We are co-located at a datacenter and host web sites, and corporate email systems, as well as host dedicated servers for customers.
We currently have two /25 internet facing subnets from our provider. We have a Watchguard X5500e 8 port gigabit firewall that supports routing as well as VLANs. We also currently own QTY4 2848 HP Gigabit switches.
We currently have each switch connected in a loop with 2 gigabit ports trunked using static LCAP. The switches are connected as follows:
A > B
B > C
C > D
D > A
Rapid STP is turned on. One thing is - is this the ideal trunking scheme?
The more important question is this. We would like to separate ips from each other using VLANing.
IE: we might have a client with 5 different IPs in one or more subnets and we would like to group them together.
We ideally do not want to break up the subnets into smaller ones as it makes it hard to reconfigure and it wastes ip addresses, as we do not have that many.
I'm designing a network that should be able to support both dedicated servers and also offer colocation (full rack and half rack). Things will be relatively small at start but the design must be able to scale. The colo area will be secured from the dedicated server area.
Right now, this is what I'm thinking:
CORE/DISTRIBUTION combined: - Two cisco 6509's running HSRP - Each 6509 is connected to the same two upstream ISP's via BGP (so that means 4 links in total) - Each 6509 is connected to the access switches (described below) - The 6509's will have a single gigabit crossconnect between them so that they can talk to each other for HSRP, iBGP, etc.
ACCESS - Each of our racks will have an L3 switch at the top of the rack for all the servers in the rack to plug into - there will be ~30 servers per rack - these switches will use 4 x 1 gbit ports for trunking to the core. They will be configured in two 802.3ad link aggregation groups (ie 2 x 1gbit links per LAG group). One LAG group will connect to the first 6509, the second LAG group will connect to the second 6509. - The default gateway on these L3 switches will be configured with the HSRP virtual IP address of the 6509's. -spanning tree will have to be enabled to avoid loops since the two 6509's are connected directly also
QUESTIONS: 1) Each dedicated server will get 5 usable IP addresses, so I'd have to subnet my IP address space accordingly (into a bunch of /29's). This also means that I'd have to setup 1 VLAN per subnet (wich means 1 VLAN per server!). Is this a scalable design? If I have 1000 servers I'd need 1000 VLAN's! Isn't there a limit to the number of VLANS that can be created/handled by my core switches? How do larger providers do it that have thousands of servers?
2) Is this design scalable/redundant? The only single point of failure that I see is my access switch (if it dies, it could take out a rack's worth of servers). I guess I would have to live with this and would have spares on hand.
3) I'm a little confused with the interaction of BGP and HSRP. What happens, for example, if one of the links to one of the ISP's goes down on the active HSRP router? I dont want it to fail over to the inactive HSRP router, because the router is still good, its just a link that went down. Would the active HSRP router be smart enough to realize (maybe via iBGP) that the inactive HSRP router can still route to that ISP and thus just ROUTE the traffic to that inactive 6509 and then have that router send it out to the ISP? I'm assuming this traffic would travel across the 1gbit xconnect between the two 6509's so I may have to consider increasing that capacity using link aggregation aswell?
4) Which cisco switch would be good as my L3 access switch? It would have to support ~30 servers in the rack plus have at least 4x1gbit ports that I can config into two lag groups to uplink to the core.
To this point (i hope the ascii diagram is understandable, i did my best on ASCII art), there are no problems. The problem comes when pluging in L2 switches. I would like them to be pluged to both L3 switches, but i don't see how to do this without HSRP or VRRP. The thing is L3 switches will also do VLAN's for the network, so HSRP would mean using 3 IP's for every VLAN and a terrible configuration mess.
I am not seeing the way to do this setup and attach a L2 switch to both L3 switches without using HSRP.
I just want redundancy for the case where one of the routers or L3 switches could fail.
We just moved 3 1U's to a new colo center, from a single host in a managed facility. We need some advice on the best way to configure our topology. 2 Systems are Windows 2003, and 1 is Centos OS.
Each host has dual NICs, and we would like to configure 1 NIC for internal server to server traffic, and 1 NIC for the external Internet. We have a checkpoint VPN-1 firewall and several switches to work with.
Our current thinking is that the ALL NICs should be behind the firewall (for protection and for Qos control), and the external NICs need to be bound to the actual external IP address to avoid NAT issues with some of our Apps that can't handle NAT translation through the firewall (Asterisks VOIP using UDP for one).
Is it possible or recomended to do this? I have tried everything I can with our router to allow the external NICs to be bound to an external IP but still participate on the network behind the router to no avail.
Our other host had only 1 NIC bound to the external IP, and only the windows firewall turned on to provide firewall protection. We really dont have any real life experience configuring this type of setup,
Recently we bough a design from DooptNet here @ WHT - See Original Thread
However, After several weeks of having this new design and numerous amounts of time and editing & making our site look a little more respectable, We got this weird live chat conversation with a gentleman named BEN.
This was around 7am AEST & his first sentence to start off this conversation was:
Quote:
Hi Sean, my name is Ben, and I am giving you 24 hours to remove your web site template that you have stolen otherwise I will public display that you have ripped another members template for personal use without permission of the original owner
Wow that was a bit significant to me as we bought this template from DooptNet here at WHT and the thread is located above. We paid $100 AUD/USD for this and we never stole it as it was said in the starting sentence from Ben.
Ben went on to say that:
Quote:
This topics will be displayed in the largest on-line communities on the internet, these include Web Hosting Talk, Warez-BB, wjunction and so forth.
For real right?
Ben also went on further to say that many other people have fallen for this and this is all part of a Con. I am not sure if Ben is telling the truth, But I would like some word from Sean @ DooptNet and this Ben Person.
No E-mail Address was left but - Admin@webhostingtalk.com in the Live Chat.
I asked Ben where we have ripped this site from as I would like to see it, After this Ben left the chat but before hand demanded that I remove the Stolen Content within 24hrs.
Not sure what to do from here, I have contacted Sean here at WHT and are still awaiting a response.
If you're browsing for a new host, do you care about the design of the site you're looking at? Would you be put off a host if their site was poorly designed and ugly?
It seems there are several ways to get a website:Build it yourself using tools software
like Dreamweaver, MS Frontpage, etcHand coded using basic text editors (or combination WYSIWYG and hand coded for w3c validation)Web builders & site studio web tools provided by web hosts Templates (both original and modified)
What I am most interested in knowing is choice most people use and for the web hosts/designers out there, do you find most people favor templates and site building software over customer design?
Personally, I have found most people favor either modified templates and custom designs and find web building tools like SiteBuilder and Site Studio too limiting.
Some people seems to still like Fantastico Deluxe though.
I have been with Hostgator for over 2 years and they have been great.
However, I host all my clients on my own hostgator account and I absolutely cannot stand hostgator's backend interface (cpanel). Trying to manage my SQL databases, 200+ e-mail addresses, etc via cpanel is tedious.
I am also interested in getting a VPS or something similiar.
When changing host, does this affect the webpage design? I am currently with Microsoft Office Live and thinking about changing to Hostgator. If I do, is it possible to retain the existing page templates / layout?
I have almost finished designing my site and so I'm looking for a host. However, in looking for hosts I found that a lot of them were scams or were not to be trusted. There were lots of review websites that gave a top 10 listing, and the top 2 always used to be justhost and hostingmonster. Which I didn't really trust as Justhost gave me this silly thing when I tried to leave the page saying 'you can talk to a special agent to get a discount' and all that tosh.
So basically, I'm looking for a host that has a fair amount of space, preferably linux OS and preferably in the UK, and it must have MySQL support and be nice cheap one if possible, around £3.00 a month is fine.
I just design websites on the side. I've done about 10 or so and have ended up hosting them on my shared hostgator account as addon domains. I've decided to leave my current "day job" and want to try to pick up a few more web jobs in the interim.
I want to stop putting more websites in my shared account, I don't want to be a reseller and I want to be able to direct people to a host where they would get good customer service for hosting and email issues. I thought it would be nice to establish a relationship with a reseller to whom I could refer my web design clients. Ideally, it would be someone that's local (Twin Cities, MN) and I could meet in person to see if we'd work together well.
Do others do this? Does it seem to make sense to do this?
Another option would be to refer directly to hostgator. I've been happy with them but I haven't needed much in the way of customer service. Do they work well with hosting clients who don't know anything about hosting?
At some point I might want to be a reseller, but right now I want to concentrate on design and learning some new things (CMS is the next thing on my plate).
Are there any web designers/developers who offer hosting to their clients as part of their website creation package. I am toying with the idea of only creating websites for people who host with me. I currently have a colo server, but only use it for personal things. So I have no experience with the needs and demands of clients in regards to hosting. What are some of your experiences with hosting for clients? Is it worth it?
I am interested in setting up a video tube site similiar to xtube or gaytube etc but maybe at a smaller scale. Where ppl can upload clips, affiliate clips, and even have amateur clips to sell etc like what the popular gay tubes do. << removed >>
I work in a DC and am looking for a better way to deal with clients who have multiple servers hosted with us.
Heres the scenario. Client buys a server or two at the beginning, with a HW firewall or they are clustered together and require their own switch and down the road, they like what we do and want to buy more servers.
However, we've been selling other servers and the only way we would be able to accommodate them would be to run a cross connect to another cab with their new server in it. Hopefully you can see where I am going with this.
This can keep happening multiple times and with multiple clients. and eventually you can end up with spider web of cable everywhere .
My thought of doing it right but more work would be to schedule down time with a client and migrate all the HW to a new cabinet where they can grow.
Weve also been tossing around ideas like getting projected growth from clients and setting aside space for them to having dedicated cluster cabinets.
I run an established web design business, and currently host my client sites at resellerzoom.com
I offer hosting to my customers and the numbers are growing so I need to upgrade to something more robust, but keep the end-user support (my customers can get support directly from host, and they will attempt to operate without their branding)
Here are my requirements: End user support WHM/Cpanel preferrably (or plesk equivelant) 512 - 1GB ram 50 - 100GB monthly transfer I have been looking at modvps.com as they are owned by Hosting Zoom, which also owns resellerzoom.com
i would just like to vocalise my utter disbelief at how incompetent and dishonest Absolute Design Barnsley aka Smart Merchant aka Absolutewebdesign.co.uk have been.
Our company signed up just over a year ago to their Absolute Design Smart Merchant shopping cart website system.
To overview, this is a pay-monthly service where they host the site and we add products to the CMS style website that Absolute Design have produced.
Being a small family business we opted for this kind of pay monthly service as it would (we hoped) give us some level of support from Absolute Design Barnsley to help with the running of the site.
At first they were helpful at getting the site setup initially but months down the line and after phonecalls or online chats with Absolute Design , the result has been no action being taken as requested.
Simple things like removing the option for other currencies... I phoned in August of 2008 and was asked to email the request to Absolute Design Barnsley , which i did. Did the other currencies get removed? Nope! I phoned and emailed many times.
This year due to the economic climate we have had many price changes to do, so i phoned Absolute Design Barnsley and asked for a holding page to be put up while i changed all the prices.
I was told this would be done within the hour.
I had my doubts that this would actually happen due to past experience, and indeed a WEEK later and the holding page STILL was not up.
During this week we had several people try and buy things at the old prices and we had to cancel orders. This is obviously frustrating for us and the customers.
Due to Absolute Design 's Smart Merchant poor system i since found out i was unable to 'turn off' the shop in any way except for basically deleting the entire payment gateway setup.
Products were also still viewable at old prices via google, even if i disabled them in the CMS itself. BAD Smart Merchant !
Also in this time i managed to decide and almost fully populate a new website for our shop, it seem's Absolute Design Barnsley cannot even produce a holding page in that same space of time.
Now, you may think why didnt i just leave? Well, after that week i rang up and asked to cancel, i was asked why and i CALMLY stated my reasons, which were basically poor support.
This resulted in Andy Clegg from Absolute Design Barnsley saying to email my request to leave and he slammed down the phone.
I emailed my request to change our Domain IPS tag and contact details and within a few minutes our website had been deleted BUT Absolute Design Barnsley decided to delete the IPSTAG for the domain, basically rendering the domain useless, including our email which we use on a daily basis.
I spoke Absolute Design again on the webchat (on a friday) and asked them to change the IPStag again, they said ok, but it probably wont get done till Monday.
I was obviously doubtful as it didnt take them long to delete the IPSTAG....
Monday comes and Absolute Design still haven't changed the IPSTAG. We are shut on mondays so i rang on Tuesday and spoke to Craig. He seemed more reasonable and said he would change it shortly. Several hours later and Absolute Design Barnsley still had'nt changed our IPSTAG and were still basically holding our domain hostage.
I ring up AGAIN, speak to craig, he says hold on for a moment, about a minute later they just hung up the phone again. I ring once more and noone answers...
Instead of swift switchover to the new site, Absolute Design Barnsley have forced us to take action with Nominet to recover our domain.
This just seems ridiculous, I'm guessing Absolute Design Barnsley must be losing alot of customers but to act the way they have is just childish.
What is the point of causing so much agro just because someone wants to cancel?
I hope this post reaches anyone else who is considering taking up services with Absolute Design Barnsley aka Absolute Web Design aka Absolute Web Hosting aka Absolute Shopping Cart aka Smart Merchant and urge you to think twice!
I'm not sure exactly how to phrase the question. But, I'm researching how to PXE boot a server without having a DHCP/PXE server in each vlan.
Scenario: Datacenter with dozens of servers. 1 VLAN per server. Cisco switches and routers. Each server has a serial console available for remote management (OS and BIOS are configured for serial console). If an admin wants to re-install OS, they should be able to reboot the server and tell the BIOS to initiate a PXE boot request. A central install server is available to provide the DHCP and PXE boot images.
Has anyone tried this? I have been reading about the 'ip helper-address' for Cisco to relay DHCP requests. Interested in hearing about real-world setups. Or is there a better way to accomplish remote OS installs?
Is there a VPS provider that will sell me a VM , and put it up somewhere, and can make me another VM in the future, on the same VLAN as the original VM ?
For example, pretend VM #1 has a NIC at 10.0.0.100
in the future, I want another VM with a nic at 10.0.0.101
I was looking at Go-Grid , but I'm not sure how their pricing works.
I need a basic L3 switch for maybe 25 mbps that will do hopefully up to 50 VLANs and which will not require me to hire someone to configure it.
As much as I like Cisco, that rules them out.
The reason I'd like a Layer 3 switch is so that I can run my backups and inter-server transfers without adding to my bandwidth bill. Also, VLANS are a critical requirement as i have a lot of customers with root on their managed servers.
So i am looking at HP [gasp] switches. How "easy" is the web-based configuration widget? [I'm an advanced unix admin but networking is a mystery to me.]
This is a starter switch and once i have a full cab of servers I'll be able to spend $7K on a pair of 3560s and hire someone to configure them for me ... but until then what can i get to meet my requirements?
I'm trying to implement VLANs on my network and can't get connectivity to host servers. Here's how the network is configured. Pardon the bad ascii diagram.
In this example my upstream is providing two subnets:
111.111.111.16/28 (I'm using an IP from this subnet to manage the 3550)
222.222.222.16/29
I am attempting subdivide the /29 into two /30's in order to place a server into it's own /30 subnet & VLAN ............
I have two servers both in a same vlan. Both may access Internet and be acceessed from Internet I setup db server and web server internal IP each as follows:
I used ifconfig to check both status, both of them are up. both of them may ping google, but when I try to ping their each other through internal IP, nothing returns.
I used command tracert to follow, found all packages were sent to Internet rather than an internal IP.
My host tells me to do it by making NAT, I have no idea on it. Anyone may help me out on how to do with NAT?
I'm looking for a solution that I can place a firewall between 2 vlans on a BigIron router with L3 enabled.
For this moment there is one big vlan2 with a ip-route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 123.123.123.123 and a router-interface ve2 with the IP of the router, the address I use as gateway on the machines behind it.
The WAN port has the IP address to communicate with to the GW of the carrier-router (123.123.123.122)
Because I want to let the BigIron the routing I was thinking of 2 vlans, one for the lan-vlan and one for the wan-vlan, but this will be a problem because I only have one IP-block what I can use.
So the sitiuation must be as follow on the BigIron:
WAN => vlan2 => firewall => vlan3(lan)
Because of the fact that the firewall will be transparent, this should be no problem to place it between the vlans. The actual problem is how to manage this. In simple words, I should be able to replace the firewall with a cross-cable and it should still work.
Cisco for an example has a SVI solution for this, but I can't find such thing for a Foundry router.
