Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Ubiquity VPS... Did I get hit with the bad end of the luck stick?

[Veks]

So, a couple months ago I purchased two VPS accounts - one with WoWVPS and the other with Ubiquity, to get back into Linux server management and to eventually have one of them host my rather active (~10,000 post/week) adult forum.

I dropped WoW fairly early on because - while I'm sure they're nice, their panel was rather buggy and the thing that freaked me out the most was any crash would happily reveal the source code. The inability to do a container reinstall was also an issue as it'd been awhile since I ran a Linux server. I had to poke them a bit to get my money back but otherwise that ended okay.

Ubiquity was great for the first month - real life got in the way of trying to set up the server properly, but there weren't any problems. They had a server move during August - moving to a new Chicago facility, I was in the first wave, and all of their DNS servers were in the second wave - or at least I gathered as much.

Since I hadn't moved anything over yet, this was merely annoying (after I got over the 'wtf did I just break it?' moment). I'm fine with minor oops moments like that. Things happen.

Then, last week I got hit with... I'm not sure what. I was locked out of the Container logs (again annoying, but okay), and my VPS got all weird at the same time... most of the latter has to do with myself and my ISP, but it was rather hard to puzzle out for awhile - or so I thought.

Eventually after a way-too-long ticket, Power Panel was upgraded and that particular issue with the VPS seemed to go away. I was back on track getting ready to move my forum over to the VPS hopefully by tonight so I could cancel my current account before the billing cycle. Yay.

Sunday afternoon: Out of space. What the hell, I'm only using 2.7 gb and Ubiquity says they're giving me 40 GB. I was locked out of the Power Panel almost entirely (no privileges)

Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
vzfs vzfs 14G 2.0G 631M 76% /
tmpfs tmpfs 8.0G 0 8.0G 0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs tmpfs 8.0G 0 8.0G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 8.0G 0 8.0G 0% /tmp

I delete some useless files to get things working again, and df reports that I'm losing several megabytes of available space a minute - I'm getting out of space errors again before the problem was 'fixed' six hours later. Still no power panel privileges.

But the core problem wasn't:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
vzfs 41943040 2036728 29049160 7% /
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /tmp

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
vzfs 41943040 2036728 29049128 7% /
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /tmp

Taken less than a second apart, I lost 32 1k-blocks into thin air... a pattern that just, simply... continued at varying rates. By the time my response was looked at the next day I'd lost another gigabyte.

---

So the next morning I get my power panel access restored (yay!) but the gradual loss of available space just continues. I report this, and am told that no one else on my node is having such troubles.

I take the hint and do a container reinstallation, again.

:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
vzfs 40281264 1070980 27989688 4% /
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /dev/shm
:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
vzfs 40281224 1070980 27979852 4% /
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs 8301184 0 8301184 0% /dev/shm

Still losing space (and about 11 gigs short of what I'm supposed to have anyway).

...at this point I had to cancel, because there was no way, even if this got fixed, that I could rebuild everything in time to move my forum over. And after doing a reinstall, I'm fairly confident that no, it really isn't on my end. My enthusiasm for VPSes was also rather shattered.

Come to think of it, this wasn't happening before I upgraded my service, at all, while I did notice wonky df reports not long afterwards, but didn't pay it any mind. Bit of a moot point now.

----

If it wasn't for the fact that I felt a bit brushed off at the end - no one else is having trouble so having 11gb less than I'm supposed to and dropping is my problem - after it apparently wasn't my problem the day before - I'd have been more than happy. If it's a bug in Virtuozzo or Parallels Power Panel because of some freak incident I was subject to, that's ... well I won't say that's fine, but I won't blame good people for something that's not their fault.

For the most part, I was happy with the people at Ubiquity. I usually got a prompt response and things were conducted professionally.

----

I may still have canceled but only because at this moment I'm going to be hard pressed to trust a VPS to run a large community site again. If I were taken a bit more seriously, at least I'd be that much more willing to look at their dedicated server packages.

Which seems a real shame : /

Maybe I'll get over it. It just feels like such a letdown.

Oh well, I still have a couple months to shop around for a dedicated server (before my database outgrows its welcome on my current host).

[j2m2]

sounds like you got hit hard with the bad luck stick. Dedicated servers as I am sure you know are a whole 'nother breed that can probably satisfy your needs. VPS are good for production environments although I am guessing you really just feel out of the luck wagon with the move.

all the best

[eclouds]

There is no reason to feel like a letdown. Sure, you did experience some pretty unlucky events however there are a lot of hosts that are perfectly capable of hosting a large forum site. Best of luck to you with your endeavors.

[Veks]

Originally Posted by eclouds

There is no reason to feel like a letdown. Sure, you did experience some pretty unlucky events however there are a lot of hosts that are perfectly capable of hosting a large forum site. Best of luck to you with your endeavors.

In theory, any small VPS would do. Any small VPS should do...

But my experience at WoW and now Ubiquity has left me pretty sour on the idea : /

[qwidjib0]

I was going to avoid commenting on this, as Veks it appeared our staff was handling things, and your initial post is 100% honest and accurate from what I can see.

Our senior administrators, as well as Parallel's tier 3 priority support, both signed off as a definite issue within this VE. None of our senior administrators have seen this issue ever before, nor did it occur on any other VPS on the node when this happened here, and Parallels claim was that the issue was related to neither their product or the hardware node's configuration. I don't say this as a necessary diagnosis of blame - simply to reiterate what's been produced from these two parties of admins thus far.

I definitely understand how this would discourage you from using a Virtualized environment. While it is true that a virtualized environment does add in new variables that don't exist in a purely dedicated environment, I can honestly say that the problems you've continued to have at different VPS providers are not the norm. If our staff has not offered it to you, I would like to offer you a free month of service to attempt to get you back on your feet, and would recommend we install with a fresh VZ template just to be safe (not simply a power panel reinstall). I would also be willing to give you a deal on a fully managed VPS, where our staff assume full liability for anything that happens in the universe of systems administration. And if not, no hard feelings, but I think it's the least we could do.

[Veks]

Originally Posted by qwidjib0

Our senior administrators, as well as Parallel's tier 3 priority support, both signed off as a definite issue within this VE. None of our senior administrators have seen this issue ever before, nor did it occur on any other VPS on the node when this happened here, and Parallels claim was that the issue was related to neither their product or the hardware node's configuration. I don't say this as a necessary diagnosis of blame - simply to reiterate what's been produced from these two parties of admins thus far.

And I'm certainly sympathetic to odd problems, I've seen my share... not just this one. I tried looking up similar problems and could find no identical event.

Which is never encouraging.

I definitely understand how this would discourage you from using a Virtualized environment. While it is true that a virtualized environment does add in new variables that don't exist in a purely dedicated environment, I can honestly say that the problems you've continued to have at different VPS providers are not the norm. If our staff has not offered it to you, I would like to offer you a free month of service to attempt to get you back on your feet, and would recommend we install with a fresh VZ template just to be safe (not simply a power panel reinstall). I would also be willing to give you a deal on a fully managed VPS, where our staff assume full liability for anything that happens in the universe of systems administration. And if not, no hard feelings, but I think it's the least we could do.

I've been told my last invoice is getting refunded (most of it was overage), though it doesn't seem to have cleared yet.

I haven't had this specific problem in other virtuallized environments - the thing with WoW was there were a number of security no-nos. As I explained in another thread, over a thousand people trust an intensely private part of their lives to me, and one thing my current host has excelled at is helping to keep that private through nigh-draconian means.

That's a reflection on WoW/Jag, though, not you.

----

I'll fully admit I was not your typical customer. It takes a bit of gymnastics to put a large forum on a small server, and that's sort of the issue... someone along the line needs to be able to do those gymnastics. It might be that a full VE reinstall works fine, but what if something happens again and the problem reappears out of nowhere? Or a different one.

Parallels and Virtuozzo are two additional layers of complexity that my budget does not require me to suffer. Especially when my forum is rapidly growing. I just was under the (apparently naive) assumption that everything would still be mostly sane.

My nightmare scenario sortof looks like this:

1: We get a full resetup of the VPS, I configure things and everything works fine.
2: Come the next population explosion from May-July, I need to upgrade again.
3: The same problem - whatever the cause (Debian Lenny REALLY DOESN'T LIKE LIVE CHANGES and makes its anger known?) - reasserts itself.

And I'm back at square one with two weeks until my forum dies.

So... skipping all that, I really am just looking around for a good dedicated server package right now. I can afford one and it gives me that much more peace of mind. I'm just trying to find something that beats the current server my forum is on within my budget.

In any case, thank you for your reply.