VPS in the "cloud" or "iron"? What drives? Difficulties of choice. Full analog server until February for free
Recently, at one very popular webmasters forum, a client asked an interesting and seemingly simple question. What to choose? A virtual server in the cloud or a virtual server on a single “iron” server? Storage on which drives are preferable and in what cases? Today we will try to find the answer to this question together. We will be grateful if everyone after reading, will express his opinion. We also want to ask you to take part in the discussion of the topic “On restoration. Is it advisable to RAID on a VPS SSD in case of dedicated drives? ” On Habré, which is partially related to the current one.
Also, in the best traditions, taking this opportunity, we would like to congratulate everyone on the upcoming New Year holidays and present as a gift a full-fledged analogue of a dedicated server in the Netherlands for FREE (conditions for receiving at the end of the article) until February:
')
For each virtual server with a dedicated drive, you can buy up to 3 IPv4 addresses and increase traffic at the rate of + $ 15 for each additional 10TB.
But back to our main questions. In which cases it is advisable to choose VPS in the "cloud" and on the "iron" server, what drives should be?
On the clouds in general.
And now I will try to explain why. Cloud is now called any distributed software environment, raised on some physical equipment in an amount of more than 1. The rest is only the efficiency of the interaction and the principles of pricing, they may vary. As well as dedicated servers used to build cloud solutions and other additional equipment, such as storage, firewall and hardware load balancers, for example.
Consider the advantages and disadvantages of cloud solutions. Our partner LeaseWeb, with whom we are collaborating to provide cloud solutions in the Dutch data center EvoSwitch, built a cloud to provide VPS using KVM virtualization and various additional software solutions that enable:
- restarting the virtual machine on another hardware, in case of hardware problems with iron;
- filtering DDOS-attacks up to 1 Gbit / s for free (excluding traffic), the attack is mitigated on the border router and simply does not reach the cloud environment;
- temporary blocking of the virtual machine or restarting of the virtual machine in another segment of the cloud, in case of an abnormal load on the storage according to IOPS, which is identified by exceeding various specified thresholds (treshhold);
- reliable data storage in a duplicate enterprise-class storage, using exclusively solid-state SSD drives, providing up to 1000 times more performance, compared to SATA HDD.
The result was a fairly fault-tolerant solution, and we were happy to purchase most of the cloud for our subscribers, while providing a solution at quite interesting prices:
http://ua-hosting.company/vps - cloud servers in the Netherlands, USA and Singapore
[S]
Kernels (vCPU) 1 Core
Memory (vRAM) 1 GB
40 GB quota (SSD Storage)
1000 Mbps port
Premium traffic 4 TB
Filtering DDOS attacks up to 1 Gbps for free
From $ 3.99 / month depending on location
[M]
Kernels (vCPU) 2 Core
Memory (vRAM) 2 GB
60 GB quota (SSD Storage)
1000 Mbps port
Premium traffic 6 TB
Filtering DDOS attacks up to 1 Gbps for free
From $ 7.99 / month depending on location
Advantages and disadvantages of this solution? They are obvious.
Benefits.
1. Price. A controversial point, depends on the cloud and the principles of charging, on some clouds it is advantageous to use resources only for instant peaks, but with a significant consumption of resources, solutions on iron servers (bare metal) will be cheaper.
2. Fault tolerance. Also a controversial point, if nothing breaks seriously - quite high, but if it breaks ... Nevertheless, we again want to remind you of the importance of backup, since in case of software problems, there is still nowhere to restore the data, even if nothing was broken by hardware or broke, but the reservation worked properly.
3. Easy scaling.
Disadvantages.
1. In case of serious problems, as with any cloud, the time of inaccessibility (downtime) can be hours and even days. As the experience of colleagues has shown, if something breaks, it will seriously break down, and sooner or later all the most reliable clouds may fail. Remember the same Amazon, when they lay for 2 days and the same service for the collection of cardiostatistics was unavailable. Moreover, there were problems on our partner’s cloud due to a storage problem, about 2 years ago, when using hybrid type SSD + HDD storage.
2. Monthly tariffing. In our case, it may be both an advantage and a disadvantage, since, due to the nature of the rating system, the price is still lower. However, some potential customers expressed dissatisfaction with this issue and even said that it was not a cloud, because there is no hourly billing and it is impossible at any time to remove a virtual machine so that it stops charging and add a new one.
3. Shared storage in our case, which is why IOPS of one client can still affect others. And although various boundary values ​​are set in order to avoid problems (treshold) - the problem may be, moreover, caused by a failure on the storage itself.
4. In the case of bare metal (dedicated servers), you yourself can identify the nodes of your cluster (clouds), make them closer to the audience and avoid unnecessary spending, since in the end, with a large consumption of resources on an ongoing basis, bare metal will be cheaper significantly .
However, in general, in our version, this turned out to be a pretty good service, because we do not use clever pricing schemes, when bursts of tens of thousands of dollars come up for a surge in resource consumption in the cloud, as was the case with some colleagues.
However, it should be understood that for $ 4 should not be set in excess of the requirements for cloud servers. For example, on this cloud it will not be possible to copy a file linearly at a speed of over 240 Mbps, since IOPS for each virtual server are limited to treshold at 1000. This is quite a large value, since in the case of random write and read operations, it is equivalent to a RAID10 array of the 16 HDD SATA drives (IOPS each about 70 in the random version and, by the way, also depends on the cluster size and many other factors). In sequential writing or reading, the solution may lose due to this limiter to the same unloaded HDD (which can also provide even more than a thousand IOPS in such cases, I recommend my article for a better understanding. What factors affect storage performance and how? ) , but there are practically no such operations in the case of real web projects, because 1000 random IOPS for $ 4 is actually very cool.
However, there are projects for which this is not enough. In such cases, it is worth considering hosting on virtual servers that are not hosted in clouds (for clouds with a guaranteed amount of IOPS you need will be expensive), but on dedicated servers. But here there are already moments associated with the integrity of the hosting provider, since when using shared storage, performance will depend on the type of drives used, as well as the number of subscribers to the storage.
Much better - placement on virtual servers with dedicated drives, when not only CPU / RAM resources are allocated, but the storage and the storage itself are allocated, all your IOPS are yours, you really do not depend on the load of your neighbors. It turns out the analog of a dedicated server, since all resources are allocated, and the possibilities are sometimes even more extensive.
So my answer to the question in brief:
We just implemented such a solution - virtual servers on dedicated drives, and in the article “On Recovery. Is RAID on a VPS SSD expedient for dedicated drives? ” Explained why they are implemented without RAID1 and why it is still cost-effective and reliable.
PS We appreciate your feedback. We would like to thank you for your attention and tell us about the condition of the bonus . Everything, as in previous times, for any of the virtual servers in the Netherlands on dedicated drives:
ua-hosting.company / vds - only in the Netherlands, you can order here;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 240GB SSD / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 per month;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (12 Cores) / 20GB DDR4 / 480GB SSD / 1Gbps 20TB - for $ 49 per month;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 4TB SATA / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 per month;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (12 Cores) / 20GB DDR4 / 2 x 4TB RAID1 SATA / 1Gbps 20TB - for $ 49 per month.
We are ready to provide use until 01.02.2017 without payment , in the case of an order at any time until the end of January (the earlier you issue, the more free use you will receive). Enter the order number in the comments to this post and you will receive a bonus - the payment already made will be taken into account as payment for February (extension for March or refusal of the service, you need to make it until February 20th), and rent until February will be absolutely free. We also guarantee a refund for any reason within a month for all participants of the promotion, if you do not like the service. We would be grateful for the reviews and comparisons, like this:
Test results on a real project .
But criticism is also permissible, we work for you and want to be better, you need to - criticize, we will translate your wishes into reality, ua-hosting.company - glad to make you happier!
Also, in the best traditions, taking this opportunity, we would like to congratulate everyone on the upcoming New Year holidays and present as a gift a full-fledged analogue of a dedicated server in the Netherlands for FREE (conditions for receiving at the end of the article) until February:
')
For each virtual server with a dedicated drive, you can buy up to 3 IPv4 addresses and increase traffic at the rate of + $ 15 for each additional 10TB.
But back to our main questions. In which cases it is advisable to choose VPS in the "cloud" and on the "iron" server, what drives should be?
On the clouds in general.
My personal opinion is that the “clouds” are a big marketing bullshit.
And now I will try to explain why. Cloud is now called any distributed software environment, raised on some physical equipment in an amount of more than 1. The rest is only the efficiency of the interaction and the principles of pricing, they may vary. As well as dedicated servers used to build cloud solutions and other additional equipment, such as storage, firewall and hardware load balancers, for example.
Consider the advantages and disadvantages of cloud solutions. Our partner LeaseWeb, with whom we are collaborating to provide cloud solutions in the Dutch data center EvoSwitch, built a cloud to provide VPS using KVM virtualization and various additional software solutions that enable:
- restarting the virtual machine on another hardware, in case of hardware problems with iron;
- filtering DDOS-attacks up to 1 Gbit / s for free (excluding traffic), the attack is mitigated on the border router and simply does not reach the cloud environment;
- temporary blocking of the virtual machine or restarting of the virtual machine in another segment of the cloud, in case of an abnormal load on the storage according to IOPS, which is identified by exceeding various specified thresholds (treshhold);
- reliable data storage in a duplicate enterprise-class storage, using exclusively solid-state SSD drives, providing up to 1000 times more performance, compared to SATA HDD.
The result was a fairly fault-tolerant solution, and we were happy to purchase most of the cloud for our subscribers, while providing a solution at quite interesting prices:
http://ua-hosting.company/vps - cloud servers in the Netherlands, USA and Singapore
[S]
Kernels (vCPU) 1 Core
Memory (vRAM) 1 GB
40 GB quota (SSD Storage)
1000 Mbps port
Premium traffic 4 TB
Filtering DDOS attacks up to 1 Gbps for free
From $ 3.99 / month depending on location
[M]
Kernels (vCPU) 2 Core
Memory (vRAM) 2 GB
60 GB quota (SSD Storage)
1000 Mbps port
Premium traffic 6 TB
Filtering DDOS attacks up to 1 Gbps for free
From $ 7.99 / month depending on location
Advantages and disadvantages of this solution? They are obvious.
Benefits.
1. Price. A controversial point, depends on the cloud and the principles of charging, on some clouds it is advantageous to use resources only for instant peaks, but with a significant consumption of resources, solutions on iron servers (bare metal) will be cheaper.
2. Fault tolerance. Also a controversial point, if nothing breaks seriously - quite high, but if it breaks ... Nevertheless, we again want to remind you of the importance of backup, since in case of software problems, there is still nowhere to restore the data, even if nothing was broken by hardware or broke, but the reservation worked properly.
3. Easy scaling.
Disadvantages.
1. In case of serious problems, as with any cloud, the time of inaccessibility (downtime) can be hours and even days. As the experience of colleagues has shown, if something breaks, it will seriously break down, and sooner or later all the most reliable clouds may fail. Remember the same Amazon, when they lay for 2 days and the same service for the collection of cardiostatistics was unavailable. Moreover, there were problems on our partner’s cloud due to a storage problem, about 2 years ago, when using hybrid type SSD + HDD storage.
2. Monthly tariffing. In our case, it may be both an advantage and a disadvantage, since, due to the nature of the rating system, the price is still lower. However, some potential customers expressed dissatisfaction with this issue and even said that it was not a cloud, because there is no hourly billing and it is impossible at any time to remove a virtual machine so that it stops charging and add a new one.
3. Shared storage in our case, which is why IOPS of one client can still affect others. And although various boundary values ​​are set in order to avoid problems (treshold) - the problem may be, moreover, caused by a failure on the storage itself.
4. In the case of bare metal (dedicated servers), you yourself can identify the nodes of your cluster (clouds), make them closer to the audience and avoid unnecessary spending, since in the end, with a large consumption of resources on an ongoing basis, bare metal will be cheaper significantly .
However, in general, in our version, this turned out to be a pretty good service, because we do not use clever pricing schemes, when bursts of tens of thousands of dollars come up for a surge in resource consumption in the cloud, as was the case with some colleagues.
However, it should be understood that for $ 4 should not be set in excess of the requirements for cloud servers. For example, on this cloud it will not be possible to copy a file linearly at a speed of over 240 Mbps, since IOPS for each virtual server are limited to treshold at 1000. This is quite a large value, since in the case of random write and read operations, it is equivalent to a RAID10 array of the 16 HDD SATA drives (IOPS each about 70 in the random version and, by the way, also depends on the cluster size and many other factors). In sequential writing or reading, the solution may lose due to this limiter to the same unloaded HDD (which can also provide even more than a thousand IOPS in such cases, I recommend my article for a better understanding. What factors affect storage performance and how? ) , but there are practically no such operations in the case of real web projects, because 1000 random IOPS for $ 4 is actually very cool.
However, there are projects for which this is not enough. In such cases, it is worth considering hosting on virtual servers that are not hosted in clouds (for clouds with a guaranteed amount of IOPS you need will be expensive), but on dedicated servers. But here there are already moments associated with the integrity of the hosting provider, since when using shared storage, performance will depend on the type of drives used, as well as the number of subscribers to the storage.
Much better - placement on virtual servers with dedicated drives, when not only CPU / RAM resources are allocated, but the storage and the storage itself are allocated, all your IOPS are yours, you really do not depend on the load of your neighbors. It turns out the analog of a dedicated server, since all resources are allocated, and the possibilities are sometimes even more extensive.
So my answer to the question in brief:
If we consider conventional VPS SSD and cloud, it is better to take VPS in the cloud (cloud), since the structure is more distributed, more resources can be obtained, better fault tolerance than in a single SSD node. Clouds, though failing - but this is an extremely rare phenomenon. On a VPS SSD on a dedicated server, hosting providers can cram endlessly clients in order to increase margins, paying for this by degrading the performance of individual virtual machines.
But if we consider a VPS SSD with a dedicated drive , the situation is opposite, you get dedicated guaranteed resources, if the provider is honest, including all IOPS drives, and even if not honest - the number of drives in the server limits the maximum number of users, fewer opportunities to cheat customers.
We just implemented such a solution - virtual servers on dedicated drives, and in the article “On Recovery. Is RAID on a VPS SSD expedient for dedicated drives? ” Explained why they are implemented without RAID1 and why it is still cost-effective and reliable.
PS We appreciate your feedback. We would like to thank you for your attention and tell us about the condition of the bonus . Everything, as in previous times, for any of the virtual servers in the Netherlands on dedicated drives:
ua-hosting.company / vds - only in the Netherlands, you can order here;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 240GB SSD / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 per month;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (12 Cores) / 20GB DDR4 / 480GB SSD / 1Gbps 20TB - for $ 49 per month;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 4TB SATA / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 per month;
VPS (KVM) - E5-2650 v4 (12 Cores) / 20GB DDR4 / 2 x 4TB RAID1 SATA / 1Gbps 20TB - for $ 49 per month.
We are ready to provide use until 01.02.2017 without payment , in the case of an order at any time until the end of January (the earlier you issue, the more free use you will receive). Enter the order number in the comments to this post and you will receive a bonus - the payment already made will be taken into account as payment for February (extension for March or refusal of the service, you need to make it until February 20th), and rent until February will be absolutely free. We also guarantee a refund for any reason within a month for all participants of the promotion, if you do not like the service. We would be grateful for the reviews and comparisons, like this:
Test results on a real project .
But criticism is also permissible, we work for you and want to be better, you need to - criticize, we will translate your wishes into reality, ua-hosting.company - glad to make you happier!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/400473/
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