 15000 pageviews per day as measured by Google AdSense, this IMO is not a small quantity, so a VPS is perfectly fit for such database driven sites. What a VPS is not fit, is multiple reseller accounts filled up with porno sites - if one of the VPS' crashes this will cause some of the servers to fail on all VPS, despite all vows in privacy of the servers. We are not to forget that the said privacy is VIRTUAL not REAL, and should be prepared to expect anything.

[Imago]

OMG, I've just seen the prices
http://www.viaverio.com/products/compare.cfm

for $ 1050 month and $ 695 setup I can purchase 10 REAL servers with REAL support. The definition of VPS is Dedicated server at a fraction of the price, not: Dedicated servers at 10 times the price of it.

[alt.therapy]

For performance limits, see my 10/23/03 posts regarding having any images served from a VPS for an HTML newsletter mailing (which is being mailed by a different list serv), specifically:


the request for about 1,500 1 to 5 KB .gif images over the span of 15 minutes brings the VPS to a complete halt.

This is on a server which handles only one site, and has been replicated on other VPS B servers in other datacenters which also host only one site...

Those sites are normally dealing with about 6,000 visitors and around 10,000 page views per day in addition to the email newsletter image hit.

While a VPS can take steady traffic, it cannot burst for periods of advertising or marketing... as I outlined in my 10/23/03 posts.

[server]

For performance limits, see my 10/23/03 posts regarding having any images served from a VPS for an HTML newsletter mailing (which is being mailed by a different list serv), specifically:


Quote:
the request for about 1,500 1 to 5 KB .gif images over the span of 15 minutes brings the VPS to a complete halt.



This is on a server which handles only one site, and has been replicated on other VPS B servers in other datacenters which also host only one site...

Those sites are normally dealing with about 6,000 visitors and around 10,000 page views per day in addition to the email newsletter image hit.

While a VPS can take steady traffic, it cannot burst for periods of advertising or marketing... as I outlined in my 10/23/03 posts.

one thing for sure, i thirdly agree with the above statement, vps just can handle huge large traffic. I do have one vps with 128mb hosting a busy forum
it just keeps repeating going down. so i decided to put it on a more powerful dedicated server


__________________

Reliable Web Host (http://www.nokiahost.com)- linux server / cpanel

[megri]

I have seen the you cannot run scripts on VPS as it has small resources. It is good for small static sites

[lukewatson789]

Surely not established do you know it will work in practice, I can see it working in theory. You will have to assure that the TTL is very low to minimise caching difficulties.

[ravinblaze]

I am Vice President of Marketing for the wonderful and I am following closely the dialogue here, but I feel that people, especially our customers should have the right to express their disappointment in our service and there should be. What I did want to communicate in this forum is to seek comprehensive solutions to the issue at hand and that we do everything possible within the limits of our technology) to put things right.

I ask that anyone here having problems with us, please contact me directly and I can assure you I will make every possible effort to correct the problem. My only is that any communication that the author is not me but instead of flame that clearly and accurately state the issues for me.