i want to write this small review for Aquarius Storage i been with them a few weeks now and they are great , great prices and the best of all great support , i ran into a few issues at first , issues i could resolve my self if ihave done further reading and they were nice and help me and even pointed me into some usefull information and tutorials thats great helping customers manage their own vps insted of charging ridiculos prices for simple task like i seen in the past with other providers , keep the good work guys my site is digitalxeon.net is still on development so there no relevant information on the site yet
thanx Aquarius Storage keep it up!
Support: 10 out of 10 Reliability: 10 out of 10 Value: 100 out of 10 Overall: a solid 10 out of 10
I just like to thank Ryan from Aquarius Storage for helping me the other day set up my test account and test the server's loading time with my website. I now have fully transferred from my previous host, PeachyDandy, as my site loaded very slowly. I have now cancelled my account with PeachyDandy.
With Aquarius Storage my website now loads twice as fast as before. Site loading time according to Pingdom:
PeachyDandy - Average of 6 Seconds Aquarius Storage - Average of 3 Seconds
Website - Mango Chico
Great job with the support Aquarius Storage! Moreover, the staff are very approachable and welcoming!
If you need speed, Aquarius Storage, is your hosting solution
I'm usually not to active in these parts of the forums, but I try to contribute anytime I can. Today, I will be reviewing Geek Storage now that all of my content has been removed from their servers and placed on another web host.
Intially: (Jan 15 '09)
The signup process was pretty easy, as it should be with all web hosts. I got a pretty good deal with a coupon and paid for the entire year. I didn't really see any bad reviews about Geek Storage at the time and was lured in by their "Powered by Geek" advertising.
Support: 8 - I honestly think I submitted one ticket, and it was to thank Jay for such the great deal and to let him know if he needed help with any design aspects of the website, I'd help. Speed: 8 - My website performed well, much better than my other web host, so I assumed the LiteSpeed was doing it.
Now: (End of April - Now)
Support: 2 & Speed: 0 - I'm honestly an easy client for web hosts, I rarely submit tickets and when I do I would like them answered. The first ticket I submitted was regarding the website speed on their Zeus server. I submitted a ticket to the help desk that went unanswered for basically over a day (w/ High Priority).
So, I looked for the Live Chat to find out they don't offer any type of Live Support...
I then proceeded to PM Jay on WHT, and didn't receive a reply for another 2 days.
He told me that they would be receiving a new server and new hardware to amp up the servers and asked if I wanted to wait for the new one, or be moved to another server they own. I told him to move me somewhere immediately since my clients couldn't even order through my cart without running into Timeout screens or blank pages. Now, two weeks later, I'm still on Zeus. I went into the community forums and noticed a 50+ post thread about the performance of Zeus and how nothing was being done to the problem.
Overall:
I think Geek Storage is lucky they have such a good design promising "You're in Geek Hands," because that's what lured me in. I'm out about 7 months of payment, but money is the least of my worries... I just want my website to be fast and accessible!
I really think these guys need to invest in hiring more people and purchasing better servers before all their clients are gone with many bad reviews about them.
I switched to a new web host and it's already been a major change. The speed is incredible because their servers aren't overcrowded... And it was a major plus seeing someone on Live Support at 1am to help me immediately with my SSL Cert.
I've gone Geek! I just switched to GeekStorage hosting a little less than a month ago, because my previous host was just ridiculous. I won't get into it because I could go on for days about my old host, it was just plain horrible. I'm not really one to mudsling or drag people's livelihoods down, so I'll just let them remain anonymous. Alot of the problems probably weren't in their control but they were numerous. That's enough of that though, because I've packed my bags for greener pastures and don't even want to look back.
Anyways, so I've been at Geek Storage for about a month now, on a shared hosting plan.
In this time I must say that I have been quite impressed with them. I've been through a number of hosts throughout the years, and have been studying the hosting game for years now. So since I know what to look for, I shopped around here at WHT for a couple of months and was drawn to Geekstorage. It was not an easy decision to make, finding a host, I'm very very picky.
First of all, I've fallen in love with the Litespeed http server. I still have all the benefits of apache, such as mod_rewrite, and any other apache modules. With Litespeed, PHP code executes blazingly fast. When I first benchmarked a Zend framework bootstrap on the servers, I fell in love. And once it was cached in memory... well let's just say it was like the time when Bruce Willis was dead at the end of the Sixth Sense. This is coming from a HUGE performance stickler... I am rarely impressed by these kinds of things. Some bigger MySQL queries that took ~0.148s to execute on my old host don't even have a benchmark reading on these servers (they round off to 0.00001s). I don't know why there was such a remarkable difference, perhaps just more memory available on the server compared to my last host.
The servers have Ruby/RoR installed, as well as Python. I am a really big fan of Python, in fact I believe it will take over the scripting world in the coming years, becoming more popular than PHP and Perl. So this was a selling point to me, since I want to get into Django development more.
Another selling point to me was PostgreSQL databases. Though I am using MySQL for all my current projects, the scope of some bigger projects I am looking into getting off the ground in the future (when I can only find the time...), require a more robust database system. What's funny is when I first signed up for GeekStorage the PostgreSQL database connection settings weren't working correctly, and PhpPgAdmin (the postgreSQL phpmyadmin equivalent) was not working. I sent in a support ticket and the problem was solved almost immediately. I think I may be the first client to use the pgsql databases!
I guess I should probably put a link to one of my sites here. This one's kinda greyhat, in fact I wouldn't even reccomend going to it because I've shoved an barrage of ads onto the page. The myspace crowd seems to love them. Here's the URL anyways:
[url]. Coming soon: Popups and peel away ads,
I haven't experienced any downtime, any slow page loads, or any other problems of that nature. I hope it continues to be that way, and as for now I am very happy with my decision. The best part to me, is it seems I have found people just as geeky about technology as me. Everything is the current version, Ruby, pgsql, mysql, PHP, etc. All up to date and ready to go. I love staying current on technology, and the Geeks really seem to know their stuff.
And before you ask I'll be sure to give the 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year reviews in due time Geek Storage Web Hosting
My earlier one month review of Geek Storage got deleted with the whole WHT-take over thing, and I figured it was about time to write a new review anyways.
GeekStorage has been a dream host for me. I have a developer package with them. I recently upgraded my account to unlimited domains, because I am slowly migrating all my domains and sites over to them.
I am paying ~$7 a month for a ton of features. I could actually get it cheaper, if I paid more in advance. Right now I'm paying quarterly, but after this next session I will most likely switch to yearly and get an even better rate. I'm getting 10GB storage, 250GB bandwith (the next upgrade would be $8/month for 25GB/500GB). I get unlimited domains, MySQL, PostGreSQL, blah blah blah. So it's feature rich, very affordable, and it's not overselling.
The features outweigh anything I've seen. The setup for PHP performance sticklers like me is incredible. The Litespeed web server is the way to go in my opinion. It has the ability to use apache modules, so that is great for easily modifying rewrite rules and whatnot with an .htaccess. Litespeed is so incredibly fast, I'll never settle for less again. Hopefully, as long as GeekStorage keeps up it's act I won't have to!
If you ever want an Apache or CGI module or anything of that nature, all you have to do is submit a ticket and they'll install it! I've never seen such a personal host where you can make requests like that.
GeekStorage also has PostgreSQL, a major selling point for me. However, nobody else on the server uses it. I say this because my only ticket so far was when I first joined GeekStorage and PhpPgAdmin (postgresql phpmyadmin equivalent) did not connect correctly. I put in a ticket and they fixed it right away.
Downtime? I haven't had any. I'm not sure how to track that, but I have some moderate volume niche sites that are constantly getting organic traffic. I have consistently made sales through these sites and have not noticed any drop-off. Everytime I go any of my sites hosted at GeekStorage, they load up quickly. I'm at ease of not having to worry about my sites going down.
Most of my sites are kinda greyhat, so I don't like to post them. So here's one you can use to confirm I have hosting with GeekStorage: [url]
So their website is: GeekStorage.com. If you want fast shared hosting, tons of features, lots of space and bandwith without overselling, and people who know what the *@)# they're doing, and all at an awesome price-- then I can recommend GeekStorage. They've been a class act so far
If you have any questions or something I didn't get to I'll try to keep an eye on this thread, otherwise you can PM me.
I'm completely torn on going the absolute budget route vs spending more for something that'll allow easy upgradeability in the future. I basically need lots of space but file sending-- media like mp3s, video, etc.
it'll be raid 5 and I'll need at least 2-3TB initially but the ability to expand would be nice.
option 1: nice chassis with plenty of hotswap bays with sas expanders expensive sas raid card
option 2: cheap chassis to serve "immediate" needs and go with more later. not sure what I'd use as a card? maybe even onboard?
regarding reliability: I once saw a database of failure rates of different models. raptor was the most reliable of the "desktop" drives. anyone have the link? I'm wondering of the seagate ES drives are worth the extra money vs the non-ES drives. they're supposedely more reliable and the "server versions" of sata drives.
Not sure if this is beyond anyones experience here or knowledge but I thought I would give it a try here and see if I can get any insight on this.
Recently I had to work with a IBM xSeries 226 server which runs two SCSI Ultra320 drives in it at this time. I've actually purchased two extra drives for it but the distributor sent me the wrong drives for that server. Now they are saying its my fault of not proving them with more information but I think stating that I have two SCSI Ultra320 drives would be enough for them to send the right ones.
Now they sent me the IBM SAS Serial ATA SCSI drives, so I was wondering if anyone in here has enough knowledge to possibly provide me on the insight on the solution I think might be right to still use these two drives and not being stuck with a $2000 bill and two drives that I don't use.
My solution would be to buy one of the support or any Adaptec SAS Serial ATA SCSI controller cards and put it into one of the available PCIe slots and connect the drives. I've tried contacting IBM regarding this but they want $200 bucks just to say "yeah it will work or no it wont".
Logically I think it would work, the only thing I'm afraid is that let say I spend $400 - $1000 bucks on a controller card and it doesn't work they way you would think, then I'm out $3000 bucks. (drives are $2000 + $1000 for a controller card).
I just clicked on the Lunarpages webhosting ad at the top of this forum. Not really hunting for hosting myself but regularly suggest places to clients.
I noticed something strange. Their business account has unlimited storage:
# Unlimited Storage # 3500 Gigs Data Transfer
For 21.95 per month. That's more space than you get with their virtual private servers.
Now we know that's not possible, machines have limits right? I've seen other hosting providers offer unlimited features as well - and since all servers have limited space and bandwidth abilities how can they offer these types of services with out the FTC cracking down for false advertising?
Beyond that, I don't recommend any service that offers unrealistic plans. Am I just overreacting since it seems more and more common?
** note, this isn't an attack on Lunarpages. They were there and it made this thought pop in my head.
My site is on forumotion right now. I want to move it and have it hosted somewhere. It is a local Mustang club. I have read all the problems with the oversold sites. I have also looked at others. The big issue is i dont rally know how much space I need. This is the site southshorestangs.com. What it will have is that forum and probably a few webpages. It is still only a month old so it will keep growing hopefully. i just dont want to get way more than I will need.
Does anyone know of a good reliable and redundant method of organizing clustered storage? I know that IBM has GPFS - has anyone actually used it? Do they charge a crap load for it?
We need a High Speed "FTP Storage Solution" for transferring our files securely between our offices.
requirements are simple: 1. High Speed / Good Port Speed in Megs. 2. Unlimited Sub-Accounts 3. Restrict Access by Sub-Account 4. FTP Based Access is Important 5. Ability to Create Read Only / Write Only Sub-Accounts
Space: 2 GB + Bandwidth: 20GB + Speed: Speed is Key For us. He need high speed Solution. Something in tune of Many MeGPS connectivity. Not shared.
I've been with imhosted for a few years now. I have had horrible experiences with them with a lot of outages and lost data (2 days ago lost 6 months of data, they deny anything happened and have no backups).
I have been meaning to change hosts for a long time now but just haven't got the energy to wade through google trying to guess which have good SEO and which are the real deal.
Any recommendations for a host with the following features would be appreciated:
- PHP - dedicated IP that isn't blacklisted - fairly fast PHP processing time for some CPU intensive scripts - MySQL (just a few needed) - IMAP
Quality of support and uptime are important and I would easily pay an extra $10 / month for it. My budget is up to $25 / month or so.
I'd like to find the cheapest way to store about 10 to 20 TBytes of data. After looking at some tape drives it seems like it'd be cheaper to get two or three big towers and fill them with large SATA drives attached to 3-ware controller cards.
we want start with a new infrastructure for VPS service, we have think to use Dell Blade and a CX300 storage with Iscsi, i would your impression on this configuration, i am not sure on the velocity access btw blade nic and storage, do u think that is enough 1gbs port to connect each blade on the storage? how about NFS system? i dont would get trouble with access performance,
Network File Storage (NFS), does anyone use it or find it useful?
From what I see are advantages:
- Raid redundant
- Good backup
- Cheap extra space
Cons:
- slower speeds read/write speeds?
Looking for someone to add on and change my point of view on NFS. Also if you like NFS what is a good model for us to get. We are currently looking at the the Dell PowerVaults...
Wondering what kind of storage hardware server builders are using to keep organized? I am currently storing HDD, RAM, PSU, CPUs, and other various parts on shelves and it gets disorganized and messy very quick.
I found this product for HDD and may order some to help organize HDDs: [url]
Anyone know of similar products or good shevling / cabinets that are computer parts friendly?
I need a hosting with 5-10 GB Hard-drive Space and about 500 GB of bandwidth (maybe a bit less). Without any features (apache, php, etc). I need only Ftp to upload and share video files.But not very expensive, not more than $10-$20.
I run several sites and all of them are hosted at invision. The main reason for having my sites hosted there is that my sites are "forum centered" and I'm very happy with the service that I have got over the last few years from them, so I don't want to change that.
However, I now wish to expand and provide my users with a file repository. The problem is, whilst hosting my sites at invision is fine, hosting my files there would be quite expensive...
Thus, I'm now looking for a host to host my files and nothing else. (I run chess sites, so I'll be providing my users with files and possibly a gallery. All legal material, of course).
I don't need any download manager or anything of the kind. Invision forums actually has its own download manager, and I can have my files hosted externally (i.e. other than on my site).
Thus, I'm looking for a host that offers specific packages for what I am looking for - I would not need scripting or any 'fancy' features, just file storage with FTP access.
How much space? around 1 GB, possibly 2 in the future, maybe 3 or 4 if I add the gallery one day. And bandwidth, as people will be downloading files from my site.
I've been looking around, but it's just so difficult: they all offer webhosting services for people who need to have their sites hosted, etc. and that's not what I need.
Any recommendations?
I don't have any fixed budgets, my focus will be on price, speed and reliability. Preferably a hosting company which has been around for a while and has good reviews.
I have a website that is approx 50GB, that I essentially would like to take offline for a while. Obviously, while the site is offline, I don't want to be paying for my server.
Can anyone let me know of some options to "store" this mammoth of a site. Downloading it locally is not an option, so it needs to stay in the cloud for the lowest possible price.
what kind of bandwidth i need and what kind of space i need for a site that experiences about 25000 hits a month and file size of about 700mb. the site is purely content and images and correspondence is done by forms.
i dont want to go to big but also dont want to under size my customer as uptime and speed is important (im looking at dedicated servers)
I setup an iSCSI target and two iSCSI initiators but I am having some trouble sharing the storage.
I partitioned the drive when I used the first initiator, a 1TB partition, I mounted it without any issues, it showed up in df -h.
Now I went to mount the iSCSI target on the second initiator, I mounted it fine, the partition I made on the first initiator was recognized on this one, however when I add files to either or, the changes aren't recognized on the other initiator. Any ideas why this might be?
I put 1GB of files in one initiator and I ran the df -h command on the other, and it still had the same amount of free space.
is there any web hosting that can be used as file storage (>10G) and cheap? I have some huge files, but many web hostings can not accept non-web-content files.
I'm also curious as to some suggestions on forums really geared towards server hardware discussion. if you know any good ones, please let me know
anyway, here's the situation:
I currently lease my servers. I'm planning on switching to colocation. three primary functions need to be met:
1) web server 2) mysql server 3) mass storage
I'm contemplating the best way to do this. price is a concern but I'm willing to pay more if it's warranted.
would it be a bad idea to have the mass storage and the webserver on the same machine? ie, take the web server box and just throw in a SAS/SATA RAID card and put in the extra disks. it'd obviously save in overhead costs.
if I do put them on one box, should the OS be booting from seperate physical disks from the rest of the storage?
if I don't put them on one box, ie, the web server and the storage server are seperated, what would be the ideal way to connect them? just ethernet/LAN, through a fibre connection, etc?
and that brings me to another question... why does SAS have external adapters if it's not supposed to be used to directly attach the array to more than one box? can it be used this way? is there a reason it shouldn't be?
building a mass storage server, but unsure whether it is better to go for most space per system, or most space per U.
Looking at making 2 storage servers sometime in the future, one more for performance (15k 300gb SAS drives) and another for more storage (bunch of 1TB SATA drives). Both would act as iSCSI targets and likely have multiple gigabit ethernet connections bonded together.
Some options I am looking at:
1) HP DL320s provides 12 drives in 2U, or 6 drives per U. Upgrade it to 512mb batter backed cache and it does RAID6. Probably the densest storage U.
2) Supermicro has a 3U chassis that does 16 drives, or 5 1/3 drives per U. Pair that with one of the newer Areca SAS controllers and up to 2gb onboard cache and it should scream.
3) Supermicro also has a 3U chassis with 15 drives... just 5 drives per U, though it is ~$200 cheaper than the 16 bay one. Probably a mute point, since either way, it is less storage per server and less storage per U.
4) Get a simple 1-2U case and use external JBOD enclosures. Could put in multiple RAID cards, hook it up to multiple 3U 16 bay enclosures, and really squeeze in a lot of storage per server.
Anyone else been in a similar boat? Overall, not looking for a real dense configuration, with like 10-20 servers of this config, so don't *need* to squeeze in more TB per U, but it is one way that I've been looking at it.
Perhaps, in a way torn between the pre-built DL320s and the white label Supermicro approach. DL320s is a nice packaged system, support, iLO, etc. Supermicro allows more space and likely more performance (Areca likely better than the HP SmartArray), but no iLO, no single source for support, etc.
