Anyone know a reliable VPS provider?

[flesso]

Originally Posted by DPS Computing

There we go - I knew support would be able to help you out with it no matter whether you are a shared, VPS Hosting or dedicated customer.

I assume that the VPS Hosting meets your needs at the moment anyway flesso so that is why you are staying on one? Hows the stability and load with yours - other people seem to be having load problems in the other thread?

I'm on the l-VPS Hosting-03 package and my stability is fine. I've had a few problems with Apache and so support had to tweak it. It could be because it's running 4 website hostings which never get any visitors; that will change soon though as I'm gonna set my own hosting and design business up properly (got the time now).

[pkearney]

Originally Posted by 247h

P.S. Paul, did you receive my PM?

Hi Gadge,

Only just noticed the PM and have responded. I can see the benefit of not adding the resource overhead of a VPS Hosting setup to a dedicated server (and the extra cost for Virtuozzo!). As long as there is someone in the group that know what they are doing I am a firm believer in keeping it simple

Paul

[flesso]

Originally Posted by pkearney

Hi Gadge,

Only just noticed the PM and have responded. I can see the benefit of not adding the resource overhead of a VPS Hosting setup to a dedicated server (and the extra cost for Virtuozzo!). As long as there is someone in the group that know what they are doing I am a firm believer in keeping it simple

Paul

Instead of having Virtuozzo, you could always set up OpenVZ (which is free). That is basically Virtuozzo but without the power panel (VZPP).

[pkearney]

Originally Posted by flesso

Instead of having Virtuozzo, you could always set up OpenVZ (which is free). That is basically Virtuozzo but without the power panel (VZPP).

Hi Flesso,

OpenVZ doesn't get a lot of love from me... it was a bug in it that kept my VPS Hosting node down for over a day

Paul

[flesso]

Originally Posted by pkearney

Hi Flesso,

OpenVZ doesn't get a lot of love from me... it was a bug in it that kept my VPS Hosting node down for over a day

Paul

That's been fixed now. And it only affected that certain node. Millions have companies have used it for a long time with no problems.

[247h]

Originally Posted by flesso

...Millions have companies have used it for a long time with no problems.

Ah, the power of overstatement! Rubbish!

If that were true of this single, solitary company in whose forum we debate, why then would I have been driven towards a stable solution after the abject failure of two completely separate VPS Hosting nodes to give me reliable uptime and performance? The first ended up with a thrashed, then trashed HDD (well-documented VPS Hosting weakness); the second was seemingly occupied by disruptive and bandwidth-hungry third parties over which I had NO control but from which I suffered far too often, however there were far more problems than just that, some of which were attributable to OpenVZ (in hindsight)! All disappeared after moving to a dedicated server; one without 'wallies' and virtual machines — what conclusion would you draw from that?

I think the objective answer Josh is probably that your use of a VPS Hosting bears no comparison to mine, nor having seen in detail what Paul uses, his either — we have reseller and user accounts in abundance for one thing and I think your needs are more modest? Neither Paul nor I overloaded our VPS Hostings in an easily identifiable way yet there were problems that left us with unsatisfied customers — that's the worst aspect ...

Paul has just been advised by eUK-Martin in another thread that his VPS Hosting is now in need of an upgrade and I believe he would be better not to be hosting on a VPS Hosting, based upon my own experience, as the potential pitfalls remain even when you upgrade — caveat emptor!

[paul]

If VPS Hosting is unable to meet your resource needs effectively don't expect it will outperform a server of any providers, it is best time to shift to dedicated server in my opinion.

[DPS Computing]

I agree with both Roger and Paul (as well as Martin in the other thread). I think it is time for a dedicated server - it will be a lot less frustrating for you and it will actually meet your needs.

Considering that your process list has now been analysed in the other thread and it has been discovered that you need more resources it seems the only logical option to get a dedicated server - either that or you will probably unfortunately have more problems in the future .

Its like trying to run a game without enough memory or run a program without meeting its requirements!!

Do keep us informed of your decision Paul .

[pkearney]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the reponses. However I am still far from convinced this is a performance issue due to load from my accounts.

Right now things seem to be just running this side of stable so I'm in no rush to make a very significant decision to change from a monthly cost of £25 to well in excess of £100 for a dedicated service. I only have 2 'paying' customers, the rest are family & friends. I hope to increase the paying customers, but not until I have a stable solution that leaves me some room to make a profit.

The analysis that was made from my process list dealt with the top 4 processes, which according to the list were sleeping and accounted for less than 10% off all the memory... so where has all the rest been used.

I have made a couple changes as per Flesso's post on tweaking the Cpanel (here) which may have made some difference. Up until now the localusr accounts for all my domains were acting as catchall mail accounts which I was unaware of. I've now set them to fail (and may set them to black hole as I guess failing them still requires the server to mail them back which is some work). There were over 25,000 spam messages in these accounts (from approx 3-4 months of hosting), which have now been deleted.

I can't realistically consider a VPS Hosting upgrade at present, as I don't see what benefit that will give me (I don't need the additional disk space, and the additional bandwidth seems like a waste of time, as I have only used less that 1% of my current 200Gb allowance).

I'm now monitoring my VPS Hosting by checking the sever status regularly and hope things will improve.

I'll also wait to see what the new smaller scale dedicated server offering will be, but not being a linux expert may put me off this. Another option for me that I'm considering is getting 1 (or more) small VPS Hostings with other ISPs, so that I can try some load balancing/redundancy or moving domains we find to be more resource intensive than others, but this brings the added headache of managing different services.

I know there are stats on the server - can anyone recommend the best way to interogate these? As the main task is probably mail is there anything that is logging the amount of resources, inbound, outbound, spam scanning, etc which is happening? Is there (or can there be) something that monitors CPU load, memory load, swap etc over time, so I can see if there are any patterns there.

Thanks again for all responses.

Regards

Paul

[Fidget]

Originally Posted by pkearney

The analysis that was made from my process list dealt with the top 4 processes, which according to the list were sleeping and accounted for less than 10% off all the memory... so where has all the rest been used.

Where is this analysis, or discussion thereof?

Originally Posted by pkearney

I have made a couple changes as per Flesso's post on tweaking the Cpanel (here) which may have made some difference. Up until now the localusr accounts for all my domains were acting as catchall mail accounts which I was unaware of. I've now set them to fail (and may set them to black hole as I guess failing them still requires the server to mail them back which is some work). There were over 25,000 spam messages in these accounts (from approx 3-4 months of hosting), which have now been deleted.

DO NOT use blackhole whatever you do! Using :fail: stops the message being processed by the mail server - it is rejected at SMTP time which means it isn't even accepted, whereas :blackhole: accepts and then deletes the message which takes more processing power/memory.

Are you running Spamassassin? If so set it to use a max of 2 child processes. Are you on a linux VPS Hosting with WHM/cPanel, if so are you using v11 with X3 skin?

Just reading what you have just posted suggests to me that resources are being/have been gobbled up by spam mail processing. Did you introduce any particular configuration into Exim to handle spam and virii?

If its not mail, using CSF (configserver firewall) which has LFD is extremely useful in tracking user processes which over use resources, and can even be set to automatically kill processes which take up too much memory.


.

[pkearney]

Hi Fidget,

This is the thread where I posted the processes (the 9th message),

How much can a VPS do....

Thanks a lot for the warning on the blackhole That would have been my next port of call.

I am using Spam Assassin on a Linux VPS Hosting, but still running V10 of the Cpanel (so an older version of SA I assume). They did upgrade me but I asked to be downgraded again as SA seemed to handle messages differently, not tagging them with as much detail as before.

I don't believe there are any special configurations for Exim to handle Spam/Viruses, I asked that everything should be allowed through and SA handle it.

Only downside is I'm not very voiced in the black arts of Linux yet, so I'll have to look up the CDF stuff

Thanks

Paul

[Fidget]

Originally Posted by pkearney

Hi Fidget,

This is the thread where I posted the processes (the 9th message),

How much can a VPS do....

Thanks a lot for the warning on the blackhole That would have been my next port of call.

I am using Spam Assassin on a Linux VPS Hosting, but still running V10 of the Cpanel (so an older version of SA I assume). They did upgrade me but I asked to be downgraded again as SA seemed to handle messages differently, not tagging them with as much detail as before.

I don't believe there are any special configurations for Exim to handle Spam/Viruses, I asked that everything should be allowed through and SA handle it.

Only downside is I'm not very voiced in the black arts of Linux yet, so I'll have to look up the CDF stuff

Thanks

Paul

I'll reply in the other thread as well then, but with regards cpanel v11 - I'm very surprised you rolled back due to SA. SA is configurable (scores can be set as well as tagging) in the updated Exim Configuration editor (in standard mode). So, I would strongly recommend that you upgrade again and edit Exim configuration in WHM as needed. To be honest, I run a VPS Hosting here with a high amount of traffic and website hostings, with SA which handles an average of 2 to 3 spam emails per second (that excludes what is rejected at SMTP time - i.e. non-existent addresses and spamhaus/RBL matches), all with no memory problems.

I mentioned Exim and Spam configuration because some peope employ these methods which consume considerable amounts of memory (and are subsequently not very appropriate for a VPS Hosting).

Sapmassassin needs a tweak to work with a lower memory footprint - discussed in the other thread ....