Curious Notes

2012-02-15T06:44:00.000-08:00

OVH is a French based company (located in Roubaix Valley) founded and owned by Octave Klaba /Oles ( his nick). At the time being OVH claims to have 70 k servers ( which makes them the biggest Internet provider).

In addition to their shared hosting, domain name registration, colocation and dedicated servers (with value added specifications) OVH started offering a handful of newfangled products which include RPS, VOIP, cloud hosting .

What do users love about OVH: location in France ( heart of Europe) which would give the French company the possibility to have lower amount of hops to their clients. The fact that all of their servers who provide root access are hooked into a 100mbit pipe ( some are even connected to a 200mbit one). The possibility to have a very strong (and just launched into the market) hardware for a very reasonable price tag.

What users don't like: English people (from OVH's UK forum) dislike being answered in French when most of them speak English ( as most English). Users dislike high installation fees . Users dislike to have changes in company's policies from month to month. One of the thing that upset many customers is the monthly cap ( which they say it is not fair as the French customers don't get any cap/ bandwidth limit per month). International customers (who are not in countries that they sell ) can't get the product and have to pay a reseller ( which is not completely clear if it is valid by OVH). Server delivery time frames in most cases last a large amount of time.
. Low quality support ( forums are clients best best to solve problems by asking colleague clients). Big setup fees (specially in low end products such as RPS's ) in which the product costs 10Euros per Month and the setup fee 49 Euro. Delivery times take quite a lot to be processed and the product ready to be used.

RPS:

For those who don't know what an RPS is: Real Private Server it is a dedicated server but without its own disks. . ''How comes?'' you might ask yourself and scratch your head. Fact is that they have a bunch of disks stacked into what it is called an iSCSI SAN, iSCSI stands for Internet Small Computer System Interface and is a an IP based Interface Storage solutions. Some of the include : redundancy, better access times and lower cost.

RPS have a bad congestion of internal traffic ( as every owner of their RPS wants to access to his data) and bottlenecks tend to be the performance killer product which could be a revolution if the company invested in a faster ( I/O ). Why is this a bad thing? because they offer a product which is deceiving. You a 100mbit network connection and clients access to data ( and to run applications) do not exceed the 1 MB/sec. See chart below:

Low-end/Standard( as they call it): RPS (I): has VERY low transfer rate ( and of course the usual 100mbit pipe which makes OVH the king it is)

Disk access ISCSI
Minimum ISCSI flows 1 MB/sec
Connection 100 Mbps
Bandwidth 100 Mbps
Traffic limit unlimited

cost: for almost 10 Euro you get an N270 Intel Atom processor, with 533 Mhz FSB . Nice processor as it has a low TDP ( 2.5W) but not a good choice for something that requires any real power. Memory: you get 512 Mb DDR 2 which is good for most common tasks (like hosting a web site, having a VPN or having a shoutcast)

Mid Grade/Premium ( as they call it):RPS (I): Same stuff as the previous one but with a better internal guaranteed transfer rate ( 4MB/sec). Downside is price: the bundle ( RPS I +improved private transfer rates) will cost you twice the cost of the Standard RPS I (almost 20Euros) to get an acceptable access to your slice of storage. Why do we say acceptable? Because your network speed is 100mbit/12.5MB/sec and you internal is 4MB/sec.

High Grade/Business: same as Premium but with a real deal internal network connection to your HDD slice (10MB/sec) which is very handy to work with as it almost has (almost) the same transfer rates (public and access to your hdd share. Downside: 30 euro per month ( 3X times the RPS I standard plan )

General downsides:

-Bottlenecks in the iSCSI SAN:
For large download speed you should transfer directly to RAM. Remember the RPS are very cheap server. You know already the bottlenecks.

-Backlogs on building the RPS's:
There is also a small backlog on the RPS 1, the others are in stock. You should have the server by early next week.
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showpost.php?p=23657&postcount=3

Some more Backlogs gripes :
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1733

-No precise data on included bandwidth : even when an OVH staff member provides feedback ( which is a rare thing)
that's 16Mbps, which is fine inside the 100Mbps that an RPS could provide, theoretically. Though to use it constantly or as an average for the whole months comes up as 5TB per month! First, consider that the bandwidth regime for RPSs is 100Mbps not guaranteed. So, if the network is fine, you'll be getting that. Just in the case that we're experiencing a high volume of traffic, this bandwidth could be limited. So you'll have to take the possibility into account. Secondly, 5TB of traffic per month is quite high, so you're putting the RPS under quite a big strain. Mind that RPS is a sort of simple cheap server to have fun but not thought as a server to run 24/7 applications. I would strongly suggest to go for a better server for that. I wouldn't plan ahead for a server that's going to meet the specifications so tightly as in your case. But it's up to you.

- Unexpected/expected downtime to some avid readers but downtime for all ( even for your clients or audience):
Following the work of changing discs, we will progressively restart the iSCSI targets on infrastructure. We plan to complete all the work in 2 weeks. During startup, communications between RPS and the SAN will be down and once everything has been restarted, the communication will resume (the kernel patched by OVH supports blocking 24hrs communication on iSCSI).

Pros:

Possibility to have windows in an RPS:
Hello, Microsoft has put significant resources to successfully boot the latest version of Windows 2008 on an RPS. And it is stable! Take a look at: http://demo.ovh.com/fr/640bed8c4f545...0ce8189fa8190/ RPS will move shortly to the solutions of "cloud clustering" i.e. the function that needs the cluster will be expanded and from 2,3 or 4 RPS to ... 10/20/50 RPS in parallel in 1 click. We are moving well in Linux and LAMP (solutions with load balancing MySQL through the mysql-proxy). The same will be proposed for other framework like Java, RubyOnRails and .NET. All these solutions will be "root-less" i.e. administered by OVH with 24/7 teams aka GS (Global Solutions). There is still a lot of R&D to complete the solutions, but we think we will offer you all this in February 2010 . All the best, Octave

Tips and tricks:

Maximize Network speeds caching with your RAM:

http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2050

rps fees
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3343

telephone:

http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3064

Offering cloud
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3436

New Content will be added soon

2011-08-16T22:35:00.001-07:00

New Content will be added soon

Most odd hosting facility I ´ve seen to date

2011-05-05T10:23:00.001-07:00

I enjoy taking a look at datacenter infrastructure ( also called DC ´s for short), the way cooling is set up, how cable management is handled, the location of the facility and every curious aspect that could be considered.

Amongst one of the most weird datacenters, Ive seen the Swedish Host Bahnhof which has used an old nuclear safe house to allocate its servers under ground level in a rock cave.

But this Ukranian hosting facility has well gone over everything I´ve seen up to date, let me know your thoughts about it .

Some things that make youtube.com loose money.

2011-04-07T07:24:00.001-07:00

Youtube is know for the amount of data it has every day which is translated into big amount of cash spent for Internet Bandwidth. They are estimated to loose $1 Million dollars per day !

What they could do to save some money.

-Avoid auto reproducing videos when opened.
-Load videos from cache of visitor instead of having to reload If I happen to want to see same video after it has just finished.

Domains

2011-02-21T14:51:00.001-08:00

Need domain names? Use a domain name generator like www.panabee.com to generate cool names. See lots of ideas with one click

Cold War Ukranian Monster

2009-06-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

This cold-war gadget who had as a purpose the detection in early stages of ballistic missiles (and from thousands of miles away) and it worked by detecting alterations in ionosphere propagation of the missiles exhaust plume.
A very curious thing about this strcuture is that it has a very close relationship with a world know human tragedy: Chernobyl nuclear power plant. ( see map to look how close to the nuclear power plant it is).
Out of Chernobil ( located in the city of Prypiat) the enormous radar from the Soviet era which can be seen from very distant places.
This secret radar called Duga-3 worked in the 10 hz ( cycles per second) and was so powerful that it interfered with hobbists radios from nearby countries ( who didnt know where this noise came from. The sound that produced in the interfered radios was a tapping noise ( to which the hobbists described as a Woodpecker noise). By the time it was operation NATO already knew of its existance and gave the monster a code codename : Steel Yard ( by Nato).

As you already know radars require electric power to work and this one wasn´t an exception. This 900 meters wide structure needed an incredibly large power: 4 thousand MW ( New York consumed 11 thousand MW in 2003). To such requirement only one thing could handle such a load: a nuclear power plant. And which power plant? Nothing less that the 5 reactors of Chernobyl ( at the time of the disaster only 4 were functional).

Suicide in the VPS

2009-06-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

I´ve been a customer of Vaserv since the 28th of October of 2008. My overall experience has been very good ( I´ve only had some issues in which I had to request IP tables modifications and so on).

I took Web hosting as an important matter and did a deep research before deciding which company I should get. My only usage of this VPS ( a low end account with 128 mb of ram VPS and with an excellent connectivity) is using it as a VPN for me and my co-workers to provide a good level of privacy while working in a secure way using Open VPN.

As a control panel I´ve been using LxLab´s LxAdmin and I´ve been quite happy but I saw a wall when I tried to park more than 40 domains using another VPS that I have with Whirlhost a company owned by some Aussie guys but with server in San Jose, Cal).

After seeking further control and having additional features I had the idea ( 4 days ago) to migrate to Webmin control panel which is free and I had a bad feeling as my buddie told me that If I wanted to have more than 40 domains I should pay LxLabs a fee ( which I dislike as there is no reason to do such a thing). Another thing I´ve been told ( of course I cant confirm) is that LxLabs has access to clients control panel in order to check if the company that hosts him has paid the royalty of half a buck per VPS node.

My idea was to pay a new RPS ( a Real Private Server which is a dedicated server without its own hard drive) and connected to a iSCSI SAN) and migrate all my current data to those RPS to try a new experience. The company that offers it, is the French based OVH and the products are a budget line solutions made to play ( as said by them) more than to work (which has made me doubt if I should hire them). Another decisive thing is that clients can only be from a reduced number of countries and I should have asked a friend of mine to pay for it for me.

The weird thing of this whole story is that 3 days ago my VPN would not connect to the server ( located in vaservs servers). I tried to access to my account via the control panel and after failing to access the LxAdmin I start grabbing my head questioning why this can be taking place. I recall that Vaserv has not sent me the past 3 bills ( even though I requested them to send them in 3 different ocassions). I proceed to open a thread at WHT/Webhostingtalk.com ( forum in which I am member and really enjoy this guys who really know what they are doing).

After I finish posting my thread I realise that someone commented something about FSCK (one of many companies belonging to Vaserv). To my surprise all of the VPS accounts on Vaserv servers had been hacked and compromised. As a result Rus Foster (owner of Vaserv) decided to pull off the server while he and his team could establish the problems. The problem seemed to be a guy that apparently was a Vaserv customer and hacked into the main servers using a vulnerability in Lxlabs´s Lx admin.

As a consequence of this hack LxLabs lost its credibility as a realiable control panel. The owner of the Indian company was a 32 year old guy named KT Ligesh who decided to eliminate himself due to having personal previous problems ( his sister commited suicide) and his products contracts were not renewed as a product of this hack. This was a sad news to all the hosting industry.

Internet submarine cables

2009-05-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

We all love having a speedy internet connection ( some like me are desiring the appropriate "technology" to knock my countries door. Have you ever asked yourself how data is transmitted from two distant points like New York and London? In case you don´t know the answer is pretty simple and yet curious : submarine cables containing optical fiber. Due to the high tensile strength ( imagine waves hitting the cables in all its length : 5586km) special materials that had been and are used by Nasa are used to assure communications in both continents. The cable that is in charge of transmiting data ( Internet and telephone ) have a diameter of around 70mm. You´ve heard about of optical fiber and use it indirectly but you dont know what it is, here I will try to provide an approach with this quote :strands of optically pure glass as thin as a human hair that carry digital information over long distances.

Some countries who rely on a purely multi homed optical fiber grid, usually have their connections knocked down due to several reasons including : fishermen that cut cables with their gear, earthquakes and pirates. Pirates cut cables in order to earn some money as optical fiber, PET film, copper and other materials that are contained in the cable can be quite pricey!

Regarding the distribution scheme of the undersea cables, most of it has a similar pattern to what it used to be the telegraph undersea system.

Where does the US deposit most of its bullion?

2009-03-07T17:47:00.000-08:00

As you might know countries use gold as a store of value ( as this allows them to deposit and retrieve when necessary). In order to store this valuable mineral a highly secured physical place must constructed and used.
The U.S. is known as the richest country of the world and to store its goods ( mainly gold) president Roosevelt´s ordered the creation of Fort Knox as a resource to hold a big portion of the US´s gold ( which circulated as gold coins at the moment). The idea of getting hold of gold was to take it virtually out of circulation after the great depression in the 1930’s.
Located in the state of Kentucky and built in 1936 this bullion depositary remained for several years the chosen place for the construction.

The fortification has several lines of protection including cameras, concrete walls reinforced by steel, motion detectors, seismic detectors and so on. Even though it can´t be confirmed it is said to have peripheral land mines. It even has its own police ( United States Mint Police) and army is ready to provide extra security if needed. Security personnel in charge of protecting Fort Knox is estimated to reach the 20k (mostly live in the city, which has the same name of the building).

Conspiracy theories surrounded the fortification during Lyndon Johnson´s administration. Some of them said that the government emptied the reserves , that they sold its gold or that they moved its content to London or Jerusalem.

As a side note ( and a as a result of the magnificence of the construction) no one has ever tried to rob this colossal fortification.

At the time being, most of US bullion is store in the Federal Reserve Banks vault in Manhattan