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dextrous
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Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 10:48 am

I need a virtual private server (VPS) to host a Flash Media Server instance. With all the options out there, I'd like to hear from any gerbils out there with some experience with a provider. So, does anybody have any good or bad experience with a VPS host?
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth
"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock
 
just brew it!
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 11:12 am

What's your budget for hosting? How much traffic do you expect? How much storage do you need?

The only one I've had direct experience with is Linode. They've been decent.

Since Adobe Media Server requires at least 4GB of RAM (WTF?), you would need to go for at least their $80/month tier even though the other specs (CPU & storage) are probably massive overkill. Biggest potential hurdle is, if you don't have Linux experience Linode may present a rather steep learning curve, as they support Linux-based VPSes only (though the choice of distro is left up to you).
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Kurotetsu
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 11:58 am

I agree on Linode. You may also want to check out Low End Box. They specialize in cheap VPS offers, and sometimes you can find a very good deal on exactly what you need.

EDIT:

I can already see some offers with 1-2GB of RAM for $7 and under. You may want to give a few of them a call and see if you can negotiate for more.

Just found another here: http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/waveride- ... #more-3872

4GB of RAM
4 virtual CPUs
OpenVZ
5 euros/$6.53 per month

Hosted in Vienna, Austria though
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dextrous
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 1:30 pm

just brew it! wrote:
What's your budget for hosting? How much traffic do you expect? How much storage do you need?


Budget is $50/mo. Traffic will only be around 100 GB/mo. I only need enough storage for the FMS install, so 10 GB should be plenty.

just brew it! wrote:
Since Adobe Media Server requires at least 4GB of RAM (WTF?), you would need to go for at least their $80/month tier even though the other specs (CPU & storage) are probably massive overkill.


I'd be shocked if FMS wouldn't run fine on 1-2 GB RAM in reality. Today, I'm running it on a Windows server with 8 GB and a ton of other stuff running on it and memory usage is a little under 50% on average. FMS does require a 64 bit OS though and some of the cheaper VPS offerings look to be running on really old hardware that might not be 64 bit.

just brew it! wrote:
Biggest potential hurdle is, if you don't have Linux experience Linode may present a rather steep learning curve, as they support Linux-based VPSes only (though the choice of distro is left up to you).


I have enough linux experience to do simple tasks. I think installing FMS on linux is very doable for me. According to Adobe, only CentOS 5.8 or RedHat 5.5 is supported. Seems like few hosts even have that version around anymore so I might try a newer CentOS or even Ubuntu and see if I can get it to work before signing up.
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth

"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock
 
dextrous
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 1:39 pm

Kurotetsu wrote:
You may also want to check out Low End Box. They specialize in cheap VPS offers, and sometimes you can find a very good deal on exactly what you need.


Neat site. Thanks for the link!
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth

"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock
 
just brew it!
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 3:24 pm

dextrous wrote:
I have enough linux experience to do simple tasks. I think installing FMS on linux is very doable for me. According to Adobe, only CentOS 5.8 or RedHat 5.5 is supported. Seems like few hosts even have that version around anymore so I might try a newer CentOS or even Ubuntu and see if I can get it to work before signing up.

According to Linode's FAQ they officially support CentOS 5.6 and 6.2. I would hazard a guess that 5.8 would run fine given that they officially support 5.6, but you might need to upload the OS image yourself instead of using one of their canned VPS images.

I've been running Ubuntu Server 12.04 on my Linode VPS. Biggest potential issue with Ubuntu is that Adobe Media Server might not be compatible with it. Given that Adobe lists Redhat and CentOS (which is a Redhat derivative) as their officially supported Linux platforms, I'm assuming they are somewhat Redhat-centric on the Linux side.
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just brew it!
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Thu May 02, 2013 11:22 pm

Deploying Linode's stock 64-bit CentOS 5.6 image + available updates should get you to something that is functionally equivalent to the last 5.x release, which ought to be fine for your purposes. If you're pretty confident that 2 GB is enough, maybe try it in a 2 GB VM locally, and if that seems to run smoothly set up a 2 GB Linode?

Any idea how much network bandwidth you're going to need?
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Flatland_Spider
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Fri May 03, 2013 8:56 am

I can confirm that running updates on a CentOS 5.6 install will upgrade it to CentOS 5.8. This can be confirmed by running cat /etc/*-release from the command line.

The point versions of RHEL and CentOS are on a rolling release, and there isn't really a way to not upgrade to the latest point release. Scientific Linux has separate repos for each release then a rolling release repo for the version, but RHEL/CentOS only have repos for the version. There is a CentOS 5 repo, and not a CentOS 5.6 repo.
 
dextrous
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Fri May 03, 2013 9:01 am

just brew it! wrote:
Deploying Linode's stock 64-bit CentOS 5.6 image + available updates should get you to something that is functionally equivalent to the last 5.x release, which ought to be fine for your purposes. If you're pretty confident that 2 GB is enough, maybe try it in a 2 GB VM locally, and if that seems to run smoothly set up a 2 GB Linode?


Thanks for the info about 5.6. I had the same thought about setting up a VM and trying it out. Adobe doesn't list RAM requirements based on connections that I could find, so their requirements are the same for 10 connections or 10,000. This project will be much closer to 10 connections than 10,000 connections.

just brew it! wrote:
Any idea how much network bandwidth you're going to need?


My guestimate is 100 GB/mo now with 200-300 GB/mo possible within a year. This seems like a non-issue with nearly all the hosts I've looked at.

Here are some of the hosts I found last night with 4 GB of RAM:
    A2 Hosting - 4 GB RAM, 400 GB bw, $36.99/mo
    MyHosting - 4 GB RAM, 300 GB bw, $27.72/mo
    Solar VPS - 4 GB RAM, 1 TB bw, $27/mo

I ran across several others that off 2-3 GB of RAM but roughly the same prices. Lowendbox has a deal from minecrafted for 2 GB RAM, 1 TB bw for $7/mo. That seems too cheap to me. Those boxes have to be oversubscribed in my mind, but for that price, it's very cheap to test it out.

I also ran across DreamHost. They only run Debian and offer 1 GB RAM $50/mo but that includes unlimited storage and bandwidth. That would allow the option of offering archived video if Debian and 1 GB RAM will work.
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth

"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock
 
dextrous
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Fri May 03, 2013 9:08 am

Flatland_Spider wrote:
I can confirm that running updates on a CentOS 5.6 install will upgrade it to CentOS 5.8. This can be confirmed by running cat /etc/*-release from the command line.

The point versions of RHEL and CentOS are on a rolling release, and there isn't really a way to not upgrade to the latest point release. Scientific Linux has separate repos for each release then a rolling release repo for the version, but RHEL/CentOS only have repos for the version. There is a CentOS 5 repo, and not a CentOS 5.6 repo.


Very good to know! From a fellow Okie too! :D

I think this might be a good time to try Red5 again. In the past ( v0.8 ), I couldn't get it working, but I see they have since released v 1.0 and even 1.0.1. I would imagine it would be more distro & version agnostic. This would probably be better posted in a new thread, but if anybody has any experience setting up Red5 to handle a live stream, I'd love to hear about it.
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth

"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock
 
just brew it!
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Fri May 03, 2013 10:27 am

dextrous wrote:
Thanks for the info about 5.6. I had the same thought about setting up a VM and trying it out. Adobe doesn't list RAM requirements based on connections that I could find, so their requirements are the same for 10 connections or 10,000. This project will be much closer to 10 connections than 10,000 connections.

You might even be able to get away with a 1 GB VPS then. I'm guessing the extra RAM is probably used mostly for cache, which isn't going to matter much if you're only servicing 10 connections.

dextrous wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Any idea how much network bandwidth you're going to need?

My guestimate is 100 GB/mo now with 200-300 GB/mo possible within a year. This seems like a non-issue with nearly all the hosts I've looked at.

Here are some of the hosts I found last night with 4 GB of RAM:
    A2 Hosting - 4 GB RAM, 400 GB bw, $36.99/mo
    MyHosting - 4 GB RAM, 300 GB bw, $27.72/mo
    Solar VPS - 4 GB RAM, 1 TB bw, $27/mo

FWIW the 2 GB Linode is $40/month. 4 TB of bandwidth, and 48 GB of storage.

dextrous wrote:
I also ran across DreamHost. They only run Debian and offer 1 GB RAM $50/mo but that includes unlimited storage and bandwidth. That would allow the option of offering archived video if Debian and 1 GB RAM will work.

I've heard a lot of good things about DreamHost. However, I would be a little leery of going that route given that Adobe specifies Redhat/CentOS. Most major Linux distros fall into either the Redhat or Debian camp; distros within each camp tend to be quite similar under the hood, but once you cross over to the other camp things diverge. So unless you're familiar with what those differences are, installing a package that is specifically targeted at a Redhat-style distro on a Debian host (or vice-versa) has the potential to turn into an exercise in frustration. You also may have trouble getting support from Adobe if you don't use one of their recommended platforms.
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dextrous
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Fri May 03, 2013 11:52 am

I think Dreamhost will only a viable option if I can get Red5 working on 1GB RAM. Sounds like plans for tonight are settings up VMs to test FMS on < 4GB RAM and to try Red5 once again. The results of that testing could change my requirements quite a bit.
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth

"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock
 
dextrous
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Re: Virtual Private Server Suggestions

Mon May 06, 2013 12:13 pm

I was able to get Red5 working on Ubuntu, so I'm ditching FMS. The unloaded server consumed about 512 MB RAM, so I'm betting 1 GB RAM would be sufficient for my needs.

Thanks to the suggestion from Kurotetsu, I saw the deal on lowendbox for minecrafted.net. So, I'm going to give the $7/mo deal a shot. If I'm not happy with them, I'll re-evaluate other providers with 1 GB RAM. Thanks for all the info guys!
"I take sibling rivalry to the whole next level, if it doesn't require minor sugery or atleast a trip to the ER, you don't love her." - pete_roth

"Yeah, I see why you'd want a good gas whacker then." - VRock

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