[Chambana-info] Re: [Acorn-Telecentre.org] Web hosting requirements

[dan blah]

i think you ment to send this to aam-staff or maybe chambana-info but
probably not aam-tc (which has idrc folks on it)... :)
Steven Mansour wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> I'd mentioned to a few of you that I was looking into the idea of moving
> my personal and client sites over to Chambana.net. I wanted to make a
> list of my hosting requirements so that we can see if such a move would
> make sense, or if I need to bite the bullet and get a dedicated server
> at a commercial host. There are also other partners (Prometheus Radio,
> Allied Media Conference, etc) who would be interested in this.
>
> I currently run about 22 sites, 14 of which are fairly active, one of
> which occasionally experiences bursts of very heavy traffic, and another
> which puts a considerable strain on MySQL (think telecentre.org-size DB,
> but cleaner ;) ). Almost all are either NGO / charity stuff, government
> stuff, personal stuff, friend stuff and pro-bono stuff, and a few are
> quite high-profile. 
>
> Of these, about 75% are Drupal, and the rest are a mix of Joomla,
> Wordpress, and Mediawiki. I know we're already on PHP5, so those all
> should be fine. I've also been doing some Ruby-on-Rails stuff, and I
> don't know how difficult it would be to get that working if it's not
> already. 
>
>
>   
ruby's cool... your stuff will work just fine.
> I don't know the history of Chambana.net all that well and I don't know
> what the plans are (if any) to extend the hosting side of things, but
> right now, I have three directions I'm thinking to go in for my own
> hosting:
>
>      1. Buy a 1U server myself and colo it at Chambana.net, which we
>         could also use for other small projects if it's not overloaded.
>   
we dont have the bandwidth or power just yet to open the doors to
colocation requests...
>      2. Rent out an account on the current Chambana.net hosting setup.
>         
>   
yeah this can be done...
>      3. Just get a dedicated server at some reputable commercial host,
>         like JaguarPC or Liquidweb.
>
>   
bleh...
> My initial concerns had to do with stability and uptime, but seeing as
> how we're confident enough to host telecentre.org here, I'm feeling
> pretty good about Chambana.net's ability to host my own projects. Which
> leaves me with only two concerns: bandwidth, traffic spikes, and CPU /
> Mem usage. I have no idea what my hardware requirements are based on how
> busy my sites are, but here are a few questions:
>
>
>      1. Traffic spikes: How well would Chambana.net deal with the 'Digg
>         effect'? An article I wrote hit over 2000 diggs in a few hours a
>         couple weeks ago, and within minutes it brought my site down.
>         Then my other sites. Then all the other people's sites on the
>         same account. I don't want to cause heavy disruptions on the
>         Chambana.net infrastructure, so I'm wondering if there's a
>         throttle mechanism or something to help mitigate the dangers of
>         a DDOS-type traffic surge. If I colo my own server at
>         Chambana.net, I imagine this would be a bit less of an issue.
>         
>   
well we are likely to only get 3mbps symmetric initially at our data
center at which point a spike would likely hurt everyone in the data
center/building.
>      2. Bandwidth: I know Chambana.net provides 'low-cost' hosting, and
>         I have bandwidth / hardware requirements that probably don't
>         fall into the 'low-cost' bracket. Is there a defined policy on
>         bandwidth usage? Exactly how much bandwidth does Chambana.net
>         currently have to spare? How much is a reasonable amount, say
>         per month?
>         
>   
defined policy... no.  bandwidth to spare... none (at least at our
urbana facility). 
>      3. Virtualization: in the case of shared hosting, is there any sort
>         of Xen / Virtuozzo virtualization that we're using, or is every
>         account side by side?
>         
>   
we haven't set this up yet but i really really want to...
>      4. Control panels, web mail, and other niceties: Is any of this
>         planned or available if Chambana.Net is going to upshift into
>         higher-end hosting? An automated script for new accounts to
>         allow for quick deployment of the most used tools (webmail,
>         maybe a control panel, phpmyadmin, etc) and account control
>         would be nice. Going above and beyond would be pre-configured
>         scripts (like that reverse-rsync-over-ssh thing I mentioned to
>         you, Josh - but now I think I'm pushing my luck a little) ;).
>      
>   
heh... web mail is in the works and will definetly be available soon. 
phpmyadmin is already availabe and will continue to be.  control panels,
imo, are mostly worthless and are very exploitable.

also, we dont want to be a higher-end hosting project.  thats not to say
we wont offer great servers in bandwidth, server reliability, etc... but
i dont feel we ought to be all that accessible to users who dont have at
least a tinsy bit of admin experience.

hardly any two users of chambana.net are the same in that they all use
mail, web, database, drupal, etc.  this is not to say that a well
thought out account script wouldn't be useful... i just dont want to
make it.
> So, I was just thinking out loud here... 
>
> What direction is Chambana.net moving in?
>
> s.
>
>   
my suggestion would be to wait for our new colocation server that should
be up w/in the next couple weeks.  if the service and bw seem good then
we can set you up on there for whatever you can donate a month.  this
server will end up holding tc as well as handle redundancy and offsite
backups of our local services.  it will be on a 100mbit port that will
be for the most part unmetered.  i would say as long as you are not
using a max on average of 2GB a day (~194kb sustained) we will be fine.

what specifics can you get me on your setup now?
daily out going throughput
daily in coming throughput
number or system users
number of email accounts
current disk usage
whats your db server doing:
-transfer / hr
-connections / hr