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We’re moving!

When I first started this blog over 4 years ago I was getting only a handful of visitors a day. Since then the site hasn’t stopped growing and I’m now averaging over 10,000 visitors a day. From day 1 the blog was being hosted by a good friend but now it’s time for me to move the blog to its own dedicated server.

I just signed up with Rackspace, a leading web hosting provider hosting sites like Threadless, 37signals, Liquid Web Laughing Squid, ESPN, Disney Online, Motorola, Canon USA and more. They gave me a really good deal and promised to have my server up and running by Tuesday. This means I would probably start moving my blog to the new server sometime late next week.

If you’re interested my new server will have the following specs:

Dell 2850
Dual socket = 2 Xeon 3.2 GHz performance CPU’s
Two 146GB 10,000 rpm Hard drives (Raid 1)
4GB RAM
1 x Cisco 506 Firewall
24x7x365 Unlimited live person support
Guaranteed 1 hour hardware replacement
100% network uptime (Backbone = 65GB throughput)
1000 GB High Performance, Tier 1 Redundant Bandwidth
Constant network monitoring for latencies and intrusion

During the move there should be some downtime but I will post about it ahead of time.

56 replies on “We’re moving!”

Good idea. However beware that once you use an external server, your sites might be down when their backbone fibre link breaks and vice versa when ours break. So you might have a mirror server set up in our region as well so that during down time, both servers reflect each other.

Is it a Linux based server or windows? Windows based IIS can be slower to host your blog site.

All the best with your move.

Congrats ,So for the rest of us is it going to change ur address ,and are you going to right it down for usso we can keep up with you without losing any day.

Mark–welcome to the Rackspace family. We appreciate you trusting us to host your site. We will be here when you need us–and when you don’t.

best,

Frederick
Rackspace Hosting

Only one hard disk?

They should’ve provided 2 on RAID1…

If you don’t mind, after you move, let us know how much RAM & CPU are being utilized throughout the day & month 🙂

Good luck!

I really doubt you’ll need more than 2GB of RAM, and having one disk only is really really REALLY a bad idea…

Can you tell how many concurrent connections you have per minute?
That would shed light on how much RAM you need (if needed!) — if it’s only spikes here and there, your machine should use the swap/virtual memory.

I hope it’s a Linux box…

MBH, my server currently has only one drive and its a lot slower than the drive I am getting. So one drive is fine for me, I have daily backups and if my drive ever does crash they can easily swap it out for me and restore it from my backup.

Well, I guess if you’re OK with losing 1 day worth of data, that works out.

4GB is an obscene amount of RAM for a web server though 😉

Good luck & share those statistics please!

Yeah I figured worst case I would lose like 2 or 3 posts so its not a major catastrophe. 4GB is over kill I totally agree but so is the whole server which is actually why I am feeling guilty spending this much money on hosting. I am currently hosted on a P4 3ghz with 1GB of RAM and 40GB HD thats also being shared by other big sites. But I got a good deal and they included the cisco firewall so…

Heh! That’s a big jump in specs!

Well since you have so much RAM and HDD space, you could set it up as a VPN tunnel/gateway or a proxy for yourself ;p

Are the forums hosted on the same machine as well?

Mark’s friend circa 2005: “yeah sure Mark I’ll host your site, after all, how many hits can ya get ? my servers can handle it 🙂 ”

Mark’s friend 2009: GTFO you’ve clogged up my fucking servers ! lol

All the best with the move Mark, btw there were some issues accessing your site on Saturday.

30GB A DAY! Don’t tell me you don’t have caching enabled on wordpress…

I guess it could happen if you have so many pictures, ads, email notifications and 100k hits a day!!!

Mark, if a shared P4 machine was working so well for you, why did you bother to throw away so much money on this hosting. You could have purchased a very reasonable hosting at a much lower price or helped the friend who has been hosting for you to buy a dedicated cheap ass C2D machine which would have been sufficient for your needs for many years to come.

I am actually feeling very guilty paying this much for hosting but I don’t really have a choice. I could get a nearly similar spec’ed machine from leaseweb.com without the firewall and without the server management for a third of what i am going to pay to rackspace but problem is I don’t know how to use linux and wouldn’t know how to manage the server. And once you want someone to manage the server the price goes up quickly and I am back to paying what I am going to pay for this setup.

The deal I got was $299 a month. I was able to get this deal according to the salesman because it was the end of the month and I decided to go with a recycled server. The firewall according to him is usually a 935$ add on per month. When researching most of the managed dedicated servers cost from around 250$ and up so paying 299 for a rackspace one with a firewall is actually a good deal in that sense. But from paying 0$ a month on hosting to 300$ is a giant leap!

100KD/mo is too much :/

Plus, if it’s a Linux box, you don’t need a firewall and drop 2GB RAM .. wouldn’t that reduce the price?

I would’ve loved to co-rent with you, but my files are huge (60GB+) and carry sensitive information… so I host them on my own machine at home.

Considering the mentioned server specifications and solution provider, $299 is an excellent deal!

I am not sure about Linux; however, with a Windows Server it is highly recommended to install an Antivirus Software since the firewall itself is not enough. I would recommend F Secure; it is light on the server and reasonably priced.

Congratulations!

look at this from this point

1. i dont think you need 4 GB ram, 1 to 2 GB is more than enough specially its for a single or couple of websites.

2. You will need to spend on HD space with Raid.

3. Firewall doesnt really matter, you could enable IP tables and just open port 110 and 25 for mails and 80 for browser and 21 for ftp. close everything else.

4. Since you are using WordPress, i assume you are using mysql community server which comes with most hosting. i recommend you buy MySQL entreprise which is cheap and one time charge of around 399 or 599 USD. it will be able much load and also you will get support on the product.

5. Ensure you get Entreprise linux , like Redhat or Centos or ubuntu server. dont go in for any desktop editions of linux.

6. Go for a provider which offer unlimited bandwidth. it will be pricey , but that what will be more important for you.

7. Your processing power is important , so core 2 duo is the minimum spec . Anything higher is great.

Rayboy: bocacom.com is self managed, i am looking for fully managed. Also looks shady.

Bashar: Rackscape are expensive but I actually got a good deal which is comparable to others. If you want a managed server you are going to have to pay 250$ and up. Check Verio for example, their managed linux basic DC is for like 350$. hell even dreamhosts DC is like 350$.

Rayboy:

1) Currently I have 1GB and the MySQL is the first thing to crash during an attack. More ram will make it harder to crash.

2) I don’t have raid at the moment and a slow IDE hard drive so the new 10,000rpm SCSI drive is faster

3) They gave me a good deal with the firewall, if I remove the firewall they wont drop the price.

4) Don’t know how that works

5) 64 bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

6) Couldn’t find a decent provider giving unlimited bandwidth and managed hosting for less than 300$

7) I don’t have a core 2 duo, I got 2 Xeon 3.2 GHz. Not sure if thats as fast, faster or slower..

ok Great…

just a note on this point

“1) Currently I have 1GB and the MySQL is the first thing to crash during an attack. More ram will make it harder to crash.”

Higher Ram wont make a difference for MySQL to crash. MySQL loads up in threads. If your site was having DOS attacks… its a whole different story

Not sure but my friend who is hosting me and someone I regard as super ultra geek (in a good way) said if I had more ram and a faster processor it would be a lot harder to bring the site down. He told me to get 4GB. If he told me to get 8 I would get 8. This is a guy who setup tivo to work in Kuwait with showtime! This is his blog https://rami.info/

i know rami. we have met many times over business when my company ‘was’ dealing with his ISP… Anyway i wont debate as the matter is closed since you already went ahead with rackspace.

Never go 64-bit if you have 4GB RAM or less. It will reserve 1GB for physical addressing the rest. 64-bit is only useful for more than 4GB. This applies to both Linux and Windows.

Since Sun bought MySQL, they’ve been releasing it with bugs [version 5.1] (which is why the founder left). Unfortunately there are no stable ports to other databases (notably: PostgreSQL).

Buying MySQL Enterprise *could* solve your *attack* (?) issues. Though in many cases, all it takes is a bit of fine-tuning some parameters to make it more robust and fit for your hardware specs.

Dual Xeon @ 3.2GHz is AWESOME!

Once you move to your new host, see if you’re still having problems or crashes, and let us know. I can help you tinker with the box.

Hey Mark — you certainly got a good deal (considering your DC) but as others have mentioned, the specs are insane for what you’ll be doing. May I suggest donating some spare cycles to SETI@Home or Protein@Home. We could all join in a group.

If you are serious about splitting the cost, let me know 🙂

MBH:

“Never go 64-bit if you have 4GB RAM or less. It will reserve 1GB for physical addressing the rest.”

If you are talking about PAE, this is only used on 32-bit systems to enable mapping unused space, and even then — if you are running a 32-bit version (of say Windows), then PAE will only enable access to 4GB of RAM; not more. You won’t lose 1GB. Native 64-bit OS, don’t need to use PAE (because they will not install on non-64bit archs).

Hey Burhan! Haven’t seen your emails for a while :p

You’re right. I didn’t separate between 32-bit & 64-bit. But from what I saw, on some computers with 32-bit Linux/Windows + PAE, sometimes you get to use the whole 4GB, sometimes you end up with 3GB only. I have no idea how it decided that :/

Folding@Home ftw!

Ok my account manager called me today, very cool guy. He gave me another drive so now I have 2 running in Raid 1 and they’re also installing plesk for me.

I worked at Rackspace long ago, and though their customer service is very good, I think they’re a bit pricey. I also worked at Liquid Web, and love that place. Not as “corporate”, better prices and competitive hardware and solutions. Tell ’em “Zombo” sent ya!

rackspace rocks in term of support and quick response but pricing is expensive so many major news websites in kuwait is using it just traced a couple of them 3 ended up in rackspace mostly in uk not us

Hello everyone,

I spoke to the original sales consultant here at Rackspace and he informed me that this was a Recycled server that was only offered for a very limited time. This was one of three identical servers that were available and sold within the same day.

If you would like to touch base with me at the end of most month to see if we have these servers availible please reach out to me.

Mario Tanchez
512-539-1087
[email protected]

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