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  1. #1
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    Oct 2013
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    Question A question on starter VPS company and HDD's?

    Hi,

    I'm starting out in the VPS industry and just wanted to run the spec by you, I mean budget wise, we're talking £1,500 for the server

    My full intention going forward is to offer 15K SAS and/or SSD - but we all have to start somewhere, so would you think this is a decent enough server to host around 30-40 VPS customers.


    SuperMicro Chasis and Dual CPU motherboard
    2 x E5-2609 V2 CPU
    4 x 1TB RAID 10 - Gone for "WD AV-GP 1TB 64MB SATA 6Gb/s IntelliPower" - As optimised for being 'always-on'.
    32GB 1600Mhz CL11 RAM

    So the above comes in at £1,455 inc. VAT.

    So pretty good standard HDD & dual 2509 CPU's - Good enough you think think to perform well and handle 30 or so VPS customers?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
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    With "30 or so" customers you have 1GB or less RAM per customer.

  3. #3
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    Do you know what Virtualization Technology are you going to use in that node ?
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  4. #4
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    Yes, looking at OpenVS, but welcome to ideas to alternatives.

  5. #5
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    if you use OpenVZ it will work fine, check on RAM limits of the server (to see if you can grow in capacity on-demand).

    Did you choose a VPS Managemente software ?

    Cheers
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  6. #6
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    Thank you that's reassuring

    Yes, it's going to be SolusVM as it seems cost effective and the features we need.

  7. #7
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    Cpu is overkill for 32GB ram in my opinion. An E3 would be better for 32GB solutions.

  8. #8
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    You better go Xen or KVM with this configuration as OpenVZ may stuck bad with only 4 drives (I do not see a descent HW raid card too).
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by WebHostDog View Post
    You better go Xen or KVM with this configuration as OpenVZ may stuck bad with only 4 drives
    Where are you getting that information?

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by WebHostDog View Post
    You better go Xen or KVM with this configuration as OpenVZ may stuck bad with only 4 drives (I do not see a descent HW raid card too).
    What does the number of drives have anything to do with virtualization setup?
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  11. #11
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    Oct 2013
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    Thanks for input guys.

    So really it's a tricky one isn't it, like you go for the low end E5 V2's 32GB RAM & Regular HDD's - Or you go for a Single higher-end E3 - but to be honest, for the sake of £200 it's probably worth going Dual E5's, as I magine you'd fit more VPS's on them?

    I more than likely won't upgrade this Nodes, just buy a new server once the customers come through the door and reinvest it, i'm just looking for a decent starter setup and appreciate any advice

    + I'll be using the on-board RAID controller:
    http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products...0/X9DRL-EF.cfm
    Last edited by SmallFish; 10-21-2013 at 04:36 PM.

  12. #12
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    The thing is, assuming you're doing 1GB RAM/user, the RAM will be a bottleneck past 30-ish users unless you oversell your nodes by a manageable amount. Depending on what kind of clients you get the E5 may or may not be overkill.

    Me, personally, if I had to choose I would pick the E5 over the E3 any day, especially if the upfront setup cost to you between those 2 is negligible. More available processing power is always better and you and your clients have more 'wiggle' room so to speak. 4 drives in RAID10 is good enough.

    And the E5 will let you upgrade RAM should you ever decide to upgrade your nodes in the future. You're not planning on that now, but you never know. Your plans might change further down the road
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  13. #13
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    Makes sense to me, thanks.

    Whats your thoughts on using the onboard RAID then of this motherboard?

  14. #14
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    The answer to all of these types of threads is . . . "it depends what the VMs are doing".

    I would say that generally, those hard drives are awful for this use and are almost surely going to be your bottleneck.

  15. #15
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    Appreciate what you're saying but there isn't money to go for SSD's or 15K yet...for budget, this is probably the best setup, appreciate it depends on use, but say you average VPS seller - some heavy users/some moderate - I mean, running on my onboard RAID, gonna cause any issues here?

    I imagine the websites are going to load fine with these 7200RPM's in RAID 10?

  16. #16
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    Great setup and great choice in hardware for your server.

    Definitely get the better CPU's, you'll find that you might get a few customers who would like to run a game server on their VPS which might end up being minecraft and we all know JAVA needs a lot of CPU.
    404 ERROR!

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by lifetalk View Post
    What does the number of drives have anything to do with virtualization setup?
    OpenVZ almost have no protection vs. I/O abusers. The server with stuck on 1st abuser with only 4 drives and software raid. Especially loaded server. Of course you can always prevent this with some scripting but the OpenVZ kernel by itself is not providing with sufficient protection against such an abuse/overuse.
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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by WebHostDog View Post
    OpenVZ almost have no protection vs. I/O abusers. The server with stuck on 1st abuser with only 4 drives and software raid. Especially loaded server. Of course you can always prevent this with some scripting but the OpenVZ kernel by itself is not providing with sufficient protection against such an abuse/overuse.
    It's very obvious when that happens - I'd hope that whether OpenVZ,KVM or Xen someone would look into the reasoning behind load shooting through the roof.

    Virtualisation platform is pretty irrelevant.

  19. #19
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    Virtualization technology is relevant to the question. If you use KVM/Xen the config is good enough. If you are using OpenVZ depends on the customers you get but with 30 random customers there is a chance to get a I/O resource shortage with OpenVZ. I will suggest you to get better drives and/or HD raid card like LSI and put E3 Xeon 1270 or 1240 if you do not plan to go over 32GB of RAM in the server.
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  20. #20
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    Personally I went for a single Intel E5-1620, 64GB ECC DDR RAM, with dual 600GB 15K RPM SAS drives in HW RAID-1 and an Intel 80GB SSD for caching. More bang for the buck, and I've got a cold spare sitting in the spare HDD bay, in the event one of the main drives fail.

    I went for OpenVZ for simpler Administration. As much as I prefer KVM, OpenVZ is more efficient as it is just an advanced form of chroot, which means there is no redundancy in a lot of things (if a container needs just httpd, that's all they'll run).

  21. #21
    The server looks awesome. I am using SolusVM and OpenVZ with no issues at the moment. If you are just starting up I recommend sticking to OpenVZ and Solus.

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