New Set Up

MattW

Well-known member
I've decided to ditch the mega expensive VPS I had, as it was hardly being tickled with the sites I had on there.

I've split the hosting I do up until 4 smaller droplets from DigitalOcean now.

3 X 2GB droplets
1 X 512M droplet (testing / play VPS)

I've put all my shared hosting that I do for people onto a single 2G droplet, installed Cpanel as they all like using that! I've left is pretty standard, and not messed about with it (just Xcache for the forums on there, no nxinxcp or percona).

That's now humming along nicely for them:

upload_2013-10-20_18-27-12.webp

For me own site, purely because I wanted to mess about a bit, I've split it over 2 x 2GB droplets. nginx web server, and Percona 5.6 database server.

Spent last night and today configuring them both up, and then moved the site over earlier this afternoon.

It's marginally slower than the old VPS setup, but that had 14CPU cores. The new ones have 2 cores each (that's why I went with 2 X 2GB).

I've got elasticsearch and memcache on the web server, along with APC for OPCode caching. Will see how it pans out, but might move back to Xcache.

I've really enjoyed setting them up, and learned loads on how to configure nginx, especially now you can't just use .htaccess to enable SEO urls.

Example with OpenCart which I use for my online shop

Code:
location /shop/ {
  try_files $uri @opencart;
  }

  location @opencart { rewrite ^/shop/(.+)$ /shop/index.php?_route_=$1 last; }
  location ~ /\.ht { deny all; }
  location ~* (\.(tpl|ini))$ { deny all; }
  if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite ^/shop/(.*)$ /shop/index.php?_route_=$1 last; }

upload_2013-10-20_18-35-11.webp
 
Just created my first support ticket with them regarding their droplet backup feature, and it was answered in 25 minutes. Given it was 07:15 BST when I submitted it, I don't think that's a bad turn around time.
 
I wasn't happy with the CPU speeds of the droplets. I couldn't get the page timings down to less than 0.3 (in debug). My previous VPS was always around 0.19 for the forum home.

I've just moved the site to a Linode 2GB VPS. Configured exactly the same, page generation is back down to 0.2 for the forum home according to debug, so I'm more than happy with that. Price if the same ($40) for the 2 droplets, but my site should be fine with the single 2GB VPS from Linode. Still going to keep my shared hosting VPS with DigitalOcean though.
 
I wasn't happy with the CPU speeds of the droplets. I couldn't get the page timings down to less than 0.3 (in debug). My previous VPS was always around 0.19 for the forum home.

I've just moved the site to a Linode 2GB VPS. Configured exactly the same, page generation is back down to 0.2 for the forum home according to debug, so I'm more than happy with that. Price if the same ($40) for the 2 droplets, but my site should be fine with the single 2GB VPS from Linode. Still going to keep my shared hosting VPS with DigitalOcean though.
where are DO and Linode VPS located in relation to your location ? geographical differences for VPS to your location ?
 
DO is in AMS1, and Linode is set up in London. I'm in Sheffield UK.


Rich (BB code):
[mworthington@artemis ~]$ ping z22se.co.uk (Linode)
PING z22se.co.uk (212.71.237.228) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from li666-228.members.linode.com (212.71.237.228): icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=9.94 ms
64 bytes from li666-228.members.linode.com (212.71.237.228): icmp_seq=2 ttl=52 time=9.87 ms
64 bytes from li666-228.members.linode.com (212.71.237.228): icmp_seq=3 ttl=52 time=9.85 ms

--- z22se.co.uk ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.854/9.891/9.941/0.036 ms

[mworthington@artemis ~]$ ping vps.z22se.org.uk (DO)
PING vps.z22se.org.uk (146.185.156.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from vps.z22se.org.uk (146.185.156.8): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=21.6 ms
64 bytes from vps.z22se.org.uk (146.185.156.8): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=21.5 ms
64 bytes from vps.z22se.org.uk (146.185.156.8): icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=21.5 ms
 
Wow Matt, jumping around the world now huh? :) I too dropped where we were and went with a server from ServerComplete. Probably didn't need a whole server but is was cheaper (for me ) than the VPS in the UK GOod luck with your new abode btw, at least you know what you're doing - ha! :)

Oh, and don't ya just love DNS MadeEasy for lightning fast updates, lets us move our site whereever we want as often as we want!
 
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Wow Matt, jumping around the world now huh? :) I too dropped where we were and went with a server from ServerComplete. Probably didn't need a whole server but is was cheaper (for me ) than the VPS in the UK GOod luck with your new abode btw, at least you know what you're doing - ha! :)
How you liking ServerComplete so far. Daniel is outstanding when it comes to support. I just got a third server from them and moved one of my L5520's over to Proxmox and have successfully set up my first KVM VPS at http://dagby.sayapple.com (just something to play with right now to learn how to configure Proxmox).
My plan for it is to have a few small VPS's to offer to folks that can't afford their own - with the understanding that it is an unmanaged VPS and if their system gets abused then it goes bye-bye. I only have 30TB of traffic a month available on that server so the use can't be REAL heavy.
 
They are great, support is damn good and yes Daniel is great. Had one hiccup on an OS reload that didn't happen for 6 hours but overall really good.
 
Wow Matt, jumping around the world now huh? :) I too dropped where we were and went with a server from ServerComplete. Probably didn't need a whole server but is was cheaper (for me ) than the VPS in the UK GOod luck with your new abode btw, at least you know what you're doing - ha! :)

Oh, and don't ya just love DNS MadeEasy for lightning fast updates, lets us move our site whereever we want as often as we want!
I know, I really don't like moving, but I just wasn't 100% happy with the DO set up.

This is now the 3rd time I've moved this May, and prior to that, I'd been on the same VPS for 4 years!

If it wasn't for DNSMadeEasy, I wouldn't have decided to move it over so quickly last night, as I can now set up a full server from a blank CentOS install in 1.5 hours. I left the TTL at 60 from the last move, so it was pretty instant when I switched it over.

I was really tempted by one of those dedicated servers from ServerComplete, but was getting pretty slow response times back to the UK, where as I can max out my home connection (80mb fibre) on the new VPS.
 
A lot of people say that, as well as report slow speeds on their drive setup. Others have no issues at all.
Yeah, the one I have set up running Cpanel is running OK, and that is currently hosting 15 sites for friends and family.

Very happy so far with the speed and set up of the Linode VPS though.
 
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