I have been looking at getting a VPS through go daddy for hosting Aware Applications. I am concerned about the amount of Ram. Aware seems to run great on my 2 gig machine but really chokes on my 512mb machine (BTW...the 2 gig machine is a P IV 3g and the 512 is a P IV 2.8 so they are not much different both running XP Pro).
The best that Go Daddy can do is 768mb of ram for a VPS. If I want more ram I have to get a dedicated server and the cost is pretty high.
From your experience using Aware...will a VPS work for a large app with 50 - 100 active users? I really want performance to be good. Am I kidding myself be going with a VPS?
Thanks for the direction.
VPS and Ram
Hi,
My advice is don't do it. I started out with a Windows VDS at GoDaddy and had major memory issues. I then switched to a dedicated server at GoDaddy and it was okay but even 2gb of ram and their upgraded processor still was pretty marginal over the past year and a half. We are currently migrating over to another provider to a server with quad processors and 4gb of ram.
My experience is that AwareIM, JBoss and Tomcat need as much horsepower as you can throw at them, speed and reliability of the system are much improved. At GoDaddy, I lived in constant fear of the server locking up and spent an excessive amount of time monitoring cpu usage with my fingers crossed.
On a sidenote, GoDaddy is okay at the price point that they are at but if you think that you might ever need anything in the way of support, you will find that it does not exist. In general, I found them uncooperative and I knew far more than the average 'expert hands' tech support employee. (which isn't saying much)
Cheers,
Pete
My advice is don't do it. I started out with a Windows VDS at GoDaddy and had major memory issues. I then switched to a dedicated server at GoDaddy and it was okay but even 2gb of ram and their upgraded processor still was pretty marginal over the past year and a half. We are currently migrating over to another provider to a server with quad processors and 4gb of ram.
My experience is that AwareIM, JBoss and Tomcat need as much horsepower as you can throw at them, speed and reliability of the system are much improved. At GoDaddy, I lived in constant fear of the server locking up and spent an excessive amount of time monitoring cpu usage with my fingers crossed.
On a sidenote, GoDaddy is okay at the price point that they are at but if you think that you might ever need anything in the way of support, you will find that it does not exist. In general, I found them uncooperative and I knew far more than the average 'expert hands' tech support employee. (which isn't saying much)
Cheers,
Pete
Hi,
I am going with a company called Q9 in Toronto, Canada. With a name like Tazzmaxx, I have to guess that you are in Australia so I would think that there would be a decent company closer to home for you.
I haven't dealt personally with hostland but you might want to consider going with him (http://www.hostland.com/aware-im-hosting.php). I don't know what kind of hardware he uses but I have to believe that his experience in hosting AwareIM apps has to be a huge advantage.
Cheers,
Pete
p.s. With dedicated hosting you get what you pay for. We are developing mission critical applications using AwareIM for our clients and so the cost of equipment problems is far higher than the monthly hosting costs. I guess that you have to assess your pain tolerance for computer downtime and slow performance vs higher hosting costs.
I am going with a company called Q9 in Toronto, Canada. With a name like Tazzmaxx, I have to guess that you are in Australia so I would think that there would be a decent company closer to home for you.
I haven't dealt personally with hostland but you might want to consider going with him (http://www.hostland.com/aware-im-hosting.php). I don't know what kind of hardware he uses but I have to believe that his experience in hosting AwareIM apps has to be a huge advantage.
Cheers,
Pete
p.s. With dedicated hosting you get what you pay for. We are developing mission critical applications using AwareIM for our clients and so the cost of equipment problems is far higher than the monthly hosting costs. I guess that you have to assess your pain tolerance for computer downtime and slow performance vs higher hosting costs.
-
christopherb
- Posts: 304
- Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:26 pm
We host our Aware apps and HTTP stuff at 888.net. They have been nothing but great with high performance machines and great support.... crap I even have the head of supports cell phone! Now thats support 
Talk to Mark or Louis and let them know Chris from The Savings Card sent you.
Cheers,
Talk to Mark or Louis and let them know Chris from The Savings Card sent you.
Cheers,
Cheers,
Christopher
Christopher
Hosting providers
Hi all, just to add my two penneth. somebody recently pm'd me asking me who I used. Here's my response for the benefit of European users. I'ts a warts and all - honest opinion.
"I host with www.oneandone.co.uk Their datacentre is in Germany.
I have a VPS costing me £39.95 PCM comprising
40Gb Disc,
2 xs quad core 2.8Ghz sempron processors.
100Mbit/sec guaranteed bandwidth
Can't remember how much traffic - it's a big number and I've never hit limits [added later - it's actually 4000Gb]
Plesk Control Panel with license for 30 domains, unlimited subs
Virtuoso outer wrapper for restarting the server when all else fails (and for recovering from the backups)
MailEnable
Root access via remote destop
Mysql V5 and MSSQL pre loaded (never use MS so don't know what performance is like
PHP, Perl, CGI scripts - which again I never use but they are there if you want them
Many reviews and posts will say support is crap. It probably is if you don't know what you are doing, but with a VPS or dedicated, really - we should know what we are doing and support is normally a quick phone call to say - "can you restart my server"
worse case I ever had was a two day outage because some system files got screwed on the hardware node my vps was running on - but they gave me a 2 month credit to compensate, before that - three hours whilst they rebuilt a failed raid array. Before that .... nothing. I've been with them about 5 years
Some supplemental questions were then asked:
what guaranteed ram do you have? 2GB? YES - a full 2Gb not "boosted" I checked this out with 1and1 because their websites says "boosted to 2GB" which was confusing. They meant to say it was boosted to 2Gb from their previously advertised 1Gb package.
what arrangements do you have for backup of data? offsite backup? I have a double backup strategy. Using Virtuoso (which comes with the oneandone package, I can take both full and incremental backups of the entire disc "on-site" that is the backups take place in the datacentre to a different hardware node.
In addition - because I am using MySQL, I run Mysql also on my office server and use MysqlAdmin to perform hourly backups to from the vps to my office server BSV's are developed and tested locally then uploaded to the vps and imported to the live versison of Aware
do you get good performance with awareim on the vps? VPS is apparently supposed to be pretty slow as apparently AWARE needs lots of horsepower.
Exceptional. ~I'm running IIS for my normal websites, plus Office 2007 - which you need to run on the server if you are doing anything with word documents because the Office "engine" forms the docs before transferring them to the browser (I actually prefer Office 2003 and may switch back.)
In total, the server consumes 664Mb ram. - having 2 x Quad core semprons running at 2.8Ghz helps ....
I should add My server is windows server 2003. 1and1 also do Linux boxes as well
"I host with www.oneandone.co.uk Their datacentre is in Germany.
I have a VPS costing me £39.95 PCM comprising
40Gb Disc,
2 xs quad core 2.8Ghz sempron processors.
100Mbit/sec guaranteed bandwidth
Can't remember how much traffic - it's a big number and I've never hit limits [added later - it's actually 4000Gb]
Plesk Control Panel with license for 30 domains, unlimited subs
Virtuoso outer wrapper for restarting the server when all else fails (and for recovering from the backups)
MailEnable
Root access via remote destop
Mysql V5 and MSSQL pre loaded (never use MS so don't know what performance is like
PHP, Perl, CGI scripts - which again I never use but they are there if you want them
Many reviews and posts will say support is crap. It probably is if you don't know what you are doing, but with a VPS or dedicated, really - we should know what we are doing and support is normally a quick phone call to say - "can you restart my server"
worse case I ever had was a two day outage because some system files got screwed on the hardware node my vps was running on - but they gave me a 2 month credit to compensate, before that - three hours whilst they rebuilt a failed raid array. Before that .... nothing. I've been with them about 5 years
Some supplemental questions were then asked:
what guaranteed ram do you have? 2GB? YES - a full 2Gb not "boosted" I checked this out with 1and1 because their websites says "boosted to 2GB" which was confusing. They meant to say it was boosted to 2Gb from their previously advertised 1Gb package.
what arrangements do you have for backup of data? offsite backup? I have a double backup strategy. Using Virtuoso (which comes with the oneandone package, I can take both full and incremental backups of the entire disc "on-site" that is the backups take place in the datacentre to a different hardware node.
In addition - because I am using MySQL, I run Mysql also on my office server and use MysqlAdmin to perform hourly backups to from the vps to my office server BSV's are developed and tested locally then uploaded to the vps and imported to the live versison of Aware
do you get good performance with awareim on the vps? VPS is apparently supposed to be pretty slow as apparently AWARE needs lots of horsepower.
Exceptional. ~I'm running IIS for my normal websites, plus Office 2007 - which you need to run on the server if you are doing anything with word documents because the Office "engine" forms the docs before transferring them to the browser (I actually prefer Office 2003 and may switch back.)
In total, the server consumes 664Mb ram. - having 2 x Quad core semprons running at 2.8Ghz helps ....
I should add My server is windows server 2003. 1and1 also do Linux boxes as well
Hi Guys 'n Gals,
I'm going to be really cheeky now - because in my PM's with another forum user, I've just discovered I've been missing out on some really good referral commission from 1and1. Guess it was one of those "I'll do it when I get a round tuit" moments. Well somebody sent me a round tuit for my birthday - so no excuses now.
If you DO decide to host with 1and 1, can you do it via this link http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7138629 and earn me some money
Many thanks
Mo
Oh, and in answer to another question - there are no firewall restrictions that will impact the running of AwareIM
I'm going to be really cheeky now - because in my PM's with another forum user, I've just discovered I've been missing out on some really good referral commission from 1and1. Guess it was one of those "I'll do it when I get a round tuit" moments. Well somebody sent me a round tuit for my birthday - so no excuses now.
If you DO decide to host with 1and 1, can you do it via this link http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7138629 and earn me some money
Many thanks
Mo
Oh, and in answer to another question - there are no firewall restrictions that will impact the running of AwareIM
Chris,christopherb wrote:We host our Aware apps and HTTP stuff at 888.net. They have been nothing but great with high performance machines and great support.... crap I even have the head of supports cell phone! Now thats support
Talk to Mark or Louis and let them know Chris from The Savings Card sent you.
Cheers,
I read your 2007 post with great interest. Are you still satisfied with this host?
Regards,
Kingsley Klosson