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Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#81

Post by lsc »

rphlx wrote: post #71
lsc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the latency difference between fios and co-lo is going to be tiny. 10ms vs 50ms at most. (yeah, 5x difference, but it's still fifty friggen milliseconds)

Same for cable.. on TWC I can ping 1,500 miles away in ~60ms. L3 latency is usually a small fraction of the initial website load time. Inline the js + css, strip whitespace, enable gzip, use memcached, get a server that can fit the whole DB in RAM, etc. Preventing packet loss is very important, though (a TCP retrans adds 2-3 seconds). I do think datacenters have a real edge there.

packet loss is pretty huge, and data centers, generally speaking, really are better in that regard.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#82

Post by brk »

lsc wrote: post #60
brk wrote: post #10

$100/mo? That's $40/mo. more than I charge for 1U of real datacenter space with a 5Mbps (shared) connection. Plus, if you actually start generating a lot of traffic I'm not going to randomly cut you off or throttle your connection like Comcast might.

you know what bothers me? when people quote co-lo price in rackspace without power. If you are willing to go with 1/40th of a 15a circuit, 33.7 watts usable, I could sell you 1u for $20/month and I'd be doubling my costs. Of course, running almost anything in that power envelope would be nigh impossible. that's barely enough power to run three 3.5" disks and nothing else. the OP is talking about a quad-core CPU, so w…

I include 1 UPS'd outlet. I don't get overly concerned about power draw, it averages out. There is only so much power you can draw in 1U. People coming in with a beefy-ass server are going to tend to want dedicated bandwidth and a small subnet of their own (if not immediately, then when their operation grows), which moves them out of the $60/mo package and in to something more custom.

But yes, power IS one of the more costly bits of running a datacenter and I could see where some sites would expect you to run no more than a nite-lite on the power that is included.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#83

Post by lsc »

code_duck wrote: post #80
lsc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3MB/sec isn't a fair share of a disk? I think it is. to start, your cheap sata disk is going to max out a 100Mb/sec for /sequential/ transfers. Now, cut that in quarters, because two different guests streaming data to the disk make sequential random. so you have 25MB/s. double it, as they are probably raid-10ing the disk (at least, that's what I do) so we have a best case 50MB/s to share. Now, they are probably in a…

Your calculations assume I am talking about bog $20/mo VPS. Nope, I'm talking about a $160 a month system with 2GB ram, 72 MB HD space, etc. As far as I know 4-8 of those fit on one of their systems. If I had a 256/384 slice, yeah, I doubt if the rest of the system could handle enough traffic that the I/O would matter. My 2 year old, nothing special home desktop gives me 72 mb/s. I expect that a pricey VPS will perfo…

Yeah, like I said, I from what I hear, linode is managing disk I/O well.

Have you ever gotten a warning about using too much IO from linode?

ok, so let's go back and see the math again... so there were 14 systems or so on that 32GiB system, so if everyone was going at the disk, you'd get what, 3.5MB/sec- about what you were seeing.

I'm just pointing out, when you 'virtualize' a hard drive, you are sharing a resource that really doesn't share very well. you were getting your 'fair share' of the server at slicehost; it sounds like linode just does a much better job of keeping everyone from trying to use all available disk at all times.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#84

Post by code_duck »

lsc wrote: post #83
code_duck wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your calculations assume I am talking about bog $20/mo VPS. Nope, I'm talking about a $160 a month system with 2GB ram, 72 MB HD space, etc. As far as I know 4-8 of those fit on one of their systems. If I had a 256/384 slice, yeah, I doubt if the rest of the system could handle enough traffic that the I/O would matter. My 2 year old, nothing special home desktop gives me 72 mb/s. I expect that a pricey VPS will perfo…

Yeah, like I said, I from what I hear, linode is managing disk I/O well. Have you ever gotten a warning about using too much IO from linode? ok, so let's go back and see the math again... so there were 14 systems or so on that 32GiB system, so if everyone was going at the disk, you'd get what, 3.5MB/sec- about what you were seeing. I'm just pointing out, when you 'virtualize' a hard drive, you are sharing a resource…

Our i/o isn't really very high. It is under 1 mb/s on average, actually! So I have no idea what the issue is. You're right, 3 MB/S SHOULD be enough because according to our Linode graph, the i/o hasn't been over 2 mb/s in the past week. I can only imagine that certain times at Slicehost must have been providing less than at the times I tested it.

That's what is frustrating for me. We don't have a demanding application. It's well written and tuned, but I was having these problems, and as far as I knew I was paying enough to not have such problems. Maybe we're on a spacious server at Linode or were graced with idle neighbors... all I know is, the system load on Linode is muuuch more stable, (and low!) even though our system is doing twice as much. And, it costs half as much.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#85

Post by lsc »

brk wrote: post #82
lsc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know what bothers me? when people quote co-lo price in rackspace without power. If you are willing to go with 1/40th of a 15a circuit, 33.7 watts usable, I could sell you 1u for $20/month and I'd be doubling my costs. Of course, running almost anything in that power envelope would be nigh impossible. that's barely enough power to run three 3.5" disks and nothing else. the OP is talking about a quad-core CPU, so w…

I include 1 UPS'd outlet. I don't get overly concerned about power draw, it averages out. There is only so much power you can draw in 1U. People coming in with a beefy-ass server are going to tend to want dedicated bandwidth and a small subnet of their own (if not immediately, then when their operation grows), which moves them out of the $60/mo package and in to something more custom. But yes, power IS one of the mor…

>There is only so much power you can draw in 1U

that sounds like a challenge to me, and is the opposite of my experience.

I used to run a bunch of these:

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/1U/1021/AS-1021TM-T_....

with high power CPUs, the goddamn thing would draw four amps. with the advent of socket g34, quad-cpu systems now cost no more than 2x dual-cpu systems, even without the 'two in 1u' bit:

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/1U/1042/AS-1042G-TF.c...

where are you located? I'm in the bay area, (where power is super expensive) and my experience has been that power doesn't average out. people keep wanting to bring in ancient dual netburst Xeon space heaters, "It's only 1u!" even though the goddamn thing eats two and a half amps.

this, you see, is why I don't do co-lo anymore.

Now, it's possible that power is just so much cheaper for you than it is for me that it doesn't matter... either way, I want more details. seriously, right now I'm recommending other co-lo places on my co-lo order page... http://prgmr.com/san-jose-co-location.html I know the guy running rippleweb is in sacramento, and is paying around 1/3rd of what I do for power.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#86

Post by lsc »

code_duck wrote: post #84
lsc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, like I said, I from what I hear, linode is managing disk I/O well. Have you ever gotten a warning about using too much IO from linode? ok, so let's go back and see the math again... so there were 14 systems or so on that 32GiB system, so if everyone was going at the disk, you'd get what, 3.5MB/sec- about what you were seeing. I'm just pointing out, when you 'virtualize' a hard drive, you are sharing a resource…

Our i/o isn't really very high. It is under 1 mb/s on average, actually! So I have no idea what the issue is. You're right, 3 MB/S SHOULD be enough because according to our Linode graph, the i/o hasn't been over 2 mb/s in the past week. I can only imagine that certain times at Slicehost must have been providing less than at the times I tested it. That's what is frustrating for me. We don't have a demanding applicatio…

I didn't say 3MB/sec was enough... just that it was fair. there's a difference, you know.

I suspect the differences you saw after moving had to do with how active the other users of the disk were. this may have been chance, or it may have been Linode's policy of pro actively doing things about heavy disk users.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#87

Post by code_duck »

lsc wrote: post #86
code_duck wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our i/o isn't really very high. It is under 1 mb/s on average, actually! So I have no idea what the issue is. You're right, 3 MB/S SHOULD be enough because according to our Linode graph, the i/o hasn't been over 2 mb/s in the past week. I can only imagine that certain times at Slicehost must have been providing less than at the times I tested it. That's what is frustrating for me. We don't have a demanding applicatio…

I didn't say 3MB/sec was enough... just that it was fair. there's a difference, you know. I suspect the differences you saw after moving had to do with how active the other users of the disk were. this may have been chance, or it may have been Linode's policy of pro actively doing things about heavy disk users.

Thanks for your insights on this.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#88

Post by vkalladath »

I host my sites on a server in my living room.

I use my HTPC at home as a server for my SVN and sites which haven't started making money for me yet. What I like about this setup is that I can deploy large amounts of data in an instant. I have a mostly static site with a few million pages I plan to update daily.

More importantly, now I can justify paying for the fast internet connection and keeping the PC running 24hrs.

The problem area is keeping backups. My server is a retired P4 I got from ebay for $50, which is not really reliable. I had to go through the pain of setting up all my backup scripts, which I guess I would have to do any way.

The P4 has enough processing power to handle all my sites' traffic while I'm watching youtube on it.

I also use the server to download anything and everything I need. It also serves as a file server and hosts some of my personal ssh tunnels and proxies.

Having said that, I would recommend using a home server unless you really don't want to spend money on hosting or if you are worried about bandwidth caps. Start ups can benefit from a home server, but plan to movie it to a real server once you start growing. Don't invest on home server hardware or try to upgrade. What you already have is probably good enough.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#89

Post by brk »

lsc wrote: post #85
brk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I include 1 UPS'd outlet. I don't get overly concerned about power draw, it averages out. There is only so much power you can draw in 1U. People coming in with a beefy-ass server are going to tend to want dedicated bandwidth and a small subnet of their own (if not immediately, then when their operation grows), which moves them out of the $60/mo package and in to something more custom. But yes, power IS one of the mor…

>There is only so much power you can draw in 1U that sounds like a challenge to me, and is the opposite of my experience. I used to run a bunch of these: http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/1U/1021/AS-1021TM-T_.... with high power CPUs, the goddamn thing would draw four amps. with the advent of socket g34, quad-cpu systems now cost no more than 2x dual-cpu systems, even without the 'two in 1u' bit: http://www.supe…

where are you located

Massachusetts.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?

#90

Post by chrisbolt »

duck wrote: post #14
fierarul wrote: post #7

Over an year this costs you about $1200 for bandwidth + $500 for hardware + electricity/service. Let's say an even $1600 or ~ $135 / month. $135 / month buys you two 1.5GB Linode instances or one 2GB Slicehost instance (I use Slicehost but they seem to be much more expensive compared to Linode). The reason I see renting VPSs, especially at the beginning, as a smart thing is that you are postponing the actual hardware…

Plus your time to spec and build the boxes and to maintain them. If your time is worth $100 an hour that is going to be a lot more per month than $135.

When you're bootstrapping a startup, you're more likely to have time than the money that your time is worth.
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