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DNS Speed

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:39:28 -0500

While I unfortunately can’t remember who linked this on Twitter, (Sorry! Twitter doesn’t allow searching just the people I follow.) I was pointed to this evaluation by BrowserMob of Google’s new DNS service compared to OpenDNS and the run-of-the-mill ISP. The results were surprising, and I suggest you take a gander at what they found.

Pause while you read up…
Alright! Welcome back.

At the end of their post, they provide a downloadable Java application that they built to perform the test. It queries for the DNS for the top 1000 Alexa sites worldwide via Google’s DNS, OpenDNS, and whatever local DNS you specify. It runs the test three times.

Here are my results from just outside New York City using Optimum Online:

Test 1: Google
45164 ms for 1000 records
Test 2: Google
40363 ms for 1000 records
Test 3: Google
35965 ms for 1000 records
Test 1: OpenDNS
98885 ms for 1000 records
Test 2: OpenDNS
26778 ms for 1000 records
Test 3: OpenDNS
17898 ms for 1000 records
Test 1: Your DNS
79021 ms for 1000 records
Test 2: Your DNS
71502 ms for 1000 records
Test 3: Your DNS
58576 ms for 1000 records

Now right off the bat, I see the Google isn’t at impressive as I thought it would be. That said, my Google results are still about twice as fast as BrowserMob’s. OpenDNS once again had the slowest response of all with their first test, but quickly made a comeback. In fact, in terms of the fastest results OpenDNS takes the cake. Looking on, I think the most important piece of information lies in the Optimum Online results. They were slower than Google every time, and much slower than OpenDNS with the rather obvious exception.

BrowserMob came to the conclusion that while OpenDNS provides nice features, and Google claims to be cutting down on DNS query times, their local ISP was still the best option. This was true in their case, but very wrong in mine. Logically, it takes less network hops to get to my own ISP’s servers than either Google or OpenDNS. So why so slow? I really couldn’t tell you, but looking over the comments on BrowserMob’s blog there’s a good mix of results like theirs and results similar to my own.

I think that when choosing which DNS service to use (something that most computer users will never even think about) a test like this proves beneficial. You can’t just make a broad statement that Google is better due to their web presence or that OpenDNS is better due to their experience in the field (though they do have nice features that Google doesn’t yet). Some will find that their tried-and-true provider’s DNS may be best. For me, I don’t know which I’ll stick with yet. I don’t use very many of OpenDNS’ features but their horrific first test and Google’s slower average leaves some food for thought.

VPS Performance Comparison

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:25:20 -0500

VPS Performance Comparison:

Eivind Uggedal –

Aside from cost, performance was the most important criteria for me when selecting a provider for was it up?. 5 different benchmarks were carried out every 3 hours over a week, leading to 56 runs each. The slowest system used up to 3 hours to complete all 5 benchmarks. Weeklong benchmarking was used to account for variance in host load during the day/night and week. I speculated that the host systems could be more utilizied on weekdays when people in the US were awake (all providers under test were US based). At the end of this article you’ll find a table summarizing the averages and standard deviations of the 5 benchmarks on all providers.

In the end, Linode won out with both their 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Much more in-depth performance reports that nicely support my previous VPS comparison.

VPS Showdown

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:15:00 -0400

Updated 2009/09/22.

A while back on the macsb mailing list there was some discussion about hosting and which VPS provider was the best for a developer’s typical needs. The two competitors that rose out of the discussion were Linode and Slicehost. I’ve used both and decided it would be good of me to post a more comprehensive guide, this is the result.

In essence, the difference between these two companies is their feel.

If you like to tinker, Linode gives you everything you need.
If you rather a defined, slick experience, Slicehost is for you.

Location

Server location doesn’t matter as much as it used to, at least when you’re discussing US-based traffic. So while this is a largely unnecessary area of their services, it does matter to some and for that reason I’ve included it.

Slicehost	Linode
Dallas, TX	Dallas, TX
St. Louis, MO	—
—	Atlanta, GA
—	Newark, NJ
—	Fremont, CA

From what I saw, Slicehost provides no way to choose where your Slice (that is, the VPS) is provisioned. Linode, on the other hand, let’s you choose when first setting up the Node (that’s what Linode calls them). Linode also lists their current availability on their website.

Both companies will move your VPS via a support request.

Distributions

Almost all VPS hosts provide a variety of Linux distributions to choose from, it’s just a matter of selection.

Distribution	Slicehost	Linode
Arch Linux 2009.02	Yes	Yes
CentOS 5.3	Yes	Yes
CentOS 5.2	Yes	Yes
Debian 5.0	Yes	Yes
Debian 4.0	—	Yes
Fedora 11	Yes	Yes
Fedora 10	Yes	—
Fedora 9	—	Yes
Gentoo 2008.0	Yes	Yes
Gentoo 2007.0	—	Yes
OpenSUSE 11.0	—	Yes
Slackware 12.2	—	Yes
Ubuntu 9.04	Yes	Yes
Ubuntu 8.10	Yes	Yes
Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS	Yes	Yes

Slicehost now offers RedHat EL (currently 5.3) for a monthly charge. This is a huge step-up over Linode for users who require RH Enterprise Support.

Linode also allows you to (somewhat) easily install any custom system, that is really powerful.

[Addendum] — Something I forgot to put in here, but I noticed when Slicehost announced it. Both providers offer kernel select from within their respective managers.

32 or 64-bit? Does it matter?

On the same track as distributions, I should point out that Linode offers both i386 (32-bit) and x86_64 (64-bit) versions of their distributions while Slicehost only offers the latter. This doesn’t make much of a difference, but on a smaller VPS setup (with less RAM), it could be an issue. For the fully skinny on how this might affect you, check out this awesome article by David Welton.

Bandwidth, IP addresses, and High-Availability

Bandwidth obviously varies by pricing plan, which will be looked at later. But generally speaking, when comparing Slicehost and Linode plans side-by-side, Linode offers more bandwidth of Slicehost at equivalent pricing tiers.

Both Linode and Slicehost give 1 dedicated IP address for each VPS, with more purchasable. (You must provide proper justification when applicable.)

Both parties offer private IP addresses for unmetered bandwidth (in the same data-center). Linode offers this immediately upon setting up your Node, Slicehost will accommodate you receiving a support request.

Both companies offer in-depth guides to achieving high-availability / IP-failover.

Want to grow?

Growth typically leads to one of two desires when dealing with a VPS. Either make more of them or make it bigger.

Both providers offer a service where you just “click a button” and their systems will take your VPS down, make a larger one, and copy it over in the same exact state. You simply have to pay the higher price.

Both services providers allow you to “clone” existing systems to create additional copies.

Mission Control

Linode has a rather advanced control panel compared to Slicehost’s SliceManager. It just comes down to how fine-tuned you want your setup to be.

With Slicehost, you are given a premade box with a swap, a disk (based on plan), and the OS installed and setup.

Linode takes a more technical approach. While they do provide a wizard that will automate the deployment process, you actually can make multiple boot profiles, and cut up and setup your disk space into however many images you like. This can be quite powerful and even allows you to install a custom OS if you want to get your hands dirty.

Lish

Linode also offers another method on control.

Lish is a shell that you can SSH into that gives you complete control over your server. It’s primary tool is to give you console access to your node (rather than an Ajax page)… but you can do much, much more. It can essentially give you all the essential tools that you normally have to go to the web panel for, in one concise tool.

To really realize how handy this is, you should just view the documentation.

Rescue 911!

We’ve all reached that point where we realize we shouldn’t have entered that command, or changed that network configuration, or done whatever it was that crashed your box. The point is, it happens. Being able to recover from such a situation is what matters.

Linode has this nice little shutdown “watchdog” named Lassie (Linode Autonomous System Shutdown Intelligent rEbooter) who will automatically reboot your server if it died unexpectedly (that is, you don’t set a proper shutdown via Lish or the control panel). This could make or break your day (or night) while you’re away from your computer.

Both companies offer recovery consoles to allow you to control the server directly in case of emergency.

Price point

For some people, it really comes down to this… a pricing comparison. I should point out that Linode has many more pricing tiers, but Slicehost has larger options.

	Price (Mo)	RAM	Disk Space	Bandwidth
Linode 360	$19.95	360MB	16GB	200GB
256 Slice	$20.00	256MB	10GB	100GB
Linode 540	$29.95	540MB	24GB	300GB
512 Slice	$38.00	512MB	20GB	200GB
Linode 720	$39.95	720MB	32GB	400GB
Linode 1080	$59.95	1080MB	48GB	600GB
1GB Slice	$70.00	1024MB	40GB	400GB
Linode 1440	$79.95	1440 MB	64GB	800GB
2GB Slice	$130.00	2048MB	80GB	800GB
Linode 2880	$159.95	2880MB	128GB	1600GB
4GB Slice	$250.00	4096MB	160GB	1600GB
8GB Slice	$450.00	8192MB	320GB	2000GB
15.5GB Slice	$800.00	15872MB	620GB	2000GB

As you can see, Linode typically gives you more for your money - though I am unable to gain concrete information regarding their private “high-end” dealings.

And finally…

The Community.

Both companies having thriving communities surrounding them, though Linode is generally less mainstream and therefore less known.

Slicehost has a nice-sized IRC channel as well as a Campfire chat room. You can hear people discussing Slicehost on Twitter often enough and many well known services run off Slicehost.

Linode is more tight-knit in my experience. They have an IRC channel hosted on OFTC which is lively throughout the day. There are a lot of regulars there that will help anyone who has a problem, or just geek out with you.

In Summary

It all comes back to the feel. Linode can offer you more if you like to pull the levers and push the buttons, but Slicehost will offer you a more controlled experience, which is quite enjoyable. In the end, I’d say it’s mostly a matter of preference.

Published your opinion? Found a mistake? Feel free to email me at jread@me.com.

Using Git to manage a web site

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

Using Git to manage a web site:

The one-line summary: push into a remote repository that has a detached work tree, and a post-receive hook that runs git checkout -f.

Great how-to for putting a website under the control of git and avoiding some of the issues that can pop up when using git pull from your server is not an option.