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  1. #1

    Virtuozzo overhead?

    I'm looking to build a P4 3.0 server with 2GB ram and 200GB SATA Raid1 (3ware) to for 10 VPS accounts.

    Those 10 VPS account (currently) are just reseller accounts, which need root access.

    My question would be, since those 10 reseller accounts easily fit on a P4 3.0 with 1GB Ram, can I safely put them on the above server with 2GB ram without performance degradation?

    Are the SATA drives able to cope with the virtuozzo overhead?
    Last edited by DecaHolding; 08-03-2005 at 08:52 AM.

  2. #2
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    Remember one thing. Before, you have 10 resellers in one server and they all run one apache, one mysql, one CPanel/WHM (if you use it), etc. Now if you put it under VPS (Each reseller on its own VPS), then you will be running 10 apache, 10 mysql, 10 CPanel/WHM, etc. It's not Virtuozzo overhead that you should be concerned. But the number of applications you will be running. I can't say whether 2GB is enough or not, you will have to see it yourself. If it's not enough, just add memory to your server. However, I personally won't run 10 CPanel/WHM on a 2GB memory server.
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  3. #3
    I would reccomend a Dual Xeon or Opteron server. Also I would up the memory to 4 GB and maybe put in a RAID 5...
    That's just me though...
    If you are looking for a dedicated server with Virtuozzo, try The Planet or LayeredTech. Read reviews around here to find out which one you like best.
    Or you could build your server and colocate it, but thats something for another forum.

    Either way good luck, and remember to come back here and post and tell us how everything went,

  4. #4
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    How much ram were you planning on allocating to each VE?

    IMO that box will run seriously slow, because of the low amount of RAM your disk I/O will rocket and those SATA's won't be able to handle it.

    I'd suggest some thing Dual CPU, SCSI RAID, ECC memory, etc.

    Unfortunately the low end "servers" being sold by quite a few companies now as Virtuozzo nodes are seriously underspecced and will simply not perform well at all.

    People don't spend $10,000 on a VPS node because they want to, it's because they have to in order to provide good service.
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  5. #5
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    People don't spend $10,000 on a VPS node because they want to, it's because they have to in order to provide good service.
    What he said.
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  6. #6
    Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
    How much ram were you planning on allocating to each VE?

    IMO that box will run seriously slow, because of the low amount of RAM your disk I/O will rocket and those SATA's won't be able to handle it.
    The VPS accounts are actually just small reseller accounts with root access.

    I was thinking about putting 3GB ram and allocate 256MB per VPS, so I have about 512MB "spare" (overhead?).

    As resellers on a SATA server, they work great, so I assume they should on the virtuozzo

    Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
    People don't spend $10,000 on a VPS node because they want to, it's because they have to in order to provide good service.
    I thought it was because the price per VPS would be cheaper if you put more VPS' es on one node?

    Example:

    If you order a 3VPS license, it would be around $12/VPS, when you order 30 VPS licenses, it would be around $7/VPS..

    Those are monthly, if you multiply it with the numbre of VPS' es and 24 (months), you would safe lots of money when getting one big server instead of 10 smaller ones

  7. #7
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    Originally posted by DecaHost
    The VPS accounts are actually just small reseller accounts with root access.

    I was thinking about putting 3GB ram and allocate 256MB per VPS, so I have about 512MB "spare" (overhead?).

    As resellers on a SATA server, they work great, so I assume they should on the virtuozzo

    This isn't at all like a shared hosting server, so you need to forget that entirely. Your VPS node will be consuming 10X as much resources as a normal shared server, because you are running a copy of each app for each VE.

    Virtuozzo does a lot of caching, so although you're about right on the memory (without overselling), your disk I/O will still be HUGE and your node will run slowly.

    I'd also be worried about 10 VE's on a single CPU ... it might be ok at idle times, but if all your VE's decide to spike because you have that extra overhead of running 10 copies of everything, your node is going to grind to a halt.



    I thought it was because the price per VPS would be cheaper if you put more VPS' es on one node?

    Example:

    If you order a 3VPS license, it would be around $12/VPS, when you order 30 VPS licenses, it would be around $7/VPS..

    Those are monthly, if you multiply it with the numbre of VPS' es and 24 (months), you would safe lots of money when getting one big server instead of 10 smaller ones

    Well you're right in terms of licencing, yes thats cheaper ...

    This is how it works, you want to run a Virtuozzo node, unfortunately it's just not going to live up to the job because you've got various bottlenecks. You then spend extra $$$ to fix one of those bottlenecks (example SCSI disks), that's costing you more but you can still only run the same number of VE's because of other bottlenecks (CPU).

    See where I'm coming from? At the end of the day the only way to make a decent profit and provide well performing VPS's is to take a pretty beasty server.

    Unfortunately that P4 with SATA disks will NOT live up to the job you want it to do ... you need to majorly rethink.
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  8. #8
    Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
    This isn't at all like a shared hosting server, so you need to forget that entirely. Your VPS node will be consuming 10X as much resources as a normal shared server, because you are running a copy of each app for each VE.
    I thought Virtuozzo means running 1 APP with different configs in a chrooted/jailed environment for a VPS environment with minimal overhead?

    Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
    I'd also be worried about 10 VE's on a single CPU ... it might be ok at idle times, but if all your VE's decide to spike because you have that extra overhead of running 10 copies of everything, your node is going to grind to a halt.



    Well you're right in terms of licencing, yes thats cheaper ...

    This is how it works, you want to run a Virtuozzo node, unfortunately it's just not going to live up to the job because you've got various bottlenecks. You then spend extra $$$ to fix one of those bottlenecks (example SCSI disks), that's costing you more but you can still only run the same number of VE's because of other bottlenecks (CPU).

    See where I'm coming from? At the end of the day the only way to make a decent profit and provide well performing VPS's is to take a pretty beasty server.

    Unfortunately that P4 with SATA disks will NOT live up to the job you want it to do ... you need to majorly rethink.
    Ok, my new idea is to put 8 VPS'es (512MB Ram each) on the following box:

    Dell Poweredge 1850
    Dual Xeon 3.0 (1mb)
    4GB ECC DDR2
    2x 147GB SCSI 10K RPM RAID1 (DELL PERC4/DI)

    Would that "work"?

    Don't forget, its just some resellers who need root access, but don't need alot of resources (+- 50sites each)

    Thank you for your valuable information!

  9. #9
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    Yes it would, that should work quite nicely

    You might want to knock that down to 7 VPS's to ensure you've still got some memory left for system management though (I know Virtuozzo doesn't require physical memory, but that's just the way I prefer to do it).
    █ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
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  10. #10
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    That would "work" but you ought to consider a 4-disk system running RAID10. I/O is much better in RAID10 than RAID1 and you still get redundancy from the mirroring. SCSI is better than SATA but a 4-disk SATA RAID10 system is better than a 2-disk SCSI RAID1, and it's probably of similar cost.

    If you go the raid10 SATA route I'd recommend 3ware 9500S-4LP's, for SCSI we're currently testing multiple solutions so I don't currently have a recommendation.

    For 8 VPS's you may be fine with the above, but disk will be your first bottleneck.
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  11. #11
    Originally posted by DecaHost
    Dell Poweredge 1850
    Dual Xeon 3.0 (1mb)
    4GB ECC DDR2
    2x 147GB SCSI 10K RPM RAID1 (DELL PERC4/DI)
    How about doubling the ram to 8GB ECC DDR2 and 5x 147GB SCSI RAID10 (1 hotspare)

    Will this box keep 15 VPS'es running? (1VPS (512mb) resource for overhead)

  12. #12
    Originally posted by Cranky
    That would "work" but you ought to consider a 4-disk system running RAID10. I/O is much better in RAID10 than RAID1 and you still get redundancy from the mirroring. SCSI is better than SATA but a 4-disk SATA RAID10 system is better than a 2-disk SCSI RAID1, and it's probably of similar cost.

    If you go the raid10 SATA route I'd recommend 3ware 9500S-4LP's, for SCSI we're currently testing multiple solutions so I don't currently have a recommendation.

    For 8 VPS's you may be fine with the above, but disk will be your first bottleneck.
    If I build an expensive SATA RAID10 server, I'd rather pay a little more and go for SCSI, a scsi raid addon-card (dell/supermicro) is about $200, while a 4 port sata is $400!!

    Anyway, what's your experience with SATA and VPS'es?

  13. #13
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    Originally posted by DecaHost
    If I build an expensive SATA RAID10 server, I'd rather pay a little more and go for SCSI, a scsi raid addon-card (dell/supermicro) is about $200, while a 4 port sata is $400!!

    Anyway, what's your experience with SATA and VPS'es?
    I've not had any problems with SATA really. It does obviously bottleneck sooner than SCSI systems, but in a raid10 configuration it works fine as long as you don't overload the server.
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  14. #14
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    I think part of the problem is your target market. You have 10 small customers who you now want to upsell into a VPS. They most likely don't need the benefits of the VPS nor do they need the overhead. They probably don't even need root access. Most people have difficulty differentiating between what they want and what they need, and this happens for any of a multitude of reasons. Nevertheless, now that you've received feedback on hardware and have suggested the use of a far more expensive machine, you should revisit your intended population of that box and the expected revenue you'll receive. You may find that the prices you'll need to charge as a result of your new expenses are too much for your existing customers.
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  15. #15
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    As much as possible go with SCSI. SATA is cheap for a reason.
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  16. #16
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    DecaHost, keep in mind your RAM requirements and allocation aren't necessarily set in stone. Similiar to shared hosting you will see some VPS's not using their full allocation of resources, so doing a 1:1 allocation isn't always necessary. Just do your best to find a good fit hardware wise and once it's full of customers re-evaluate usage and performance based on actual figures.

    The other thing is it's not necessary to sell only a single plan on a VPS's, such as all low end, or all high end VPS's on the same box. Feel free to mix/match to get a better average of system usage. If things go well and the system hits a set mark you can expand with a 2nd virtuozzo box and you'll be able to transfer VPS's between the two to balance out load better.

    Also, on the 1850 you can have six 1Gb sticks of DDR2 Ram for a total of 6GB without too much additional cost. I'd recommend filling all the slots as memory is always a limiting factor with vps's.
    Last edited by sshepherd; 08-17-2005 at 06:05 PM.

  17. #17
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    Originally posted by sshepherd
    I'd recommend filling all the slots as memory is always a limiting factor with vps's.
    More memory is better, but I'd still rate I/O (disk), RAM then CPU in that order on a typical node for bottlenecks in my experience.
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  18. #18
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    Originally posted by Cranky
    More memory is better, but I'd still rate I/O (disk), RAM then CPU in that order on a typical node for bottlenecks in my experience.
    I agree, DISK/Memory being the major bottlenet but there was plenty of great advice on Raid 10 SCSI or Raid 1 SCSI at a minimum so I didn't want to repat those recomendations.

    The only times I've seen CPU usage being an issue have been runaway scripts, or poor programming where a client had to be informed to remove or fix the script. It very rare that under normal load and sizing on a server you see the CPU's maxed out before the ram is completely allocated with enough spare for bursting and overhead.

    I guess the only thing I'd add is if you do go Raid 1, certainly consider the 15k rpm drives. If you're building a larger array with 4 drives or more with SCSI the 10k rpm drives should be plenty.

  19. #19
    Disk I/O can be a big problem in VPS, you do not want to skimp on Hard drives, go SCSI and go with Raid 10

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