Hello,

Right now I am currently looking to setup a VPS server, I have done the research and found that virtuozzo seems best but at the moment the price is a bit out of my leauge.

What I am looking to do is to setup the server with some VPS software - if I could get some recommendations please? also to have cpanel/whm installed on each VPS.

What I would like to know is....

Can you recommend some VPS software, with prices and experience.

What the pricing structure for the cpanel would be and what VPS is cpanel compatible with?

I really want to find out some rough costs and to find out how somethings are setup.

Thanks
Mark

try User Mode Linux. Open source kernel patch that lets you create kernel applications and virtual machines.

Originally posted by UltraGrain
Hello,

Right now I am currently looking to setup a VPS server, I have done the research and found that virtuozzo seems best but at the moment the price is a bit out of my leauge.

What I am looking to do is to setup the server with some VPS software - if I could get some recommendations please? also to have cpanel/whm installed on each VPS.

What I would like to know is....

Can you recommend some VPS software, with prices and experience.

What the pricing structure for the cpanel would be and what VPS is cpanel compatible with?

I really want to find out some rough costs and to find out how somethings are setup.

Thanks
Mark


Just curious -- what pricing did you find on virtuozzo?

Hi,

We found the pricing to be around $2500 - $3000

So a bit our of my reach at the moment :).

Originally posted by UltraGrain
Hi,

We found the pricing to be around $2500 - $3000

So a bit our of my reach at the moment :).

Thanks. Ouch....expensive.

I think Oopsz had a good suggestion for you in user mode linux.

Hi,

I am looking into that right now and I must say it seems pretty good. Gonna test it on a test server and see how things work out.

Cheers!

You can also use FreeVPS.com or
Linux-vserver.com.
Both are GPL (free). FreeVPS can be provisioned through H-Sphere, or can be used stand alone.

The main benefit of freevps & linux-vserver is that they provide real VPS - not emulation. That allows much better performance that UML, and allows to put more VPSes per server.

IF put the price tage aside, how do you rate Virtuozzo, UML, FreeVPS? which is recommanded?

Also, from what I have learned, most configurations has to be done either via command line or via VZMC for standalone Virtuozzo. Is that the same with UML?

Thanks.

A friend of mine uses Virtuozzo and he says its great and he talked about it for the first few months that he had it, as if it was his god. So i guess it must be good

Hi,

Virtuozzo is brilliant and I would recommend it to those who can afford it, I tried the demo along with HSP complete and it is brilliant.

Just not for my budget yet :)

try User Mode Linux. Open source kernel patch that lets you create kernel applications and virtual machines.
Whats the web addy for this?

Also, can these share space on a server with shared or reseller accounts? Can they be installed while accounts are on the server or would this need to be done on a fresh server install?

Is the $2500-3000 price for Virtuozzo per server or what? I thought they had a scale based on Mhz too.

Im just wondering what the total cost is on a typical Dual 2.8 Xeon.

Originally posted by sshepherd
Is the $2500-3000 price for Virtuozzo per server or what? I thought they had a scale based on Mhz too.

Im just wondering what the total cost is on a typical Dual 2.8 Xeon.

That would be $5600 USD for an unlimited VP license ($1/mhz) :)

Originally posted by Alex042
Whats the web addy for this?

Also, can these share space on a server with shared or reseller accounts? Can they be installed while accounts are on the server or would this need to be done on a fresh server install?

http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/

Yeah, you can share them with reseller accounts, they run as a user mode application. But they use up a lot more CPU time and memory than a regular account, so allocate accordingly.

I've got to say that Linux-vserver is the best software I've used for setting up VPS'. I've tried ULM and FreeVSD but vserver just seems to feel more like a full server than anything else.

Only downside is a lack of decent control panel for host management.

I've tried looking at cpanel etc licences but always found them too expensive for a $30 per month vps.

Vserver has some serious issues if you give a user full root acces including the ability for customers to run tcpdump and view other peoples traffic. Also "cat /proc/mounts"

C-Panel VPS can be done for $25/mo if you shop around (that is external). Interal can be done for $15/mo

Rus

Originally posted by jvds
Vserver has some serious issues if you give a user full root acces including the ability for customers to run tcpdump and view other peoples traffic. Also "cat /proc/mounts"


Issues in the same way that FreeVSD allows pstree to show the processes on every other vps on that server?

The vserver software is in use by a lot of hosts and there is a fair volume of information on the mailing list from hosts who are using it. I've not seen anyone comment on there being any significant areas of concern over security.

The issues I was concered about are shown at

http://list.linux-vserver.org/archive/vserver/msg05856.html

For our customer we would at least want some of those fixed. Also having to use a specially compiled version of bind 9 as well

Rus

Has anyone looked at using vmware www.vmware.com as a VPS solution?

Originally posted by jvds


http://list.linux-vserver.org/archive/vserver/msg05856.html



According to that archive, iptables should be available with freevsd. Well, we've been testing freevsd for the past few days and this is what I found so far :

1. Iptables doesn't exist.
2. You can't use any other kernel, only 2.4.18 otherwise their patches won't work.

Other than that, everything looks and works really well. Their management scripts simplify everything. Example of reporting from freevsd:


Virtual Private Servers found on the host:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ID NAME STATUS VDEV(HDEV):IP DISK INF. (Mb) MEMORY (Mb) PROCESSES TRAFIC (Mb)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 vps1 running eth0(eth0):10.3.3.150/24 3000 513.986 64 14.648 1000 7 0.004
4 vps2 running eth0(eth0):10.3.3.151/24 3000 592.361 64 14.660 1000 7 0.004
5 vps3 running eth0(eth0):10.3.3.152/24 10000 592.928 128 15.039 1000 7 0.004
6 vps4 running eth0(eth0):10.3.3.153/24 10000 593.391 128 15.031 1000 7 0.004
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


We will try both vservers and user-mode-linux next.

are you talking about freevsd, or freevps?
FreeVSD was FreeBSD based project - which I don't think any longer active/live.

FreeVPS is linux based (based on rh kernels, the latest stable release is based on 2.4.18, but the next one should work with latest RH kernel). - This why I assume you speaking about FreeVPS - and it does have support for iptables per vps. Contact support-help@freevps.com if you cannot get it working.

Originally posted by jvds
Vserver has some serious issues if you give a user full root acces including the ability for customers to run tcpdump and view other peoples traffic. Also "cat /proc/mounts"

C-Panel VPS can be done for $25/mo if you shop around (that is external). Interal can be done for $15/mo

Rus
For our VPSs (running on UML) we got off-site licensing (we tried to go direct with Cpanel they wanted $8/license/month with a minimum of 20 licenses . Cpanel demand wasnt that high for us) for $12/month and alternatively found other places offering $15/month .

Originally posted by iseletsk
are you talking about freevsd, or freevps?
FreeVSD was FreeBSD based project - which I don't think any longer active/live.


Yupe, I'm talking about FreeVPS and yes it doesn't have iptables. That email address for support connects you to an inactive mailing list.

Originally posted by drhonk
Yupe, I'm talking about FreeVPS and yes it doesn't have iptables. That email address for support connects you to an inactive mailing list.
FreeVPS does support iptables. I think the problem you are experiencing is due to the fact that VPS doesn't allow to load kernel modules (due to security issues). So, you need to do insmod ip_tables on the host server first.

I play around with it some more when I get to the office. From I can remember was that it doesn't even have iptables comannd .. :) That could be the problem, but I'll double check later on.

So far, I like FreeVPS .. it just need more documentation on kernel side, like which patches needed, etc ..

Well,

FreeVPS didn't even install iptables to each vps. I tried to install it but it won't let me do it because I don't have kernel 2.4.x installed.

I will try their forum and see if I can anyone to help with this.

try installing it via:
rpm -i --nodeps iptales-.....rpm

It does look like a bug though :( - no entry for kernel in rpm database.

I'm not that up on FreeVSD but I think it's quite close to linux-vserver.org. The vps doesn't have it's own kernel, it depends on the host servers kernel so that means that most kernel related features eg iptables are not available to the vps.

You can run iptables on the host server to track bandwidth usage etc but you can't run it within the vps.

I believe freeVSD project is not even alive any more. I haven't seen their website up for about a year.

Very true. The last that I heard of FreeVSD was that the parent company were pushing it in a big way with commercial support. DSVR are still using it but I've seen some of their support people working with linux-vserver so I don't really know where it and they stand now.

Hey guys,

Ive successfully sussed this out using MS Virtual PC.

I've installed RH9 and Debian on the Virtual Machines and they each have their own unique MAC address.

I was wondering if theres anyway to monitor each virtual machines bandwidth use?

I currently have MRTG monitoring each port on my switch.

The PHYSICAL machine running the virtual machines is on Port 2 and when i SNMP walk the switch it see's all 3 MAC's [1 physical, 2 virtuals]

Does anyone know if i can monitor a specific mac on a port using MRTG or any other tool?

Thanks!!

It depends on your switch.

3com superstack

Originally posted by UltraGrain
Hi,

We found the pricing to be around $2500 - $3000

So a bit our of my reach at the moment :).

Even if we forget various technological advantages of Virtuozzo, such as complete resource control, migration, backup, multiserver capabilities, scalability of single VPS, security (which is actually higher then UML arguably), stability under load - below are just economics ...

The point here is not what is the price of Virtuozzo, the point is what would be the price of HARDWARe + SOFTWARE per each VPS instance. And that is without "indirect" cost of supporting and maintaining it, again to be calculated per VPS instance.

With Virtuozzo you could (and will) run 50-500 production/selleable VPS/server dependant on the hardware, and your cost of Virtuozzo + Hardware could (and would) be 40-20$ per VPS

With UML you could run reasonably 10-50 VPS/server on the same hardware, and your cost of UML (free) + Hardware would be 150-75$ per VPS.

Hence UML setup even seems FREE ends up to be directly more expensive.

At the same time Virtuozzo comes with lots of tools, which make management of the server with 500 VPSs almost easy as management of standalone server, and that makes it even cheaper. Not to forget the tools for your resellers and customers.

And yet, that is not to forget, that large portion of the support/maintences of Virtuozzo is done by SWsoft, where with UML you would have to do it yourself.

So it is highly questionable what is out of reach - Virtuozzo or UML. We would never charge our beloved customers anything more then small part of savings compared to doing the other way.

regards
Sb@
SWsoft/CEO

Originally posted by sb@

With Virtuozzo you could (and will) run 50-500 production/selleable VPS/server dependant on the hardware, and your cost of Virtuozzo + Hardware could (and would) be 40-20$ per VPS

With UML you could run reasonably 10-50 VPS/server on the same hardware, and your cost of UML (free) + Hardware would be 150-75$ per VPS.


Your example doesn't quite add up. You claim 50 Virtuozzo VPS on the hardware would cost $40 per VPS. You then say 50 UML VPS on the same hardware would cost $75 per VPS. But if UML is free and Virtuozzo isn't, then there isn't any way the Virtuozzo would be cheaper when dealing with the same number of VPS.

Based on your 10 UML VPS costing $150 each, you're assuming that the hardware costs $1500. Therefore, 50 UML VPS would cost $30. Or $10 less than the Virtuozzo at 50 servers.

However, if your numbers are correct, you're saying 50 Virtuozzo VPS cost $40 each. That means that the person is just paying $500 for the Virtuozzo software. Now the numbers I have seen around here has used $1 per Mhz for a Virtuozzo server. So your example is based on a 500 MHz server? I don't think so. So lets try this again with better real world numbers.

I can pick up a Dell 2.4 Ghz Xeon Server for $1375. So if I could create 10 UML servers, thats $137. 50 would cost me $27.50 per VPS. A Virtuozzo license would set me back $2400. So the total server costs is now $3775. 50 licenses would cost me $75.50. 500 would cost me $7.55. The point at which it would be cheaper to get a virtuozzo license instead of UML is when you have 138 VPS to place on a single server. Then the cost is $27.50 per VPS.

So if your sales forecasts shows you'll get 150 VPS clients in about 2 years, it may be cheaper for you to go with the UML method until you sign up your 138th customer. At which point when you need a new server you can pick up the Virtuozzo license and migrate your customer base over to it as your TCO is now lower with the Virtuozzo platform.

This of course doesn't take into consideration the other costs that you mentioned of managing UML VPS vs. Virtuozzo VPS.

Hal

Originally posted by sb@
With Virtuozzo you could (and will) run 50-500 production/selleable VPS/server
With UML you could run reasonably 10-50 VPS/server on the same hardware

Could Virtuozzo be packed clients into one box 10 times as much as UML?
I cannot believe it. In this case, the server load would be up 10 times as much as UML, and its memories could be needed 10 times?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by papepo55
Could Virtuozzo be packed clients into one box 10 times as much as UML?
I cannot believe it. In this case, the server load would be up 10 times as much as UML, and its memories could be needed 10 times? [/QUOTE

I think its fair to say that with Virtuozzo you can get more people on the server but not 10 times as much. I could believe 1.5 times but of course load would go up as well

Rus

10 times as many as UML, not bloody likely. Not if you value your service at least. There are checks and balances that the Virtuozzo software provides and thresholds you should no exceed unless you *know* what the behavior of each Virtual Server will be.

Virtuozzo by its very nature will perform better with more Virtual Servers, but in the end you still have limited RAM and CPU resources available at any ONE time. If the Virtual Servers start butting heads and consuming more resources than are available you will have problems.

Now that said, with Virtuozzo you can allocate more Virtual Servers to a single Host than you probably should and if you keep a close eye on things you'll know when to shuffle things around for optimal performance. And I don't mean when things start failing, I mean well in advance. There are handy tools that assist in keeping tabs on things and migrating Virtual Servers as needed. It's all in how aggressive you want to be and how well you manage things.

Originally posted by hbouma
Your example doesn't quite add up. You claim 50 Virtuozzo VPS on the hardware would cost $40 per VPS. You then say 50 UML VPS on the same hardware would cost $75 per VPS. But if UML is free and Virtuozzo isn't, then there isn't any way the Virtuozzo would be cheaper when dealing with the same number of VPS.

sb> First of all thank you for your comment, now I could answer!

Second of all my example does match. You could not run 50 similar VPS with UML on the same hardware if you would use for 50 VPS with Virtuozzo. Hardware for 50 UML VPS would have to be quite different. The whole difference is exactly in the point that hardware you need for UML must be significantly more expensive one, the one you would need for Virtuozzo, if you were to sell the result of vps-ing at the same price, for the same customer expirience.

Originally posted by hbouma
Based on your 10 UML VPS costing $150 each, you're assuming that the hardware costs $1500. Therefore, 50 UML VPS would cost $30. Or $10 less than the Virtuozzo at 50 servers.

However, if your numbers are correct, you're saying 50 Virtuozzo VPS cost $40 each. That means that the person is just paying $500 for the Virtuozzo software. Now the numbers I have seen around here has used $1 per Mhz for a Virtuozzo server. So your example is based on a 500 MHz server? I don't think so. So lets try this again with better real world numbers. [/B]

sb> We have changed the pricing model few month ago, and now we charge per VPS. List price for 10 VPS Virtuozzo node is 799 now.

Originally posted by hbouma
I can pick up a Dell 2.4 Ghz Xeon Server for $1375. So if I could create 10 UML servers, thats $137. 50 would cost me $27.50 per VPS. A Virtuozzo license would set me back $2400. So the total server costs is now $3775. 50 licenses would cost me $75.50. 500 would cost me $7.55. The point at which it would be cheaper to get a virtuozzo license instead of UML is when you have 138 VPS to place on a single server. Then the cost is $27.50 per VPS.
[/B]

sb> I argue that you could run 2-3 times as many similarly powerfull VPSs. If you would look into selling cheaper and more dense VPSs (50 per box, 100 per box, 300 per box) difference in density would grow to 5-10 times more.

Originally posted by hbouma
This of course doesn't take into consideration the other costs that you mentioned of managing UML VPS vs. Virtuozzo VPS.
[/B]

sb> And these costs, even though seems fun (compile, recompile, reconfigure), are actually much higher then the costs of hardware. Imagine that your time is as low as 25$/hour. You just have to spend 50 hours per year to add another 1250$ into equation.

Originally posted by papepo55
Could Virtuozzo be packed clients into one box 10 times as much as UML?
I cannot believe it. In this case, the server load would be up 10 times as much as UML, and its memories could be needed 10 times?

sb> Thank you for your comment.

Server load is an abstract term. There are various components of the server which could be overloaded. Here is some examples of such components:

1) CPU > Virtuozzo is about 40-100 times faster in processing anything related to system calls and somewhat faster in the usermode calls. For example Virtuozzo could saturate 100 mbit network as easily as bare box (8+Mb/sec), when UML would show you ~1-3Mb/sec maximum download speed only. And so on.

2) User memory and disk > Virtuozzo allows you to share those resources/structures much more efficiently (in absolutely isolated way). Everyone could change anything, but it would be kept/processed/copied twice only after it is different for you.

As a result we save up to 500-1.5Gb of disk space per vps, 15-50Mb of Memory, large portion of CPU and tons of kernel resources.

Once you go to large numbers > that ads up > 100 VPS x 15-100 mb = 1.5 to 10 Gb of memory saved. Or say 100 x 500-1.5gb = 50-150 Gb disk space saved. So here you go...

If you need more inforamtion you are WELCOME to contact SWsoft and we would be happy to provide you demo, official technical comparison with UML and explanations why Virtuozzo is MUCH CHEAPER then UML.

In any case, UML is very nice, but it was designed for a completely different purpose and is no match for Virtuozzo if you talk about production VPS, especially in the hosting environment.

regards
sb@
SWsoft/CEO

Originally posted by sb@

Most of CPU usage and memories are used for client's processes. Client's processes have nothing to do with Virtuozzo and UML. Client's processes have relation to Hardware, OS (e.g. Linux), and Application (e.g. MySQL). Whatever VPS's software you develop, you could not be faster client's process.

In conclusion, it is very hard to get more than twice performance through VPS software.

sb@, I know you are a good sales person. But you should reduce the price of Virtuozzo at least under the hardware price.

Originally posted by papepo55
In conclusion, it is very hard to get more than twice performance through VPS software.

I am sorry this is inaccurate. Accurately speaking:

In conclusion, it is impassable to get more than 20% up performance through VPS software. Because 80%-90% processes are client's processes.

Originally posted by papepo55
Most of CPU usage and memories are used for client's processes. Client's processes have nothing to do with Virtuozzo and UML. Client's processes have relation to Hardware, OS (e.g. Linux), and Application (e.g. MySQL). Whatever VPS's software you develop, you could not be faster client's process.

In conclusion, it is very hard to get more than twice performance through VPS software.

sb@, I know you are a good sales person. But you should reduce the price of Virtuozzo at least under the hardware price.

Thank you for a compliment. However I also have designed this
technology, so I know what I am talking about.

First of all CPU is by far not the main limitation of the servers hosted in internet datacenters. Sometime it is network and most commonly they are just simply idle. Average utilization levels of CPUs by user processes are very low, less then percentage point. Second of all as I have described before user processes do incure "virtualization overhead" when working under UML. Lastly most of the user processes do require some use of some system calls, and their overhead of something like UML is tremendious.

On top of that we did decrease price of Virtuozzo, and we changed the model. Now it is sold per VPS, and the price per VPS is very small :)

regards
sb@
SWsoft/CEO

Originally posted by sb@
Thank you for a compliment. However I also have designed this
technology, so I know what I am talking about.

First of all CPU is by far not the main limitation of the servers hosted in internet datacenters. Sometime it is network and most commonly they are just simply idle. Average utilization levels of CPUs by user processes are very low, less then percentage point. Second of all as I have described before user processes do incure "virtualization overhead" when working under UML. Lastly most of the user processes do require some use of some system calls, and their overhead of something like UML is tremendious.

On top of that we did decrease price of Virtuozzo, and we changed the model. Now it is sold per VPS, and the price per VPS is very small :)

regards
sb@
SWsoft/CEO
Hmm, actually, I haven't seen anyone saturating 100mbps link yet with a webserver. Most of the time the constraints are CPU, RAM & IO (in webhosting environment).
VPS infrastructure does help a lot by sharing some of the IO & RAM. It also helps a lot, as there is not that much context switching when RAM/IO/Network...etc requested (comparing to UML/Vmware).
It should be pretty easy to run 50 VPSes where you can do at most 5-10 UML servers - provided that all of them are fairly uniform (like same shared libraries, binaries, etc...) and they are not computationally intensive (like seti@home), or memory intensive (like java with 1gb heap space).
Yet, on average, I would say you can double the number of servers by using VPS via UML.

RAM is almost always the biggest issue in my experience. Generally speaking, a single page request lasts very little time so memory isn't consumed and held on to very much in your typical web hosting environment. If things are relatively uniform then Virtuozzo or other single-kernel shared-application implementations could probably 10-50X the number of UML instances. But when two or three of those Virtual Servers decide to take a beating and get a little carried away, you will run into troubles.

You'll run into serious troubles when you start over committing resources without taking very careful measures ahead of time. If you allocate "up to 200%" of all memory to running virtual servers, and they get up to 110% what happens? SWAP SWAP SWAP SWAP. If these are heavy weight processes, like a Java instance with 1GB heap for example, then you can really start running into some issues.

One of the things I really like about Virtuozzo is the functionality it offers for scaling Virtuzo Servers, analyzing commitments versus actual consumption, and the ability to change QoS parameters on the fly without interrupting service.

Originally posted by papepo55
I am sorry this is inaccurate. Accurately speaking:

In conclusion, it is impassable to get more than 20% up performance through VPS software. Because 80%-90% processes are client's processes.

I am not sure you could get more performance through VPS. The only thing you could do is to better utilize idle hardware capacity, and there are LOTS OF IDLE capacity of all sorts.

That would also mean to load hardware more equally - not only CPU, but everything properly, so you would not end up in situation where you have overpaid for CPUs but your bottlneck is actually memory or cache.

My point was however not about that, it was about the fact that Virtuozzo allows to utilize it 10-100 times better compared to UML, that is all. It was architected to be this way, and there are number of things which we have not finished implementing, which would make even more efficient and which would be released in the next 12-24 month.

And, as it rightly pointed below, the ability to utilize hardware better depend not only on architecture > we also trying to (and that would be MUCH MORE) supply lots of well integrated tools which allow you to monitor and dynamically adjust the settings to utilize it even better.

regards
sb@
SWsoft/CEO

PS. We are very welcome to feedback, that is very valuable - tell us what you want!

Originally posted by sb@
PS. We are very welcome to feedback, that is very valuable - tell us what you want!

Your insistence on performance and price "Virtuozzo is cheaper than UML" is unacceptable to me. But your other claim "Virtuozzo is a good software and easy to use" is comprehensible. And I admit "Virtuozzo is a good software".

I suppose many hosting companies (especially, reseller hosting companies) would want Virtuozzo if the price could be reasonable. Because many hosting companies prefer VPS rather than to shared hosing.

I expect the CEO of SWsoft to lower the price under 1/5 and sell it over 10 times as many before the market will be saturated.

oh, no don't lower the price that low ... otherwise, too many people will use Virtuozzo ;)

Don't worry Dave, the new pricing isn't that low. :D

Anyone had any experience with Xen http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

The claimed performance looks pretty good http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html

eventully this is always about the green grass and money money money... did i say money yea thats right m m m m o n e y

if your able to run a tight shift and get good ways 'economically' to dump your money into a good church THAT ACTULLY works with the people who are treated like 'walmart americans' at work it helps SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much