Many shoppers wonder why a host recommends semi or fully dedicated to them, when they request 100+Gb a month of bandwidth. They see a dedicated server, out on the market, with 400Gb of bandwidth for only $99. Then they wonder why they can't get 200Gb of that bandwidth for $50.00. Of course, there are many reasons why. However, this thread is concentrating on the physical parameters of the server as an explanation not software, insurance, or other business related costs.

So, we're curious how many server owners out there could actually get a $99 server (in a decent DC) to handle 400Gb of bandwidth efficiently (CPU Load Average around 1.0), realistically. (added this in an edit) When we mention, realistically, we mean not theoretically.


Also, if you believe a $99 server wouldn't do it. How much will a $99 server do and what would be the minimum server specs that would be able to handle 400Gb, assuming the backbone is never the weak link.

Hope you enjoy the discussion.
Thanks ahead of time :)

400GB a month is not much, it is less than a T1.

If you had a constant 180kb/s output all the time, you would use up more than 400GB a month. And that is real easy.

Really it depends. What is that server going to be doing with that 400 GB/mo. Is it just serving straight up files? is it running a Forum using 400 gig? FTP archive? Really it all depends on what its doing.

A $99 server is capable of of pushing more than 400gb. Now a days, you can get some "high end" Celeron/AMD boxes with 7200 drives. Assuming all the parts are working, and don't die on you, you can probably utilize a full 10/100mbit upstream without any problems. I think you're under estimating the $99 server market.

Maximiliam,

Agreed, but we weren't considering the backbone here, however. We're considering the output capability of the processor, memory, hard drive, etc..

What is your experience with data transfer on a server? What's the most you've ever gotten out of a server, maintaining an efficient cpu load average, and what were the specs on that server.

It's all a matter of curiousity for us.

We run oodles of niftly software on our servers, and surely that comes in as a limitation. However, we average no more than 1.0 CPU Load on 1.3Ghz Celerons, with 512Mb RAM, and IDE Hard Drives, handling 100Gb of transfer a month.

We have other servers we have upgraded to 1Gb of RAM and this bumps up capable output to about 130Gb of bandwidth a month.

We sincerely doubt there is anything we could ever upgrade on these Celeron servers to get them to handle 400Gb of bandwidth, efficiently. :)

Thanks for your input.

Spingen,

Exactly.

So what are your experiences? Have you had the opportunity to test out a maxed out straight-up file server or a dedicated forum box?

Thanks again, for sharing your experiences.

If you had a constant 180kb/s output all the time, you would use up more than 400GB a month.
Just to clarify, that's 180 Kilo-bytes, which is equivalent to 1440 kbps (kilo-bits per second).

- Matt

There's no yes and no answer here. As I had mentioned so many times in various threads, it's so much dependent on usage.

for example, purpose of server, usage patterns, type of scripts (if any) ran, and such.

It's definitely possible to push high bw out of such a box. If the network is good, 30-40mbit/s as a file server is definitely possible.

teck,

We don't want it to seem like we are judging anything. We just started this thread to pull in some more experiences to see exactly what is happening out there. We would love to hear from someone that is getting 400Gb of bandwidth, efficiently, out of their $99 server. Hopefully they could share the specs for that server as well as what type of traffic it maintains :)

sprintserve,

You bet. We didn't mean it to be a yes or no question. We are simply hoping that someone has some actual experiences to share about their web server efficiently using tons of bandwidth each month and what the specs are on that server.

I used to have an AMD Duron box that I had for some high traffic personal sites that pushed about 170 GB a month that stayed well under .20 server load. Downloads, forums, a few CGI scripts etc. It had 512MB of memory. I've since migrated sites off of it, but I consider that to be "The Little White Box That Could". :D The most uptime I had on it was 150+ days and would have been even more if I hadn't royally screwed up when I was patching something and was forced to reboot.

Coach,

What were you running on that box? Any control panels, jsp, or asp support? What was the processing speed, if you remember?

We believe the asp, and jsp support we're running on our boxes is a very limiting factor.

Thanks for your example :)

The servers i'm referring to are the "higher end" celeron/xp/duron processors. Each with their 40/60 7200RPM drives and atleast 512mb of ram. I've seen these servers push about 500gb without any problems. Though i'm not in the server looking at load, they did not appear to have any problems.

teck,

Thanks for that info. What were your servers running for software? Were they straight-up file servers or a mix of different websites?

It is good to know that the hardware is at least capable and that it is more of a matter concerning what type of data is being processed and served.

Curtis,
Are you looking at a RackShack server?

Originally posted by Gigabean
Coach,

What were you running on that box? Any control panels, jsp, or asp support? What was the processing speed, if you remember?

We believe the asp, and jsp support we're running on our boxes is a very limiting factor.

Thanks for your example :)

I wouldn't run ASP on a 'nix box period even if it was a dual xeon because of the performance issues. I tried ChiliSoft on a couple of servers and yanked it soon afterwards. I limit Tomcat as well to higher end sites so that we don't run into issues with that either.

The Duron was running an Ensim CP and the processor was clocked right at 1 Ghz. It was one of the AMD Whiteboxes that people told the horror stories about, but I never had any problem with it what-so-ever, hardware or otherwise that wasn't my own doing.

REALLY, nobody can answer your question, just too many varibles involved. i think the best thing you can do is keep putting sites on your box untill the load average gets to a certin point.

then if you can add more/faster hardware to it, or if you cant stop adding sites to it and get another box.

maxhest,

It is not a matter of considering new servers for purchase, but more a matter of sharing experiences with others and learning from that what we may do with our existing servers to decrease load/increase transfer capability.

Others' experiences will also prove useful for business plan projection, when calculating potential population of a server vs. cost, etc.. (variables that are always evolving)

If you have colo experience running cPanel on a PII 450Mhz 256Mb RAM machine, transferring 200Gb through a T1 connection, with an average load of 1.0, that would be excellent info. How much you are paying is not necessarily all that important for this thread. The $99 400Gb server (probably a server they saw at RS) was just the point made by the shopper that sparked our desire to start this thread.

Had a RS raq 4i with 512 MB ram once with 100 sites on it. Total bandwith usage a month: 400+ GB.
With 375 GB coming from just one site. Straight file downloads. The raq (450 mhz) did not seem to care.

I'm pretty sure that had it been a php/mysql forum the server would have been dead and burried before you could say "bloody he....."

Like the others said.. too many variables.

I've found out long ago that less sites on the server, means less serverload means less technical difficulties and downtime.

Which in the end means more profit per server because of lower tech cost even if you technically make less on a server.

Don't push it to the limit.

I remember having a server set-up like that (the PII) that ran Plesk back in December of 2000. Extremely high traffic gaming network that pushed close to 300 GB of traffic if I remember correctly. Load averages were around 1.7 without major problems. The only issues with it were too many MySQL connections, which I edited the max connections for and fixed.

However, later got a PIII 700 Mhz (if I'm remembering correctly) WinNT machine with less sites and the CPU usage went through the roof and it was using a T1 connection with lower traffic.

I think the issue is more of not your hardware, but what is actually running on that hardware. 'nix is much more efficient in my experience.

modihost,

It is not really a single answer question. We are just hoping that people will share their experiences on when they had to stop populating a box for efficiency reasons (probably load limit) what was the transfer on the box at that point?. Then, what was the box doing mostly, what were the specs on the box, and maybe what software was on the box :)

Originally posted by Gigabean
Maximiliam,

Agreed, but we weren't considering the backbone here, however. We're considering the output capability of the processor, memory, hard drive, etc..

What is your experience with data transfer on a server? What's the most you've ever gotten out of a server, maintaining an efficient cpu load average, and what were the specs on that server.

It's all a matter of curiousity for us.

We run oodles of niftly software on our servers, and surely that comes in as a limitation. However, we average no more than 1.0 CPU Load on 1.3Ghz Celerons, with 512Mb RAM, and IDE Hard Drives, handling 100Gb of transfer a month.

We have other servers we have upgraded to 1Gb of RAM and this bumps up capable output to about 130Gb of bandwidth a month.

We sincerely doubt there is anything we could ever upgrade on these Celeron servers to get them to handle 400Gb of bandwidth, efficiently. :)

Thanks for your input.

Then, why not say: Do not install a cd-rom drive on that computer. It might take too much resources.. The cd-rom drive will be the bottleneck. A 2x cd-rom..

An AMD/Celeron can handle 400GB easely over a month if used as a standard web server, serving files.

We are talking about transfer rate. Not some cpu bogging scripts.

My point was, 400GB no problem. Then there might be a bunch of ifs, and i see that you took care of them :)