A New Breed of (dv) Servers?
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:28 amSince our launch late last year of version three of our (dv) Dedicated-Virtual server line, we have been selling these servers like hotcakes. Quite literally, we now sell as many daily as we used to sell in a month when the product line was first announced. Customer demand and satisfaction have been very high on both counts, and we are happy to be able to provide a product of this quality in the marketplace.
From a technical standpoint these servers are in part based on Operating System Templates. When a new (dv) server is provisioned, an OS Template is mapped into that customer’s service which allows us to provide each server with a bit-by-bit copy of a known and reliable environment. Practically speaking, an OS Template corresponds to a specific Linux distribution. Currently, the distribution that we deploy is CentOS 4.4, which is a free, binary compatible clone of Red Hat Enterprise 4. There are other distribution templates available, but we chose CentOS for a few specific reasons. The first reason is that this is known to be an extremely stable and well tested Linux environment. The second is that many of our customers install binary third party software applications on their (dv) servers. Since Red Hat is the big fish in the Linux pond, all Linux ISVs certify their software against it. So, by using a compatible Red Hat clone such as this, we allow these customers the greatest flexibility in terms of their ability to get third party applications up and running.
Now, keep in mind that the basic goal of Red Hat Enterprise distributions is to provide stable, secure, well tested software. There are other distributions whose primary goal is to provide very up-to-date, bleeding edge versions of various software packages. Based on recent customer inquiries, we are internally discussing a new flavor of (dv) server based on one of these “bleeding-edge” template schemes. The advantage to a customer using this kind of (dv) is that they would have very new versions of things such as apache, subversion, PHP, Python, Perl, and so on. The downside is that these distributions get less testing than CentOS before new packages are made available, so third party applications may not be certified against them and they may be somewhat less stable.
Of course, as a company, our job is to weigh the increased engineering and support costs of having a new product on our roster against the customer demand for such a product. And so, we would really like to hear your thoughts on this matter. Would a (dv) server based on one of the bleeding edge Linux distributions be of interest? If so, can you let us know why? Is there a particular application that you’d like to run but you need the newest versions of everything in order to make it work? Please leave your comments here for us, we’re all ears!
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April 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Other than getting access to the Red Hat RPM package system, what is the benefit of using CentOS over say Ubuntu or SUSE (which I think are much more stable and used ditros).
Also, is there a possiblity of using a different Control Panel package than Plesk?
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:20 pm
My site v2ex.com is running on a community application wrote by myself, since my main development box is running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, so it would be really great if I can have the same environment on (dv). Currently with CentOS 4.4:
1) I have to make some extra efforts to get PHP 5.1.
2) MySQL 5.0 is not available, and since Plesk depends on it, so it’s not easy for me to replace 4.1 with 5.0.
3) memcached, dictd and a lot cool daemons, actually my application does support them, I can install them via apt-get but I don’t have yum on (dv).
4) If developer toolchain is installed by default, it would save a lot time.
(dv) is very great, I’m understanding that for stability and performance so that CentOS is a good choice, but if Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is also available as an option with less support(Yes I’m happy with this), it would be a crazy option for crazy developers like me.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I would be very interested in a more bleeding edge version of (dv), I hav had servers in the past that were bleeding edge on Red Hat and Debian and I have not seen any stability issues even when using thrid party applications. For customers that are interested in more bleeding edge configurations would it be possible to allow those customers to easily upgrade things like apache, php, mysql, etc on a more stable platform such as centos? Keep up the great work , I am happy with my (dv)!
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I think this is a great idea! We all want PHP 5 and MySQL 5, etc. and other cutting edge technologies.
Make sure you have the server setup preconfigured for ultimate fastness so we don’t have to Root fiddle with anything on our end once we move over to the new cutting edge system.
Make sure you allow for continuation of the silent server upgrade program you already propagate.
Make sure you have a direct, and invisible upgrade path between the (dv) 2 systems and the psycho (dv) so we don’t have to reinstall from base one.
All the best new stuff wants the latest versions and you know this or you wouldn’t be publicly asking for confirmation of your inkling. SMILE!
Will you keep Plesk?
Will you more frequently update our servers as part of the regular upgrade process?
Don’t charge more to cut the edge. Be smart and lower the (dv) price $2 a month — it makes risk-taking more tempting!
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I would kill for a server with more ‘bleeding-edge’ updates. The DV performance has been outstanding but having to install PHP5 and other modules every time i set up a domain is a slight hassle. New version of MySql would also be extremely beneficial. But overall i Know mediatemple always has the customers best interests in mind and i couldnt imagine ever buying hosting for another service.
April 3rd, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I’d like to see a DV with a standard LAMPP install of fedora, Redhat ES, Ubuntu and/or Debian. Included in the LAMPP install would be phpMyAdmin and webmin. Personally I would have moved to DV if I had these simple options to choose from, rather than what you offer now which is overkill to me. Hopefully a simplified system would decrease the plan rates; at $50 they are a little pricey.
Also, IMHO plesk is awful.
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Just curious, why did you guys decide to go with CentOS instead of RHEL? I know CentOS is free but seeing as how you guys are a huge, well respected, and profitable hosting company I figured you guys would choose the commercial RHEL over CentOS.
Looking forward to you input. - Rob
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:57 pm
On a production machine I would prefer something more stable, so I’m glad that you guys picked CentOS as your OS template. On my company’s own production machine, sometimes it is a pain that I can’t just yum to get the latest packages. However, with that said, usually all the latest pieces like Apache, PHP, mysqld are easy enough to compile on CentOS. It’s only the ability of having the latest libraries that come in hand in a bleeding edge distros such as Fedora. But then there’s always allowing the experimental repositories.
But with REL 5 out and CentOS 5 coming out soon, are you guys planning to upgrade the OS templates? I would love to run the Xen virutalization on a (dv) server, this way, I can simulate a production enviroment in the comforts of my own (dv).Or would this not be possible because of the way the (dv)s are provisioned?
April 4th, 2007 at 1:57 am
DV is great, I am a proud customer of it.
I think that adding new variations is not clever, if someone wants PHP x.x and MySQL x.x and so on and he is capable of dealing with their installation and configuration nobody is stopping him from doing this.
I think that is MUCH MUCH better if you focus to provide cool add-on (that will add more and more value to your offer since there aren’t much people offering this on the Internet with your pricing plan) . What I am referring?
1) A REAL BACK-UP (snapshot is good but it needs to be scheduled!!!)
2) some kind of dedicated firewall add-on (I pay monthly to have a dedicated hw firewall in front of my dv, isn’t cool?) (you can also add an hw solution with an IDS or advanced logging in addition to this firewall “package”)
3) sell software assistence (in token or by hour is up to you) focused on Plesk and CentOS… I think you have tons of geek willing of working with you and you will put your valuable brand to certify for this high-level and high-skilled assistence
4) Some load-balancing stuff. It will be costly but there are people that are willing to pay for this. For example you can offer a configuration that is made up by two server (one for web and mysql the other for email) or by three, etc…
I am referring to something more near to (cx) but not so near.
I hope to see soon some of this idea implemented, thanks again.
Filippo
April 4th, 2007 at 5:39 am
I feel that it would be a good idea to provide a “bleeding-edge” version for those who like to stay on top of all the new versions. Of course like you pointed out, it will not be as well tested as CentOS 4.4, but clients who sign up for this should understand that and know that there may be problems and errors.
April 5th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Oh, and if anyone is interested — here’s my blog article detailing why I came back to Media Temple’s (dv) 3 hosting after leaving the (dv) 2 to go to Mosso:
http://urbansemiotic.com/2007/03/25/moving-back-to-media-temple-from-mosso/
April 18th, 2007 at 4:54 am
I am all for keeping up with the Jones’s…. I am one for “bleeding-edge” technology.
Fo my business, personally I have no issues with trouble-shooting new systems and configs…. change and challenge is welcome in my house.
Bring on the “New-Breed” I say.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:34 am
(mt)’s customer service is great, but I must admit I’ve often found it frustrating that the (dv) servers run pretty old technology by default. I have a small shared server account elsewhere just for backup, and it’s always been running the latest versions of everything — PHP, MySQL, etc. I know that with a (dv) you can upgrade these at will, but still…
I can understand (mt) reasons for not keeping up to date with some stuff… but things like PHP5 have been out for years!
So, yeah, (dv) servers set up with up to date technology would be great, thanks!
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
It’s not that I prefer “bleeding-edge” over “stable”, but I have been running a ubuntu based box for pretty long at home for development and some friend-circle based hosting, and it has been working very well. It may not be as “stable” as your CentOS OS template, but it really does it’s job, and is pretty up to date.
Plus, the only thing I really don’t get the grasp of is DNS configuration. So if there was some way to abstract it I would even ask you to get me a blank box with only sshd enabled. I would take care of the rest. This should be an available option anyways, since you guys don’t provide support on software.
My $0.02
May 16th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Hi Guys,
Firstly, great to see CentOS being used all around!
Secondly, CentOS does have the CentOSPlus repository of packages, where Mysql-5, php-5 pgsql-8 etc have been available for a long time and all of the other packages mentioned in this conversation so far, are available directly from trusted second party repositories ( http://wiki.centos.org/Repositories )
- KB
May 16th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Just wanted to point out that CentOS-5 is now released … it has all the things people are asking for (php-5, mysql-5, apache-2.2, mod_perl-2, etc.) and it is stable … supported for years.
May 16th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Johnny - First off thanks for all your hard work on CentOS. We’re big fans of the project here at (mt).
We do know that CentOS-5 is out, and there are templates available for it for our virtualization platform. However, Plesk is not going to support it until the next version of Plesk 8 which is due out sometime Soon ™. Since the large majority of our customers need a control panel such as this, we aren’t offering VPS’s based on CentOS-5 just yet. But, we will certainly be keeping an eye on things once those CentOS-5 Plesk templates become available.
May 27th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
We would switch our server to Ubuntu if you added that. We would even use Ubuntu LTS but would prefer the latest greatest Ubuntu of course.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
I’m also looking for CentOS 5. Mostly for ruby 1.8.5 without the need for a development yum repo. I also really need subversion 1.2 or newer since I use Red mine as my project management software. I can’t seem to get subversion 1.4 to “play nice” on centos 4.4 with the latest compiled modules. Has anyone got it to work with the collabnet rpms here?
http://downloads.open.collab.net/collabnet-subversion.html
June 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Todd Nine -
Thanks for the input. In regards to subversion, our customers have had success on the current (dv) platform using the packages you can find here:
http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/subversion/
that are build for the RHEL4 line. Hope this helps!