Dear All,

My apologies if the DhO has been slow or unstable recently: my internet service provider has been working on the lines out here, but I am looking at a longer term solution in which I move the mac mini it runs on into town and place it in/near a colo (large internet hub with lots of fiber). It will cost me a bit to rent the rack space and connection, but not much in the overall scheme of things, and should get me a fast, symmetrical connection, perhaps 100M up and down, which would be awesome, and this place should run like a top.

Anyway, expect some instability until that happens. The long-term effect should be worth it.

Be well and practice well,

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

Why don't you sign up for an account with Amazon Web Services and move the server to the cloud? Amazon's rates are quite reasonable, they take care of all the system level IT, and you get quite high bandwidth. I think Amazon uses Xen as their hypervisor, so it might be a bit of work to get a VM out of the current server. If they could take VMWare images, you could simply install VMWare Fusion on your Mac, clone the VM and upload it to Amazon.

               

I looked at AWS just now: it all seems to be pay for what happens, meaning that more requests mean more costs, more data sent means more costs, more computations means more costs, such that, were someone to be malignant and attack the server, as has happened before (we think), I would pay those data costs. Further, I wasn't able to figure out how to get a dedicated blade/CPU when I looked at their pricing.

I would be amazed if whatever they gave me was able to compete consistently with a quad-core i7 with 16GB RAM and an SSD drive all its own. Further, I already own that box, so it is no cost to me anymore, so renting their processor seems less efficient than renting dedicated bandwidth, which I couldn't figure out how to price on their website either.

Thoughts?

Daniel

If you already own the box, it'll be cheaper to put it in a colo.

On the other hand, if you ever get fed up with dealing with your own physical server, the possibilities are definitely there. I also find AWS pricing totally mystifying. Fixed-price packages from Digital Ocean and the like are much easier to get a handle on.

Digital Ocean still has a fixed amount of transfer data in all the packages I saw: that makes me nervous. I would really prefer to just have an fast connection without restrictions on data usage. Still, thanks for the suggestion.

if i can point to an excellent service, and if you can afford 42 usd per month, get the cheapest dedicated server here .. unless you have 1m hits /month, but even then   : http://www.soyoustart.com/us/essential-servers/

this service is a subset of www.ovh.com (https://www.ovh.com/us/), truely the biggest and best service known in Europe, extremely good peering worldwide, and a company true to the internets heart values. 15years+ , owning many servers , actually 5;  you have all os flavours , mosts panels (cpanel, plesk etc..) pick to your liking, no hidden or surprise fees;

I know very well aws and all its services around. i only use them when i need instant, big big power .. otherwise, for simple web hosting, its overkill (imao ..)

That is a hip tip. Actually, $42 per month is a bit cheeper than the other options I was exploring, and definitely doable. Their prices are great for how much processor power and bandwidth you get. That's the sort of power level I have been thinking of.

Simon: thoughts?

Daniel

There have been many complaints about OVH and their subsidiaries taking months to "verify" new accounts and being uncommunicative during the process. That's the only thing to watch for there.

OVH's Kimsufi brand also does dedis at low prices, but SoYouStart seems to be "in stock" more often than Kimsufi. I don't know what the other differences are.

If it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.

Hi again, i think SoYouStart is simply the north-american version of Ovh's Kimsuffi offer in Europe ;  "kimsuffi" meaning in French "justwhatineedtohavethejobdone"  .. that's one of their big commercial hit .. because of their level of competence, technical offer, price for nearly 15years . i used to chat with the two shareholders (2 brothers and their father) back in the days of irc .. they have incredibly grown , today they are a heavy international player, and number one in europe ... started in Poland and immigrated in France just a bit before working on their passion.. true .com'ers who kept their philosophy/passion

On my side, i set up my initial account long ago, didn't have to complain,  but also some others quite recently, was quite instant, and required no verification process, other than having a valid debit card. If you pay in another form, that can maybe take time ? also, i guess the support staff is still quite young on your side of the globe.. also, if you need them to explain you how to setup some personnalised software on a server, any os flavour, not their job, If you break the server, not their job, just push the rebuild button, but if you have troubles with one of their admin tools, they answer quite toroughfully ; Also, If i correctly remember, ovh's services in NA started a year and a half ago.. Cool thing is their datacenters are brand new , there is plenty of place; 

Chris, the problem is not if the website is broken   it is if it is resiliant enough and tolerant to faults in case of traffic load, security, redundancy of backups etc.. without having Daniel sleeping with one eye closed only, monitoring his homebound server with the other (but still meditating with his third eye ^^ ..)

Oh, that's where the name comes from ... qui me suffit ... thanks!

Yes, tout à fait ! You are very welcome, avec Plaisir Derek !   And i also must say many thanks to you and this forum people, i learn much everyday in here too ! (Especially about myself ! ) 

Except that it is more broken than you imagine. Sometimes it runs very slowly. Not infrequently, it goes down and then comes back up. I notice this as I get the notifications, and, if you weren't logged in 24/7, you wouldn't likely notice it. Still, it is a problem, and it is due to my DSL connection, which, at about 5-6 miles from the fiber, is really pushing the limits of twisted copper pairs.

Further, things you wouldn't notice unless you lived here: my cell phone runs off of a local box that catches the signal and transmits it down the DSL line, as I live in the Greater Nowhere Area, not even in Nowhere proper, so there is little cell signal out her in this "holler". When there is heavy use on the DhO, I get packet loss of about 32%, according to Verizon techs, which explains where often people can barely understand what I am saying when I try to talk to them on my cell phone from home.

Further, if I want to stream a movie or something, as DSL is assymetrical and built oddly, if the 2MB I have up is being used, the 12MB I have down barely works, so that annoys myself and my wife, and annoying my wife is a bad idea.

Thus, I do need to fix this, unfortunately, but it will be worth it in the end if all goes well.

re: Daniel M. Ingram (5/31/15 2:16 AM as a reply to Chris J Macie.)

"Thus, I do need to fix this, unfortunately, but it will be worth it in the end if all goes well."

It does sound more serious, especially the bit with the family.

From this end here DhO is actually about as responsive as the email vendor, or the credit-union or most news sources. I was amazed to learn it was all run over a twisted-copper-pair from the middle of Nowhere (where No-one lives, doing Nothing?).

Good luck, and use your best Magick.

I'd like to help with this, but my technical skills are limited to Googling for answers.

I did find colos in Huntsville and Birmingham at https://www.hiwaay.net/colocation/colotechspecs.html They seem to assume you'll have a 19-inch rack-mountable server.

There is, on the other hand, an outfit in Atlanta that specializes in Mac Mini colocation: https://macstadium.com/colo

Yeah 6 miles is a long way from the exchange. Its definely worth getting this hosted and will probably cost you much less than you think. In the mean time, it might be worth checking your ADSL microfilter/microsplitter if you have one. I was recently getting my internet with a high packet loss, sometimes entirely dropping out. Mine was built into the phone socket, so I had the tech talk me through unscrewing it from the wall, and reseating it. There are different types, and yours might just be the adaptor type, but its a cheap (a few dollars or verizon might just send you one) and easy thing to check, assuming you havent already. 

also, is the email notification linked to this? I have stopped recieving email notifications on subscribed threads over the last few weeks. Just wondering if you swiched that off, to try and stablise things?

email notifications are back!