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Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

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Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#21

Post by jacquesm »

jbyers wrote: post #7

Don't trust any servers to anyone. When we get a new server we check its stats against reality (have had upside and downside surprises on CPUs), run bonnie++ to make sure IO is as expected (it hasn't been due to exotic RAID problems), and run memtester to see if we have bad RAM (had that too). Takes more time, sure, but no surprises later.

Apropos upsides, always do an fdisk /dev/sdX for the drives that are not installed in your machine, sometimes you get more than you paid for.

This happened to me several times at EV1, same with memory and CPU.

It really pays off to check if you can boot a machine with an SMP kernel and another CPU shows up too (don't bother doing that on a celeron box though).

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#22

Post by sailormoon »

jacquesm wrote: post #17
sailormoon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really do not dig this tone. The guy is obviously not a system admin. He paid top dollar for rackspace managed hosting precisely so he wouldn't have to do the kinds of things you mention. "You can't outsource responsibility" is utter nonsense. It is completely impossible to "own" responsibility for everything important in a complex society. Meaningless platitudes should not distract from the fact - Rackspace did no…

I didn't say he shouldn't be running a startup, I said he should not be managing the servers their customers stuff runs on. As for the tone, you may disagree with that but that does not distract from the fact that if you operate a business, that you should know your stuff. And if you outsource something you should at least know how to check up on the bits that you've outsourced. Outsourcing does not mean that your re…

"I said he should not be managing the servers their customers stuff runs on."

And what if it's only him? No go then huh?

You've been saying a lot of this kind of thing lately. That guy before with the App Store payment problem? You came down on him like a ton of bricks. And now this. Just because people haven't dotted every i and crossed every t. It's not exactly the hacker mentality is it?

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#23

Post by jacquesm »

sailormoon wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say he shouldn't be running a startup, I said he should not be managing the servers their customers stuff runs on. As for the tone, you may disagree with that but that does not distract from the fact that if you operate a business, that you should know your stuff. And if you outsource something you should at least know how to check up on the bits that you've outsourced. Outsourcing does not mean that your re…

"I said he should not be managing the servers their customers stuff runs on." And what if it's only him? No go then huh? You've been saying a lot of this kind of thing lately. That guy before with the App Store payment problem? You came down on him like a ton of bricks. And now this. Just because people haven't dotted every i and crossed every t. It's not exactly the hacker mentality is it?

Then he could hire a part-time sysadmin, there are plenty of those looking for work. I figure for $200 / month he can switch to a similar powered dedicated server with a competitor and pay a guy for 4 hours worth of real hands on sysadmin time every month. That way he pays roughly the same and comes out ahead in every way.

Managing UNIX systems that have to perform well under load takes quite a bit of knowledge. Sure, everybody can install 'ubuntu', 'redhat', 'gentoo' or whatever flavor is popular this week. But that does not make you a system administrator. I wouldn't trust myself with my customers machines either, simply because to stay up-to-date on all the holes in all the packages that you may have installed and keeping them patched is real work.

I don't think I came down on the app-store guy 'like a ton of bricks', in fact I gave what I thought was pretty sensible advice and offered (after Sam Odio did) to help him out.

But it's essentially the same problem as what is happening here, blame company X because of something that you caused yourself.

The app store guy:

  - quit job before having money in the bank
  - set up overly complicated corporate structure to avoid non-existent liability
This guy:

  - take responsibility for a part of the operation that he's not qualified to do
  - keep on messing for two years without calling in outside help (sure, it will cost)
And both of them point the finger at another party.

So maybe that's why it seems to you that this is a 'lot of this kind of thing'.

As for whether or not it is the hacker mentality is not my thing, I call it as I see it.

I've had people here rip me to bits for making a stupid remark (and rightly so), if you can dish it 'Rackspace is at fault because they don't know how to upgrade a cpu' or 'Apple is at fault because they don't pay me' then you should be able to take it.

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#24

Post by sailormoon »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
sailormoon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I said he should not be managing the servers their customers stuff runs on." And what if it's only him? No go then huh? You've been saying a lot of this kind of thing lately. That guy before with the App Store payment problem? You came down on him like a ton of bricks. And now this. Just because people haven't dotted every i and crossed every t. It's not exactly the hacker mentality is it?

Then he could hire a part-time sysadmin, there are plenty of those looking for work. I figure for $200 / month he can switch to a similar powered dedicated server with a competitor and pay a guy for 4 hours worth of real hands on sysadmin time every month. That way he pays roughly the same and comes out ahead in every way. Managing UNIX systems that have to perform well under load takes quite a bit of knowledge. Sure…

Since it's basically personal I'll take it to e-mail if that's OK with you.

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#25

Post by jacquesm »

sailormoon wrote: post #24
jacquesm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he could hire a part-time sysadmin, there are plenty of those looking for work. I figure for $200 / month he can switch to a similar powered dedicated server with a competitor and pay a guy for 4 hours worth of real hands on sysadmin time every month. That way he pays roughly the same and comes out ahead in every way. Managing UNIX systems that have to perform well under load takes quite a bit of knowledge. Sure…

Since it's basically personal I'll take it to e-mail if that's OK with you.

Anytime!

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#26

Post by nailer »

jacquesm wrote: post #8
inaka wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

attempting to ignore snarkyness, but failing - and that says what about the dozens of rackspace engineers configuring and monitoring and supporting the box over the past two years?

There once was a really nice quote here on HN: "you can't outsource responsibility". If in two years time you've never ever had a look at what kernel you are running, especially while tuning a system for performance you only have yourself to blame. Don't tell me you're running a 'stock' kernel and never bothered tuning it for your application, or considered upgrading it. Also, in your resources list you should have t…

'Don't tell me you're running a 'stock' kernel and never bothered tuning it for your application, or considered upgrading it.'

Not sure why you've got 'stock' in quotes. Vendor kernels are used by hundres of thousands of servers, each sharing the same bug reports and security updates. There's a massive benefit unless you think you can do those bug reports and security updates better than your OS vendor.

Most custom compiles are by people who don't understand loadable modules or read somethign written before they existed.

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#27

Post by inaka »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #19
sailormoon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really do not dig this tone. The guy is obviously not a system admin. He paid top dollar for rackspace managed hosting precisely so he wouldn't have to do the kinds of things you mention. "You can't outsource responsibility" is utter nonsense. It is completely impossible to "own" responsibility for everything important in a complex society. Meaningless platitudes should not distract from the fact - Rackspace did no…

I'm not a big fan of the tone, either, however, jacquesm is spot-on in his assessment. For one thing, my understanding of Rackspace's business practices -- and I've only dealt with them peripherally, so I might be a bit wrong here -- is that they "manage" things like their network, and the actual server hardware, and stuff like that. So, if you want a CPU upgrade, sure, they'll do that. If you need your server reboot…

probably not a good idea to comment authoritatively on a company you haven't worked with, but no, kernel management is part of rackspace's job. performance and monitoring is part of their job. they have an SLA and this is absolutely part of it...

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#28

Post by inaka »

jacquesm wrote: post #8
inaka wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

attempting to ignore snarkyness, but failing - and that says what about the dozens of rackspace engineers configuring and monitoring and supporting the box over the past two years?

There once was a really nice quote here on HN: "you can't outsource responsibility". If in two years time you've never ever had a look at what kernel you are running, especially while tuning a system for performance you only have yourself to blame. Don't tell me you're running a 'stock' kernel and never bothered tuning it for your application, or considered upgrading it. Also, in your resources list you should have t…

Honestly your tone stings a bit, jacquesm. I guess i shouldn't have titled it 'don't trust rackspace' but my larger point is exactly the opposite of what you wrote - take responsibility for your servers - don't trust anyone, even the most expensive hosting provider, to do it for you.

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#29

Post by dagw »

sailormoon wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There once was a really nice quote here on HN: "you can't outsource responsibility". If in two years time you've never ever had a look at what kernel you are running, especially while tuning a system for performance you only have yourself to blame. Don't tell me you're running a 'stock' kernel and never bothered tuning it for your application, or considered upgrading it. Also, in your resources list you should have t…

I really do not dig this tone. The guy is obviously not a system admin. He paid top dollar for rackspace managed hosting precisely so he wouldn't have to do the kinds of things you mention. "You can't outsource responsibility" is utter nonsense. It is completely impossible to "own" responsibility for everything important in a complex society. Meaningless platitudes should not distract from the fact - Rackspace did no…

It all comes down to what I paid for. Check your contracts carefully.

Some places basically just give you a computer and make sure that it always has power and network and that the hard drive is backed up, and everything after that is up to you. Other places give you 24 hour sys-admins that continuously monitor everything and basically manage every aspect of your server. The former obviously costs a lot less than the latter.

It's perfectly OK to outsource responsibility, but you've got to pay top dollar for someone to take on that responsibility. You cannot go for the cheap option and expect all the services offered by the expensive option.

Re: Cat /proc/cpuinfo or don't trust your cores to rackspace part i

#30

Post by jacquesm »

inaka wrote: post #28
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There once was a really nice quote here on HN: "you can't outsource responsibility". If in two years time you've never ever had a look at what kernel you are running, especially while tuning a system for performance you only have yourself to blame. Don't tell me you're running a 'stock' kernel and never bothered tuning it for your application, or considered upgrading it. Also, in your resources list you should have t…

Honestly your tone stings a bit, jacquesm. I guess i shouldn't have titled it 'don't trust rackspace' but my larger point is exactly the opposite of what you wrote - take responsibility for your servers - don't trust anyone, even the most expensive hosting provider, to do it for you.

That's a whole lot better, if that was the message then it somehow got lost to me.

Again, apologies for the tone, but it really seems to be a trend to make a mistake, 'blame someone', then blog about it.

What I would suggest you do, and this is meant very seriously, is find a cheaper hosting provider (EV1/The Planet is about half of what you pay right now) and spend the rest on getting a part-time sysadmin that really knows his stuff.

The difference in $ should be minimal, then look over the guys shoulder at how it is done, but keep doing what you know is your 'level' anyway. That way you get the best of both worlds, excellent care and you don't break the bank, at the same time you'll learn a huge amount.

And if your startup grows you just might have found an employee for the future.

Spend some time looking around, your best bet would be a guy or girl that does sysadmin duties for a larger company using UNIX that wants to make some extra $ in their spare time.

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