Tuangou / Group Buying With Regards To Online Services
Apr 10, 2009
I recently discovered the magic of Tuangou / group buying after a short stay in China. It made me wonder why this efficient method of purchasing things has yet to be popularised in the Western world. (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuangou for more information.)
I think that this is quite interesting when you look at the economics of server resources, in particular online data storage. I have been looking for around 100GB of cheap, reliable FTP space for a while now, but it seems that truly cheap storage is only available if you have terabytes of data to store. This has always prevented me from storing my data in 'the cloud'.
However, if the Tuangou principles are applied to this situation a lot of cheap storage could be realised so long as there were enough people to cover the yearly cost.
Which moves me on to the crux of my post...
As a home user or small business owner, would you be willing to wait longer for an online storage service to be provisioned and pay in advance if there were significant cost savings to be had?
(By significant cost savings I mean cheaper than Amazon's S3.)
I'm currently looking to set up a company offering just this, but do not wish to enter the market until I can substantiate my own views and until I can be sure that my target market does not solely consist of me.
What's the best solution web-based that I can install on a server to monitor a group of servers, services, bandwidth etc.. I'm thinking of offering a service where for a monthly price we'll monitor your server(s) and notify the data center or client of outages. So I'm looking for something that I can create clients then under them enter servers and items to monitor. Kinda like a NOC monitoring solution?
I work for an academic department which utilizes one web server, and has few issues with processing time and/or speed during the year. However, there is one point during the year when there is a need for a significant number of processing transactions, which opens all at once at a certain time on a certain day for everyone, that the web server cannot handle and is currently not occurring.
I need to find a service that can handle this. Basically, we would just need to insert info into a database (or whatever input form works) and then later export that data into a text file to be inserted by us at a later time. This is not credit card processing, which is why I'm posting. However, this would need to be secure. We only need the use of the servers and a database.
I'm planning on hosting several websites on a server or several servers in my home using Comcast(Comcast told me unlimited bandwidth would cost me $60.00 a month). I'm currently researching what used servers to buy and what operating system would be best to use on the servers(LAMP sounds interesting). Security is a big concern. I want to be able to expand this system when necessary.
What used servers and software would be a great setup for what I want to do? I program websites using XHTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT AND PHP.
how many of you guys are considering buying into a CDN service? Do you ever find yourself (or your clients) asking for it?
If so, in what specific situations would you need a CDN? Did you already buy the service - if so, what made you choose your provider, and if you did not buy the service yet, why not?
I am considering buying a C6509-E and I wanted to get a feel for that which I am about to do is hopefully a good move, and not a bad one. My traffic patterns are similar to what I suspect many of you experience. My traffic levels hovers around 2 - 300 mbit, but we are about to start offering more colocation services.
I also do internet facing bgp routing.
I was thinking something like this:
1 x C6509-E Chassis 1 x VS-S720-10G-3CXL 720 with 2 ports 10GbE MSFC3 PFC3C XL 1 x MEM-C6K-CPTFL1GB Compact Flash Memory 1GB 1 x WS-X6724-SFP 24-port GigE 1 x WS-C6509-E-FAN Fan tray 2 x WS-CAC-3000W
I will probably add on the forwarding card to the 6724 once my traffic levels rises more.
Additionally I would probably be getting one more identical box a little later.
Could I get any feedback on this setup, is there anything I've missed?
Also, if you have bought a similar setup before I would love to to be given an idea of what I should expect for pricing?
So I need to build or buy a server to run my site. The site will use a basic LAMP setup and we will also be allowing for file uploads and downloads. File sizes aren't expected to be too large, mostly word/PDF documents and maybe some Powerpoint presentations. At the moment we can only afford one box to run the whole site so we need to build something that can handle both file serving and basic site stuff.
I'm wondering what kinds of hardware we would need to make this happen. If I were to setup a box with a quad core CPU, 4-8GB of RAM, and a few 15K RPM drives would that be able to handle file serving and PHP/mySQL? Would multiple processors be required? What about RAID?
I guess the real question is what kind of hardware requirements are involved with setting up a file server. I'm guessing running PHP and mySQL is not really an issue but I don't want the site to slow down because of the file serving. I'm sure some of you have experience with this sort of thing so if anyone knows please let share your thoughts.
Some time ago there was this guy apaqdigital who was quite well known among WHT memembers -- but i dont see his name when i type in the user section of the advanced search.
Anyone know if "apaqdigital" is still around or has changed his user name?
Our company just outgrown our linux routers, so we're getting ready to buy a pair of 7201's. I'm one of the programmers, not the network engineer, so I'm not sure about the details. All I know is that we will buy a pair of 7201's soon.
what they go for after discounts? Resellers/vendors feel free to chime in.
I am going to buy a Shared host for the first time. I am currently considering big hosts because of my bandwidth requirements are high.
I am considering Dreamhost, BlueHost, HostiCan, and most preferably HostGator.com
I have heared a lot about hostgator and saw many persons praising it, but when i was going to buy it, i accidently saw a few sites on google giving bad remarks about the HostGator.
I recently purchased web hosting with HostMonster. I will want to build multiple sites down the road.
What is the process of getting another domain and hosting it with HostMonster? Can I just buy another domain from a site and stick it right on my leased web server?
Do I need to transfer the doamin into HostMonster?
I run an online flash game website, which gets between 20000-40000 unique visitors per day. The website basically just hosts flash games which I upload myself. I have no forum, do not run any databases or have any major scripts running or anything; the site is just plain html and php includes (with images and flash [.swf] files also)
I currently have 512MB of RAM on my VPS. If I decide to upgrade to a similar plan on a Dedicated Server, but instead with either 1GB or 2GB of RAM, would that make my website faster, particularly loading time? (As some games are 5 to 10 MB in size).
I would like to clear a few doubts before I buy a VPS.
Here are some of them:This is the kind of setup I am looking for. Debian/Ubuntu + Webmin + Virtualmin + Usermin (maybe) + LAMP + RoR (upgradability).
I want to host multiple websites.
I would appreciate if ServeAxis can set this up for me to start with. Atleast, OS + LAMP + Webmin + Virtualmin LAMP should be setup the with default options provided by most of the shared hosts (eg: Dreamhost). Virtual host, etc. should be enabled.
Is there a knowledgebase (wiki) where I can read up on how to do this. I am okie with managing a linux system (ui, terminal) but haven't had core experience using live server. I can follow instruction through manual etc. but I have no clue of best practices.
No Community for ServerAxis users? Is there a forum etc. for Serveraxis.com users?
I can't find information regarding installation etc. on your website. Please give me any pointers if there are on the website or a handbook for administration.
-- This post would have been apt in the ServerAxis forum (if there was one), if not then from what I have figured out here is where I can get a good response.
I have put up a request for the same at support & sales @ SA. Will post up updates when I receive them.
I am using linux dedicated servers, but I want to move over to Windows for some stuff I run...
Anyway, I need ideally 1000-1500gb bandwidth on 10mbs connection, ram&cpu is not important as they're very simple things but requires a lot of bandwidth. Location in Europe or USA, but whatever is cheaper...
im planning to collocate server with ecatel in Amsterdam.but im from india and if i send hardwares from here then it wil cost me alot.so im searching for some vendor who can quote me the price of hardware , they must be based in nether land only.
For learning purposes, I'd like to purchase a switch to network at least 4 servers. Based on your knowledge of switches and the ones you currently use in production, could you recommend some switches that, while initially for development use, could be transitioned to production?
I'd like a switch that specifically isn't meant for home use, because a big part of the reason for purchasing it is to get experience configuring, using, and troubleshooting a production-quality switch that has anywhere from 8-32 ports.
For those of you that actually network 32 devices together in production, do you have one mega 32-port switch, or multiple smaller (e.g. 8-port) switches? What setup, in your experience, have you determined to be ideal?
What criteria are very important to consider when purchasing a switch that, as a newbie to this area, I may not have otherwise considered? Most resources on this topic give pretty basic information, but don't highlight the real 'gotcha' areas.
i have a main server that is connected online & now live with a static IP address. at the local network, i have 6 other PCs running apache that is connected to the main server.
since i can only effort for 1 IP now, how can i have the local connected servers to be viewable from the internet as well like some normal web URLs?
in a domain environment, how do I enable users to be able to access the Desktop properties and allow them to change their wallpapers. I know it should be a simple one but I'm still looking through policies but can't find what can be. By default/ after some group policy changes, all users are denied from accesing this properties window.
I'm making an account for my friend, and I just want him to have access to /var/www/hishomedirectory/
I want him to be able to do anything in that directory (rename files, delete, copy, move, upload, etc..), but not able to use apt-get or play with settings. Not a superuser either.
After some yum updates last night one user and group called xfs were created on my dedicated server. Does anyone know what this group/user is used for?
The problem is, how do I get the group to be set as apache on a file/dir upload? I really do not like having other permissions set, as it can be a security risk, allowing others to access someone else's files.
Another issue is, I can't remove privileges, but I can add them.
copy of proftpd.conf:
Code: ServerName "FTP" ServerType standalone
Port 21 PassivePorts 35000 35999 UseReverseDNS off TimesGMT off TimeoutLogin 120 TimeoutIdle 600 TimeoutNoTransfer 900 TimeoutStalled 3600
#MaxCients 20 "Sorry, the maximum number of allowed users are already connected (%m)" #MaxClientsPerHost 2 #MaxClientsPerUser 2 MaxConnectionsPerHost 6 "Sorry, you may not have more then 6 connections open at a time" MaxHostsPerUser 6 "Sorry, you may not connect more than 6 times"
#DON'T modify this log format. Its used by DirectAdmin to determine user usage LogFormat userlog "%u %b" ExtendedLog /var/log/proftpd/IP.bytes WRITE,READ userlog
AuthUserFile /etc/proftpd.passwd DefaultServer on
#AuthPAM off
<IfModule mod_tls.c> TLSEngine on TLSLog /var/log/proftpd/proftpd.tls.log TLSProtocol TLSv1 TLSVerifyClient off TLSRequired off
(2) I changed the DocumentRoot in httpd.conf and point to a different folder in my server. (whatever I guess it really didnt do anything to my problem)
(3) I Opened the Modernbill software on the but cpanel is not showing in the ServerGroup.
