I've been in talks for the past couple days with them. They respond to emails pretty fast, seem friendly and their website seems to go fast. I have also read a couple positive reviews on sites that were positive, none negitive. Tho these reviews were all brownnoseing and did state 1 fault ( not so great control panel ) so it doesnt sound like a company member wrote these reviews ( NOTE : I was told that they are upgrading the control panel this week, and was directed to a sample panel on their site, so not worried there )

What I really want to know, is there anyone out there who has had very-unpleasant experiences with this company? I'd like to know, as this is where I think I will be parking my website.

Thank You

The guy that owns it frequents this board alot, bye the name of jaguar. He seems like a pretty friendly guy, and he seems to care about the quality of service he provides his customers. I thought he was going with Alabanza servers, so im confused on why the control panel wouldnt be up to par, maybe he didnt.

Any how, Im not promoting his company, as Ive never used it ,(since im a competitor of his) just stating my impression of him which is good.

Jaguar posts a lot on this board! His has servers with Dialtone, I think. He seems like a friendly guy. Give them a shot, I would if I dint already have a account somewhere else ;)

I believe that he also stated that he is going with VDI as well. Don't know what he uses at DI, probably a RaQ and speaking from personal experience, the control panel at VDI is much better than the RaQ interface.

As far as the company, don't know anything about them, Jaguar has been in the forums for, it seems, the past 3 weeks or so. He seems pretty helpful here.

Ah, I do not have any RAQ's and you should not assume such things. I have also been on these boards for a lot longer than 3 weeks, in fact since around June but didnt register until the end of July if that matters. I agree a RAQ interface doesnt even come close to VDI's interface.

Something someone once told me : never post a post inside a thread about how good you company :).

Technics!!!!!! :eek: To many "posts" and anonymous creatures in there!! ;)

Jaguar, if you don't use raqs, you should remove that picture from your web site showing tons of Raqs

http://jaguarpc.com/noc.php

Only raqs are blue with that little status indicator in front... sooo if it is not from your NOC... why is it there? (??)

Anyway, I agree with you, Raqs are good to start a company but they stands no chance against a nice dual 750 mhz with 1gb ram :)

Becuase we sell them as dedicated servers, we dont use them though. We did start with RAQ's two years ago but found them too limiting for what we needed. Easy to use though.

Many have already opined that RAQs were very limited two years ago... but what I would like to know in your professional opinion ... since you are selling them as dedicated servers...

For what particular type of hosting needs is the newer RAQ3i *the ideal machine* for?

I know the RAQ is a cheaper alternative, but I am wondering this...

If i need a dedicated server to...

1. host about 500 very small websites containing primarily simple HTML with a little client side scripting each sold in a 10 MB space package;

2. all these websites have absolutely no server side applications running;

3. and each of these sites consumes not more than 200 MB on an average each month...

Would it be okay to host these large number of sites on a single RAQ rather than a higher-end server?

And how much would this approximately cost me per month (+ setup, if applicable)?

I also am hearing from some people that it would be impossible to host more than 500 accounts on a RAQ because its control panel doesn't allow it? Is that true?

Learner

[Edited by Learner on 09-15-2000 at 04:41 PM]

Well 500sites @ 200mb a mo. is 100gig a month.
If you want to allow those sites even the slightest
room for growth I would not go with an inferior RAQ3
for 500 sites. The RAQ4i should pull it off fine,
you don't ever want to "get by" with what you
need as the minimum when it comes to hosting.
Its just not good business, if a problem came up
on that server and all your 500 clients ar there, you
wouldn't want to risk them all leaving you.
I would go with a comfortable soultion, you never
go wrong with a big bad power house linux box,
but if its the admin of the RAQ you need I would
recommend the RAQ4 if you have to have cobalt.
If your still interested please emial me, I dont
want to plaster hosting plans all over this board. :)

I think there is an actual limit on the RAQ3 regarding the number of sites that you host... something like 256.

lets say you host 250 on each, it is already a pretty good number... I personally wouldnt go higher than 150-200, because I've had too many problems with RAQs before :)

I have never heard from anyone using raq4, so I can't help there.

Basically, if you host web page that does not require too much cpu, you need something like:
350 mhz+
256 ram, should be 512 for optimal performances
some HD.

The CPU us used mainly by cgis... and apache, when ran a lot use a lot of RAM.

If you need specific details... just ask :)

Thanks Jaguar and Felix for your replies.

Oh... this is all a bit confusing :( Guess I will have to know a little more about servers in general.

Your post that not more than 256 accounts could be hosted on a RAQ makes me ask this:

What are the maximum number of 10 mb accounts I could host on a big bad power house linux box? I have learnt that many hosting companies offer 10 mb accounts... but since most people use just a fraction of this space, it makes it possible to even host a bigger number of accounts on the same server.

Let my explain my doubts on this with a proper analogy below so that you may be able to poke holes in it:

Suppose a server has a 9 GB disk. Assuming that 2 GB is used for the OS and other software, there remains 7 GB to host accounts.

If each account is 10 mb, that means one could theoretically host (7 GB X 1024 mb) / 10 mb = 716 accounts.

But since each account will just use a fraction of the space alloted to it, and suppose this were 2 mb... then the same equation would give another answer ie. (7 GB X 1024 mb) / 2 mb = 3584 accounts.

MY QUESTION IS: if I had a linux or windows NT box, could I host up to 3000 accounts on the same server if I was using the dynamic (name based/shared) I.P. system? (I am aware that one cannot fill up a harddisk entirely, so let us round the above figure to 3000 accounts (which leaves at least 1 GB harddisk space free).

I am also aware that such a proposition would eat up a whopping 585 GB bandwidth... YIKES!... if each account were to consume about 200 mb monthly.

I would like to point out again that none of these accounts would need server side scripts at all. For those that do, my intention is to locate them on a different server.

So, to sum up, is this technically possible: If I had a linux or windows NT box, could I host up to 3000 accounts on the same server if I was using the dynamic (name based/shared) I.P. system with such huuuuuuge bandwidth consumption?

I know this question may sound silly to some... this is blamed on my current ignorance on such technical matters! But then, a fool who knows that he is a fool isn't such a big fool after all, is he??!!!!!!

Learner

585 gig, yes it can handle it. I have a server that used according to DI used more than that. If some of you have read the big bandwidth thread i started about a month back you will see whta im talking about. If the transfer rate that gave me that 650+ gig a month chart was sustained I do not think the server would have held out very long. I would say if you want to be safe and not crash your machine every minute, you could put as sites up to about 300 to 350 gig a month worth on one server. Because on top of your 350 gig on that server your going to have 1500+ targets which is harder on a server than one pushing 350 gig and 150 targets. This will happen because you have 150 sites with a few extra ftp and POP acounts per site for 150 sites compared to the same thing for 1500 sites. Thats a much larger ratio of users checking mail, uploading sites, and just using the server at the same time. You will definitely have to moitor the cpu usage to keep a tight handle on things, I would also go with something like a P3 800 with lots of ram to hold you off. I would not base a server like you did above using the 9gig drive, a drive can be added and cost very little. You caould have three 18gig scsi on one server and that would definitely host your 5000 sites as far as space goes, but one cpu pushing 500 targets plus sub-users is not healthy at all.

The theoritcal max transfer per server (100% use 24/7) 328320 gigs per month (average month 30.4 days). This is assuming Gigabit ethernet cards, Gigabit switches and connected to fast Cisco routers with and at minium two OC-12 net connnetion to low latency, uncongested tier 1 backbones.

The server would probably have to have static content only, large cache and memory (so all of it is constantly in memory) and extremely fast bus between cpu/memory to pci network card. Logging would probably have to be turned off, and you'll probably have to compile Linux and Apache to get the best possible performance.

Can anyone do that?

I can :)
I would not recommend it though... To get such high performances, the best deal is always to create a server farm and balance the load between them.

I agree, on the machine im talkign about , 150 sites , 120gig actuall use and 330gig according to 95% . meaning i have spikes that if sustained would make me move 330 gig on that server. And it works fine but its a memory powerhouse, i like overkill . I would not set a number , say 500 , to the amount of sites you want per server. instead just monitor for system load, set yourself an acceptabel load amount, and when half that load you preset is reached move on to the next server. You want to allow room for the current sites to grow and use up your predetermined cpu load.

Jaguar, that's right. It's never a good idea to crowd too many sites on a single server, because each request for a site adds a little bit of overhead to the CPU and the more sites = more requests = slower responses.

I suggest setting a reasonable limit of sites per server and then setting up server farms. And if you have any particularly bandwidth/CPU-intensive sites you can just put them on special servers specifically for this purpose. I know WebCentral http://www.webcentral.com.au does this to excellent effect.

From what I remember reading on their website, Communitech resorts to doing such things too. At their website, they claim that they shift demanding sites to different servers if it is warranted, so that it doesn't affect the other sites on the same server.

Learner