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View Full Version : UPDATE: Changing Linux support company -- Slim chance of some problems during switch over



Tned
04-08-2010, 10:21 PM
Edit: See update on today's server outage in this post: http://www.broncosforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=944680#post944680

Just a heads up, I am still having some work done on the server. Mostly related to increased security. In addition, I have moved to a different linux management company, as the other took too long to address problems or finish security installs.

For instance, when I had a security update done a few days ago, it broke the homepage (/forums worked, but not if you went directly to bronosforums.com) and it took hours to resolve.

It's a get what you pay for thing. They were only $29 a month, so you couldn't expect 5 minute support response times. They typically responded to a ticket in a couple hours, but could take 12-48 hours to fully resolve it.

I have moved to another company that costs more than twice as much, but they guaranteed to start work on a support ticket in 10 minutes, and claim it is usually 5 minutes. They also will be monitoring the server every 5 minutes and if there is a problem, begin working on it without me needing to contact them (that's what they say at least).

Anyway, since it is a new company, the have their own server hardening, which they have been performing today and they have installed some additional hacker prevention software, which 'could' cause problems with vBulletin. I will monitor the firewall ban logs to try and make sure that there are no problems. If for some reason you can't connect to the forums, send me an email to: admin at broncos forums dot com (please put that together as a real email address, I broke it apart like that to avoid getting spam from email collecting bots).

Davii
04-08-2010, 11:26 PM
Thanks for the heads up Tned!!

BroncoTech
04-09-2010, 01:50 AM
I started spinning up servers on the amazon cloud and haven't looked back. You can get a small instance for $70 a month. I have 5 running.

dogfish
04-09-2010, 01:53 AM
are we talking "slim" in the original sense of the word. . . or as in really gigantic, like the poster slim?

Tned
04-09-2010, 06:38 AM
I started spinning up servers on the amazon cloud and haven't looked back. You can get a small instance for $70 a month. I have 5 running.

I look into clouds every six months or so ((first Amazon and Mosso, and now may others have begun offering them). Within the webhosting community, Amazon doesn't have a very good reputation for anything beyond small websites. Typically, when you add up all the extra costs (I haven't checked to see if they recently changed to flat pricing) it costs more than a dedicated (when calculating the cost based on their bandwidth/CPU calculations/etc), but the biggest concern is that the performance isn't good. They aren't truely as scalable as they claim, but worse most clouds are known for poor I/O performance, which hurts the performance of a MySQL based site like vBulletin, and Amazon is reported by web hosts that have made the switch to be among the slowest.

I'm going to continue to check on them, because the idea of cloud computing is great, but right now in practice, they have flaws.

Thnikkaman
04-09-2010, 08:35 AM
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that I'm good friends with the kernel.org admin.

Tned
04-09-2010, 09:42 AM
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that I'm good friends with the kernel.org admin.

I don't have any friends, so I have shell out $$$ :sad:

Tned
04-09-2010, 09:43 AM
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that I'm good friends with the kernel.org admin.

What's your kernel.org guy think about the state of cloud servers for webhosting?

Denver Native (Carol)
04-09-2010, 09:55 AM
Tned - we need an update on the money situation, as the change you are making now, is adding additional money, so are the ads covering your costs, or do you need to reopen paypall for those who would give a monthly contribution?

Tned
04-09-2010, 11:08 AM
Tned - we need an update on the money situation, as the change you are making now, is adding additional money, so are the ads covering your costs, or do you need to reopen paypall for those who would give a monthly contribution?

The ads aren't covering my costs (March and December actually did, Jan and Feb fell well short), but I hope to make up the shortfall in the season. I also took a hit because they pay one month in arears (December ad revenue is paid the first week of February), so I basically had no ad revenue and no contributions for December. Now that the one month hit is over, I get paid monthly so there are no more gaps, it's just a matter of the revenue vs. cost.

I don't feel right having ads and paypal contributions, as some will question whether I am pocketing the ad revenue and asking others to foot the costs (I have seen these accusations on other forums).

I made a decision to see it through for a full offseason/regular season and hope that it averages out.

Denver Native (Carol)
04-09-2010, 11:19 AM
The ads aren't covering my costs (March and December actually did, Jan and Feb fell well short), but I hope to make up the shortfall in the season. I also took a hit because they pay one month in arears (December ad revenue is paid the first week of February), so I basically had no ad revenue and no contributions for December. Now that the one month hit is over, I get paid monthly so there are no more gaps, it's just a matter of the revenue vs. cost.

I don't feel right having ads and paypal contributions, as some will question whether I am pocketing the ad revenue and asking others to foot the costs (I have seen these accusations on other forums).

I made a decision to see it through for a full offseason/regular season and hope that it averages out.

Of course it is your call; however, if I remember correctly, you are way into your own money - so it is not just enough to cover the monthly costs, but also to bring you even with everything you have put out-of-pocket, which, more than likely you are not close to making up.

T.K.O.
04-09-2010, 11:32 AM
i think it should be optional.i'm not trying to tell T how to run his site,but i like being able to help a little when i can and i am terrible at clicking on ads.
if it were an available option the people who would donate would not likely ever suspect T of embezzling millions:laugh:

Tned
04-09-2010, 04:56 PM
Of course it is your call; however, if I remember correctly, you are way into your own money - so it is not just enough to cover the monthly costs, but also to bring you even with everything you have put out-of-pocket, which, more than likely you are not close to making up.

No, I am not close to making up what I have spent and likely never will. At this point, I will be happy with something close to break even.

The fact is that when we were asking for contributions to avoid having ads put up, there were only 10-11 people each month (usually the same people) that made contributions. My guess is that with ads up, that number will be even lower.

Unless there is a major shortfall, I am willing to see how the whole year goes and see if it evens out, rather than running ads and asking for contributions. Especially since last time a small number of posters carried the load, and I don't want them to feel obligated to do so again.

Hardwired
04-09-2010, 06:38 PM
I would appreciate the option to donate so I can make up for the ad/cookie blocking software I forget to disable. ;)

Denver Native (Carol)
04-09-2010, 06:58 PM
No, I am not close to making up what I have spent and likely never will. At this point, I will be happy with something close to break even.

The fact is that when we were asking for contributions to avoid having ads put up, there were only 10-11 people each month (usually the same people) that made contributions. My guess is that with ads up, that number will be even lower.

Unless there is a major shortfall, I am willing to see how the whole year goes and see if it evens out, rather than running ads and asking for contributions. Especially since last time a small number of posters carried the load, and I don't want them to feel obligated to do so again.

I would not believe those who would be willing to contribute would be doing so because they feel obligated, but rather because they appreciate the site, and would like to help pay for it.

Tned
04-09-2010, 11:11 PM
I would appreciate the option to donate so I can make up for the ad/cookie blocking software I forget to disable. ;)

Don't sweat it. Goal number one is for all of us to enjoy BF.

Tned
04-09-2010, 11:16 PM
Just a heads up, I am still having some work done on the server. Mostly related to increased security. In addition, I have moved to a different linux management company, as the other took too long to address problems or finish security installs.

For instance, when I had a security update done a few days ago, it broke the homepage (/forums worked, but not if you went directly to bronosforums.com) and it took hours to resolve.

It's a get what you pay for thing. They were only $29 a month, so you couldn't expect 5 minute support response times. They typically responded to a ticket in a couple hours, but could take 12-48 hours to fully resolve it.

I have moved to another company that costs more than twice as much, but they guaranteed to start work on a support ticket in 10 minutes, and claim it is usually 5 minutes. They also will be monitoring the server every 5 minutes and if there is a problem, begin working on it without me needing to contact them (that's what they say at least).

Anyway, since it is a new company, the have their own server hardening, which they have been performing today and they have installed some additional hacker prevention software, which 'could' cause problems with vBulletin. I will monitor the firewall ban logs to try and make sure that there are no problems. If for some reason you can't connect to the forums, send me an email to: admin at broncos forums dot com (please put that together as a real email address, I broke it apart like that to avoid getting spam from email collecting bots).

I think most of the security updates are in place. As I am leaving town on Monday, I am not going to have them do anything else (even though their job is to fix things even if I'm gone :)). When I get back the week of the 19th, I'm going to work with them on some optimization stuff -- try and eek a little more speed out of the server.

There is still a slim chance that one of the pieces of security software installed (mod security) could inadvertently ban you. It would be a firewall ban, so it would look like the server was down. So, if for some reason you can't connect, try and remember this email address, and shoot me an email: end me an email to: admin at broncos forums dot com.

Also, I am checking the firewall a couple times a day to try and spot any false IP bans that appear.

dogfish
04-10-2010, 12:19 AM
I think most of the security updates are in place. As I am leaving town on Monday, I am not going to have them do anything else (even though their job is to fix things even if I'm gone :)). When I get back the week of the 19th, I'm going to work with them on some optimization stuff -- try and eek a little more speed out of the server.

There is still a slim chance that one of the pieces of security software installed (mod security) could inadvertently ban you. It would be a firewall ban, so it would look like the server was down. So, if for some reason you can't connect, try and remember this email address, and shoot me an email: end me an email to: admin at broncos forums dot com.

Also, I am checking the firewall a couple times a day to try and spot any false IP bans that appear.


if i get inadvertently banned, i am so going biz1 on this place. . . .



:lol::lol:

Tned
04-11-2010, 03:33 PM
Ok, somewhere, somehow, we went from a slim chance to a smack in your face series of problems.

The server became unresponsive about two hours ago and needed to be rebooted at the datacenter. When it came back up, something in the database (appears to be related to the thread tags) is corrupted.

I think I have disabled all of the places where the tag clouds were displayed, which appears to have stopped the SQL errors that were preventing some pages from loading. I put in a support request with vBulletin, to see if they can help me fix the DB corruption related to the tags.

Unfortunately, vBulletin often balks at supporting any site that has third party add-ons (Hi-Five system for instance), so I don't know how helpful they will be.

FanInAZ
04-11-2010, 04:12 PM
Too bad I'd been too busy the last couple of days to read this thread when it was 1st posted. I just figured that it had to do with some major site overhaul and I'd just need to wait for the process to complete.