The Planet Knowledge Base is now LIVE. Our team has been laying the foundation for this support resource over the past few months by contributing answers to commonly asked technical and account-related questions, and their blood, sweat and tears are now available for you 24×7x365.

Whether you are curious about where to find your server’s bandwidth usage or you can’t figure out how to move or rename a file on your Linux/BSD/Unix server, you can track down answers to the most frequently asked questions we receive on the KB’s index page or search through our archives of content for specific keywords … in the clean, “Web 2.0″ interface:

We’re constantly on the lookout for new content to be included, so when you get a stellar ticket response that might be helpful for other customers, let us know, and we’ll make sure it is added to the KB.

Oh … and don’t forget to bookmark http://support.theplanet.com.

If your friends ever ask you to explain why you bookmarked a link that doesn’t involve a LOLcat or funny YouTube video, you can impress them by quoting Enrico Fermi eruditely: “Ignorance is never better than knowledge.”

-Kevin

In 1962, Life International magazine published a logic puzzle that was said to be so difficult that it could only be solved by two percent of the world’s population. I’ve heard the riddle attributed to Einstein, and apparently Lewis Carroll is given a claim to it as well, but in the end, it’s simply a fun way to challenge yourself.

If you haven’t tried a puzzle like this before, don’t get discouraged and go Googling for the answer. Take your time and think about how the components are interrelated. If you’ve solved this puzzle before, this iteration might only be mental calisthenics, but with its new hosting veil, it should still be fun.

Einstein’s Hosting Riddle

A shelf in one of The Planet’s data centers holds five servers.
On a theoretical full shelf, each of the five servers has a single hard drive configuration, processor type, control panel (or absence thereof), server add-on, and operating system. No two servers on this shelf are the same in any of those areas.

• The Red Hat 5 operating system is being run on the Pentium 4 3+GHz server.
• The Dual Opteron server sits next to the server running the Cent OS 4 operating system.
• The Conroe 3060 server has a Checkpoint X16 Firewall as its add-on.
• The Single Woodcrest server has no control panel.
• The Cent OS 5 operating system is being run on the right of the server running the Windows 2003 Enterprise operating system.
• The server with an 80GB NAS backup add-on sits next to the server with two 750GB SATA hard drives.
• The server running the Windows 2003 Enterprise operating system uses Helm 4 as a control panel.
• The server running the Windows 2003 Standard operating system has two 750GB SATA hard drives.
• The server using Ensim Pro X as a control panel is in the center space on the rack.
• The first space on the rack is occupied by the Dual Opteron server.
• The Dual Xeon 2.8 server has two 146GB 10K RPM SCSI hard drives.
• The server with a LanTronix Spider KVM as its add-on has two 250GB SATA hard drives.
• The server with two 300GB 10K SCSI hard drives sits next to the server with the F-Secure Anti-Virus add-on.
• The server using cPanel as a control panel has two 500GB SATA hard drives.
• The server with two 300GB 10K RPM SCSI hard drives sits next to the server using Plesk 8.2 as a control panel.

Question: How much does the server with 20GB DiskSync add-on pay per month with The Planet (not including setup fees)?

Use The Planet’s Dedicated Servers and shopping cart to calculate.

You can assume that the servers have a base configuration (unless specifically noted in the clues above), that the owner of the server pays for components monthly (rather than in one-time fees), that The Planet’s promotions are not used, and that the 100 Domain licenses of the control panels are used for any control panel with price varying by number of domains.

Bonus Question: If a Private Rack shelf costs $325 per month and this particular customer pays only for the rack shelf and all five of these servers and add-ons every month, what is his or her monthly payment?

Submit your answers via comment, and I’ll let you know by email if you are correct. I’ll publish the comments with the correct answers in about a week (once other people have a chance to answer it without the risk of spoilers).

-Kevin

As promised, I’ve got a few pictures for you contrasting our upgraded workplace with our old offices. Doug explained why we made the transition to a new, consolidated office, so you can consider this post a continuation on how we’ve changed our work environment to advance The Planet’s pursuit of providing the best customer experience in the industry.

Jimi Hendrix once said in an interview, “In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.” I could creatively weave in a “the world/ The Planet” pun, but I’ll spare you the cheesinesses and simply show you some of the ways the move has upgraded our work environment, enabling us to provide better service.

The Call Center

If you’re speaking with Billing, Technical Support, or Abuse, you are probably talking to someone in this room. In the new call center, the screens in the front of the room show statistics like real-time ticket counts and statuses, call lengths and hold times, live chat requests, and quality assurance statistics like support ratings, escalations, and new policies.

The Network Operations Center

If you have a chance to swing through Houston to visit us, the new Network Operations Center will probably catch your eye. You’ll see the NOC staff hard at work under a blue glow with its new nine-workstation, stadium-seating configuration (above right). It faces nine monitors with switchable sources that track various statistics and status reports over time. As you can see in the old NOC (above left), everyone worked along a single aisle in the middle of the room, so the monitors on the back wall were behind half of the staff . With the new configuration, everyone can keep an eye on the monitors and respond to notifications accordingly.

In the near future, I’ll sit down with The Planet’s new VP of Network Operations Stan Barber to explain the NOC’s role in The Planet’s day-to-day service (like monitoring and filtering DoS and DDoS attacks, tracking and notifying customers about the network status, and addressing network-affecting issues).

The Cubes

The picture shows the sales area to show the general contrast between the old (above left) and new (above right) work spaces. Lower partition walls, higher ceilings and quad-cubes make collaborating a lot easier, and it’s much more conducive to me throwing a Nerf ball at Kevin Landreth.

Did I forget anything? … Oh yeah:

The People

Smiling faces. It looks like I don’t have to report any unhappy employees to Doug.

Because a few of you have asked for more on the other areas in which we are investing, I will have a new post for you soon about The Planet’s most recent data center and network improvements and retrofits; the company-sponsored education and certification programs in Technical Support and the Network Operations Center; and our investments in new server hardware.

-Kevin

With Web2.0 upon us, some customers have difficulty deciding when the time is right to make a new server purchase, particularly amidst a sea of buzz words like AJAX, Ruby, and Content Delivery Network. Which server is best for you? Should you get the Celeron or the Dual Clovertown? How can you choose between them without being bitten by over- or under-purchasing? How many times have you purchased a server with your boss looking over your shoulder? Hopefully, I can share a little of my professional experience to make your next server-buying experience a little easier … maybe when your boss is hounding you about how much you are spending on your next server, you can point to this definitive guide from someone who has done a few tours of duty in the industry.

What’s Your Server’s Application?

It’s a simple and straightforward question: What is your server’s application? I’m not talking about whether you are using apache, fastcgi, php, python, lighttpd, IIS6/7, asp or .NET. I am interested in how your server is configured and its purpose: Is it a Combo (http+db), a Workhorse (http or appserver), a File Server (http, ftp, rsync), or a Media Server (http site + files)?

While I boiled down the general “web servers” category into only those few types, I can almost guarantee that your web server will fall into one of them, and each type has its own needs.

The Combo (http+db)

While this is one of the most inefficient configurations, it happens to be the most common. Combo boxes rely heavily on CPU and RAM because they not only process the web request, but also handle the database queries. Databases queries eat up RAM and so do most web-scripting languages. The server’s CPU and hard disk access will probably be the most limiting factors in this type of application. I wouldn’t recommend spending a lot of money on RAID configurations or extra disks in a Combo machine since you would be better suited to run two purpose-customized non-RAID machines — with money to spare on backup space — for about the same price.

When you are able to break your Combo server down into separate dedicated http and database machines, you will be able to better tune and customize each server’s configuration for most efficient disk patterns, VM subsystem pressure and RAM usage. It may sound a little confusing, but I’ll explain a bit more about the different types of servers’ needs in my next post.

The WorkHorse (http or appserver)

When you don’t have a database on your http or appserver, you are looking at more of a workhorse-style server application. This configuration typically needs a focus on RAM and CPU without much demand for disk access. Typically, you will see servers like this bundled with Tomcat or ColdFusion. Most PHP applications suggest this setup because the ever-growing intensity of database queries and the amount of post processing in the scripting languages can put a strain on a box serving both the http and database requests. As a note, when you’ve set up your dedicated http or appserver box, you’ll have to decide whether to use mysql_connect() or mysql_pconnect() for your web application. A word to the wise: pconnect() is great if used in the right circumstances so don’t write it off if you don’t know how to use it or because it crashed your server last summer while you were on vacation. *wink*

The File Server (http, ftp, rsync)

File servers are the easiest beasts to set up. RAID and RAM!! RAM is for the file cache (which prevents direct disk-read requests), and RAID configurations accommodate multiple spindle heads. You will need 4 or 5 disks to make up for the RAID5 “write penalty.” I’d advise you not to get duped by reading about RAID1’s performance in reading from multiple disks. While it may be “smart” by definition, most hardware RAID controllers do not run “smart” RAID1. Don’t neglect the CPU on these toys since CPU plays an important role in bus transfers between the RAM, your disk controller and network connections. Dual processor or dual core machines would be ideal here.

The Media Server

These are the same as file servers but need a lot more CPU power and probably a separate database server (for the same reason explained in the “Workhorse” explanation). More spindles here = more better.

Do I Need to Upgrade?

Don’t rush into a server upgrade “just because” … look at your current utilization patterns — install sysstat so you can at least use SAR and make RTG’s, and estimate your usage. Is your server running at 25% or 75%? If you are at 75%, you might need to split your web and database servers. If you are at 75% and already have made that split, you may need a much better box with application-level caching and threads. I’d recommend against over-shooting your needs since the monthly cost can eat away at you in the end. If you are speculating a 10-15% increase in usage, just double up on the most important server resources go increase them by about one-and-a-half times if you already have a beast of a machine.

Don’t get caught up with RAID configurations if you would be better served with two machines with more RAM and CPU. In the end, it’s not about uptime or how much you are paying for a server each month; it’s about the most efficient way to use what you have so you can spend your money where it is needed.

Making the Move

Most of the forum posts I’ve read were about people who hate migrating from server to server or about how horrible the process is for their customers typically don’t have much experience in the process. The more you do it, the better you become at it (not really a novel idea, I know). My experienced advice: you need at least two weeks to get it done and done right. Why two weeks? Everyone knows DNS is a pain and so are custom-installed perl/pear modules … remember in ’04 when you installed Compress::LZO for that one customer?

I hope this helps!

-Kevin Landreth, RHCE
Technology Architect

And boy do we know how to throw a party! Well, at least our customers do. New Year’s Eve Nation, a new startup company out of New York, plans for one event 364 days out of the year: a national New Year’s Eve party spanning four time zones and eight cities. That’s one hell of a party.

Ex Spin City producer-turned-entrepreneur Jann Yogman has been throwing New Year’s Eve bashes in Manhattan since 1997 and is the genius behind the event. Last year, he decided to go national with his soirée and did just that using live feeds via the internet. Yogman connected five cities and allowed party goers to interact with each other via text messaging and video — all of which is broadcast on plasma screens at each location.

Last year, there were five cities. This year, it was bumped to eight, including New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston and Detroit. 8,000 people attended the party billed as “8 Cities. 4 Timezones. 1 Outrageous Party.”

So what hosting company with world-class datacenters and the most reliable network powered the event?

That’s right.

Not only did this party welcome in 2008 with a serious bang, it also gives back by donating 10% of the net profits to Micheal J. Fox’s Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

You can read more about the event and the goals for the future on CNN.com or the New Year’s Eve Nation website.

Happy New Year, Y’all!

-Ali