[YakumoHiratsuhi]

hard work you're doing here Bail, keep it up.
i was wondering why the site didn't load up, so i though it was down.
it's sad to read this kind of news, but at least you got it on the track again.
Nicely done.

[rappinduke]

Welcome BACK!!

[Omega_K2]

I don't know where your server is located or how much do you pay, but from doing research for my own needs (gameservers) I noticed that the USA seem to have horrendous prices for a decent dedicated server; since most of the services you offer doesn't seem to rely on a good ping/latency like a css server does, it may be an alternative to get a dedicated server in europe (or especially germany) since the prices even with conversion from euro to dollar seem to be much lower to their us counterparts.

I can see that this may not be viable due to laws/etc, but it may help to cut down the server cost and/or get a better OR more servers for the same amount of money.

Anyway, it's good to know that am is back

[BAILOPAN]

Chrisber: Yeah, there's security and technical complications there. I'm not sure how to share individual pieces of the site, remotely, in a way that doesn't potentially compromise our users' data.

Omega: A few people have told me prices are better in Europe. Problem with Europe is, as you noted, is that I doubt a contract over there has any legal meaning for me in the States

The data recovery lab gave me this evaluation:

Medium Details (make / serial number) : Western Digital / WCANY3933805 Recovery Chance* : Good Medium Failure Details : * Disk Head Failure * Rotational Scoring Present (slight) * Data Corruption (file tables) * Data Corruption (data area)

Well, that sounds scary, but it seems like they think they can get data back so I approved

[marvel]

Originally Posted by Omega_K2 I don't know where your server is located or how much do you pay, but from doing research for my own needs (gameservers) I noticed that the USA seem to have horrendous prices for a decent dedicated server; since most of the services you offer doesn't seem to rely on a good ping/latency like a css server does, it may be an alternative to get a dedicated server in europe (or especially germany) since the prices even with conversion from euro to dollar seem to be much lower to their us counterparts. I can see that this may not be viable due to laws/etc, but it may help to cut down the server cost and/or get a better OR more servers for the same amount of money. Anyway, it's good to know that am is back

I agree. It's not only cheaper but the internet infrastructure in Europe is way better as well.

I have a colocated server in europe and one dedicated server in st. louis usa and you really notice the difference in network quality.

As for the contract, they have to follow EU laws so it doesn't mean anything if it doesn't have legal meaning in the US, it does in the EU.

I don't know if you have dedicated servers now but colocating might be a good idea as well. It's a one time investment in hardware but then your monthly fees will drop big time.

[KyleS]

Originally Posted by marvel I don't know if you have dedicated servers now but colocating might be a good idea as well. It's a one time investment in hardware but then your monthly fees will drop big time.

All of the decent (good) datacenters that support collocation charge a horrendous amount of money. If extremely good hardware is not purchased and put into use, you'd be far better off renting. NL was pretty cheap the last time I looked into it (couple years ago). However, if someone doesn't live there, it would be kind of silly to pay someone else to do trivial work.

[Warbucks]

Originally Posted by marvel I agree. It's not only cheaper but the internet infrastructure in Europe is way better as well. I have a colocated server in europe and one dedicated server in st. louis usa and you really notice the difference in network quality. As for the contract, they have to follow EU laws so it doesn't mean anything if it doesn't have legal meaning in the US, it does in the EU. I don't know if you have dedicated servers now but colocating might be a good idea as well. It's a one time investment in hardware but then your monthly fees will drop big time.

Your issue with network quality in St. Louis comes down to your provider. There are plenty of great dedicated server providers in the US with top notch quality networks.

I'd advise against colocation if you only require a handful of servers. You can usually negotiate a much better deal(for dedicated servers) with a provider for multiple machines.

[BAILOPAN]

Warbucks, what sort of deals do you mean, and what sort of providers do you think offer them?

Our biggest problem right now is understanding our load. The second biggest problem, which made this incident really painful, was not having easy access or ownership of the hardware.

One potential plan for new infrastructure calls for two or three servers, instead of one. Pricing this out with our current provider is extremely expensive - enough such that colo looks attractive, with lower fixed costs and easy access, even given the higher up-front cost.

[zeroibis]

Originally Posted by FaTony I didn't try to make a joke. I just hate people that lie even if lie is justified on their moral grounds.

I do hope you fully realize how big of a philosophical slope that is going down. In addition I also hope your fully realizing the size of the philosophical slope by stating "their" moral grounds in that your implying that moral ground are relative.

[zeroibis]

Sorry for double post but I wanted this separated from the above for easy reading:

I really recommend litespeed. I have used it for over a year and have enjoyed the performance gains and the fact that I am able to get away with using slightly less powerful hardware for my loads. You can find more information here: http://www.litespeedtech.com/litespeed-vs-apache.html

Another option may be to invest in a better form of RAID in order to also increase your I/O performance. You should try to generate some logs to see how stressed your disk is and if it is under heavy load you may want to add more drives to spread it out. Running even a 3 drive RAID 5 would go a long way to increasing I/O performance and also providing you with some data redundancy.

In addition file fragmentation could also be an issue for high loads and you can take care of that by getting something like diskeeper to reduce the development of fragmentation and to provide automated defragmentation of the drive at preset time intervals.

If your not already you should be trying to log your cpu and ram usage to help identify bottle necks. Your Server Load Averages should not be above 2 in ideal conditions to avoid lag or instability. 3 and above is an indication that problems are coming soon if you do not increase your specs. You can find a bit more information here: http://www.crucialp.com/resources/tu...linux-unix.php

I must admit that I find it a bit funny that the mighty programmer BAILOPAN does not know much about how to run a web server.

You can also find out more about the importance of disc I/O here (I have not actually read it): http://nathanaeljones.com/153/perfor...iller-disk-io/