The Planet Blog

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

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

At The Planet, we’re excited about the holiday season. We’ve had a great year, so this is a perfect time to look back on 2007 and store away the memories much like one would store server backups in our data centers. How’s that that for a convenient segue into a discussion about The Planet’s backup solutions?

We currently offer NAS, DiskSync, Dedicated SAN and Dedicated Backup Server options, and as the resident backup and storage guru on the Product Management team, I love sharing backup knowledge with our customers. What question do I get most often? Easy: What is the difference between

What is the difference between NAS, DiskSync and the Dedicated Backup Server?

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is storage space allows you access over FTP. You write or provide the software to create and send backups to your NAS, and it functions as a reliable external disk to protect your data and store information separate from your server. Think of it as a target disc, albeit a pretty small one. You can buy NAS space from The Planet in increments ranging from 20GB to 200GB, and our typical NAS setup accommodates many users on each of our available NAS devices.

Our DiskSync product offers a much more complete SAN (Storage Area Network) infrastructure backup solution with the ability to schedule full backups and perform restores in our managed environment. Rather than having to create the backup software, our DiskSync solution enables you to quickly and easily monitor and track your data backups. On the infrastructure side, we host the large storage network and maintain the integrity of all DiskSync user data. The SAN structure is significantly larger than a NAS device and is much more scalable. It’s able to accommodate a considerably higher number of DiskSync users and any additional space you may want or need. DiskSync backups are available in 10GB increments with unlimited capacity.

With our new Dedicated Backup Server (DBS) solution, you become the admin for the entire system. You get a dedicated server with the R1Soft CDP Server software/license installed, and full root access. You have the ability to manage backups and delegate authority to users and sub-users, and you manage the OS, which allows for true customization for any of your more complex backup needs. We’ve found that many customers want this complete control and the peace of mind that each DBS is individually encrypted for data security since no other users access your DBS. Our most popular Dedicated Backup Servers come equipped with 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB of data, but we’re always open to a challenge if you need more.

While that’s a quick rundown of our three main backup solutions, it succinctly explains a few of the key differences I like to communicate when asked to run through the options. We feel this array of products can meet the needs of almost any user, so if you have additional questions about backup solution implementation or if you would just like a little more information, visit our Backup page or post a quick comment to let me know.

-Brett

As those of you who frequent The Planet forums know, I made the move from marketing to sales nearly one month ago. I’d like to share some interesting insights and observations I’ve gained since joining this team.

When I first arrived in sales I got a little training from my fellow team members, mostly watching how they handle live chats and the phones. Our sales folks are on commission, so taking the time to help me is not good for their bottom line. Even though I’ve known some of the sales team members a long time, and I shouldn’t have expected anything different, I was surprised to discover that it didn’t matter. They wanted to help make their new team member great and were willing to sacrifice their time selling to show me the ropes.

I also worried about how different the sales organization might be from the one I “grew up” in at EV1Servers. We had a saying at EV1, “The sales department doesn’t sell servers, the Web site sells servers.” So we acted as more of a consultative sales team than one that had any sort of interest in whether or not you chose to purchase.

We have a vested interest in whether or not you order the right server and the best way to serve our customers’ needs.

You may be asking yourself why you need a sales representative when we have a shopping cart that allows you to pick your server and customize it to your heart’s content? We have a fabulous shopping cart, and I know all of you are perfectly capable of ordering your own servers. You’re obviously brilliant since you’ve selected The Planet as your dedicated server provider. Regardless of how fabulous our shopping cart is, it may be helpful to have someone on the inside with your best interest at heart when ordering your server.

We may know about a promotion you may not be aware of. Just 15 minutes before I began writing this blog, I told a customer about the Free Fall promotion and saved him $50 on his control panel and setup fee. Plus he got some cool free extras, just because he stopped to ask whether or not cPanel supports unlimited domains.

And , it doesn’t cost you a dime. You pay the same setup and monthly fee whether a sales representative helps you or not. But we can’t help you fulfill the same server needs for less, or customize a server that’s perfect for you, unless you give us a call, send us an e-mail, or talk to us in chat.

When you’re ready for your next order, we’ll be happy to help you. My teammates and I hope to hear from you soon!

- Brooke

If you’ve ever seen Enter The Dragon, you know how dangerous a house of mirrors can be. Last week, our team had a great opportunity to chat with a handful of our customers to hear first-hand what we can do better to deliver a world-class customer experience. We also shared some details about where The Planet is heading in the coming months.

The primary topics of conversation in this self-assessment and evaluation centered on our support structure and performance, product pipeline, customer portal and account management processes. While the breadth and depth of these topics could fill several weeks of discussion, we were able to touch on them all in our focused two-day session.

Our goal? We want to be able to look at ourselves as Ranier Maria Rilke poetically describes in Letters on Cézanne:

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there’s another dog.

At HostingCon, I noticed a common pulse coursing through the veins of most companies: “Listen to your customers and provide them the services they want and need.” That business mentality is fantastic, especially if you are looking at it from a customer perspective, but the difficulty in approaching that broad goal lies in its immediate practical execution.

While there are hundreds of ways to gather information on those wants and needs virtually, we relished in the opportunity to break the “remote relationship” with a cross-section of customers visiting and brainstorming with us in person (and we could hear the Internet screaming in horror). This group came together with the understanding that we wanted to conduct an open dialogue about where we can improve to deliver a world-class customer experience.

From broad suggestions about adding general server configuration options to specific requests for our future consolidated control panel, we have reams of notes to reference in the continuous pursuit of providing a world-class customer experience, but those notes don’t mean anything until we execute on them.

We created a long list of action items we’ll complete in the coming days, weeks and months. We hope to continue the discussion by culling all of the suggestions and comments YOU can muster.

I am always excited to talk to our customers about what changes we should be making as a company. Does that sound cliché? Send me an email with your thoughts to test whether or not I’m really interested (and/or excited): khazard (at) theplanet (dot) com

-Kevin

P.S. YouTube has the final “House of Mirrors” fight scene from Enter The Dragon if you are in need of your daily Classic Kung Fu fix.

Welcome!

If you’re reading this post, you have made it to http://blog.theplanet.com, The Planet’s new blog home! For the past few months, we have been testing the blog waters at a temporary WordPress.com address, but that installation couldn’t provide us the flexibility and expandability that our new home does.

Additionally (and more importantly), we’ve got the blog humming along on one of the 45,000+ servers on our network! If you haven’t taken a second to bookmark this page or add the feed to your RSS reader (http://blog.theplanet.com/feed/), you should do so before starting the next paragraph. Trust me, the guilt will weigh heavy upon your head if you do not bookmark/add before you continue reading.

As you can see, subtlety was never my strong suit.

Now that you’ve updated you bookmark and added us to your RSS feed, I can fill you in on what you can expect to see from our team at this fancy new address. The main cosmetic changes — or what we like to call “bling” — of the new site includes a wider page layout and a brand-spanking-new navigation bar. We’ll continue to update the blog’s presentation with sidebar widgets, new content and new pictures.

On the back-end, we’ve installed a few plug-ins to cache the content and improve functionality.

What does this move mean for you? Well, since you’ve already updated your bookmarks and RSS feeds (or started crying in response to the guilt of not doing so), we just ask you to stay tuned! We’ve got a lot of great ideas coming this direction, and we’re confident that you will love them.

- Kevin

Surprise! I’ve got some data center pictures for you. I’m sure this post caught you completely off-guard, so I’ll give you a moment to let your heart rate settle. If you want to call all of your friends to let them know that another incredible picture post is now available, I will wait for that as well.

…

Everyone ready for me to proceed? All heart rates back in the normal 60-100 beats per minute range? I can’t promise that your heart won’t race again as you get a partially serious tour of one of our Houston Data Centers, but for right now, we are safe. A couple months ago, Brooke posted a note about our Virtual Data Center Tour, and in the comments, a “real life” data center tour was requested, so here we are. I’ll give you a more focused picture tour of the data center, and if THAT isn’t enough, I’ll dust off the transporter and start taking reservations.

This row is one of our “hot rows.” I could have taken a picture of the fronts of all of the servers with all of the pretty lights, but this side of the servers is what you really want to see from your data center. Every cable is individually marked and designated for a specific server on that rack.

See … I told you. Because the labeling and organization of each of the cords is harder to capture up-close with the larger boxes, this picture was taken behind one of our rack-mounted server racks. Don’t worry … I didn’t unplug boxes 2 and 3 on this rack to show more of the cords, but I can’t promise that I didn’t unplug ANYTHING …

This picture was taken immediately after I finished taking some crazy pills, and when I look at it, I can’t help but think of Mitch Hedberg’s “Bigfoot” observation:

I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that’s extra scary to me, because there’s a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He’s fuzzy. Get outta here.

In this case, it was the photographer’s fault.

It can be argued that this picture isn’t really showing a whole lot, but I find the detail to cleanliness and organization extremely impressive. I had to recruit Aaron to give me a run-down on what each of the wires carries, and here’s the run-down:

• Pink: Local Switch to Regional Switch
• Yellow: Regional Switch to Distribution Router
• Blue: Primary Network
• Brown: Isolated Network
• White: Remote Reboot Unit to Remote Reboot Controller
• Orange: Out-of-Band Network
• Black: Environmental Sensor
• Purple: Lunar Module Recharge Antiquantifier

I’ll let you guess which one of those I made up.

This cage houses our transport equipment. You thought I was joking about the transporter in the second paragraph? Pshaw… I don’t joke around with Star Trek references. If you look closely at the top left of the picture, you can see an orange plastic protective sleeve; that’s where the “interwebs” come from. More technically, that tube is the “pipe” or transit fiber that connects our data centers to the World Wide Web.

This picture features some of our edge routers (in blue) and core routers (in black, to the right of the edge routers).

When I walked into the data center, I felt like I was in a Sierra Mist commercial. If I had to guess the temperature outside in Houston, I would guess that it’s in the 120-130 degree vicinity (highly exaggerated), but as soon as you open the 3rd or 4th locked door to enter the data center, you get a wave of 68-70 degrees (not exaggerated).

This is the third phase of this data center’s space. When I came to Houston a few months ago, this phase was just getting raised floor installed, and I was surprised to see that the floor was “raised” about three feet from the ground. What goes under the floor in that three foot gap? Well, magic and rainbows, of course … along with power cables and the under-floor A/C vents.

This room has a caution sign on its door: “ACID.” As I was walking through the data center, snapping these pictures, one of my coworkers (who shall remain nameless), saw the sign and in a quizzical tone said, “A. C. I. D.? … I wonder what that stands for.”

While I was trying to come up with a smart-ass response to poke fun at that question, he (or she) sheepishly realized that “A. C. I. D.” might actually spell “acid.” The picture you see above is in the Uninterrupted Power Source room… which happens to be filled with batteries which happen to have battery acid which happens to lend itself to a warning sign. If the data center loses power for any reason, the batteries in this room immediately shoulder the energy load while the generators start-up.

This picture — and the next picture — were taken in the power transfer switch room. This area is the brain deciding where power is coming from (outside electricity, battery or generator) and where it is going (which phase of the data center).

These are the power transfer switches for each of the three phases of this data center. Needless to say, I didn’t touch anything in this room.

Generators. Four of them. Big ones. With such a large data center requiring so much power (and so much redundancy), our power backup couldn’t be a hamster in a wheel or a lawn mower engine. To get a perspective of how large each of these generators is, please see the picture below where I shamelessly cameo again.

Now, I’m anywhere between 6′3″ and 6′9″ depending on which convenience store I’m leaving (joke reference: Ron White), so these generators each have to be around 18 feet tall and 10 feet wide.

This picture features one of our data center NOCs (Network Operations Centers). These folks monitor the data center and are the “hands” that work with our server hardware.

As PBS would say, these tours were made possible by viewers like you. If you’ve got any more requests for pictures or brilliant insight from me, don’t be shy about sharing them.

- Kevin