DreamHost VPS

In case you haven't noticed, DreamHost has just launched DreamHost VPS (Virtual Private Servers).

The solution gives each user a "virtual machine", thereby protecting the users CPU and RAM from other users on the same machine.

The service is an add-on to your existing account and prices start at $15/month. The cool thing is you can scale as you go, and increase your CPU and RAM levels at any time.

More info:
http://www.dreamhostps.com/
https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=vserver.provision
http://blog.dreamhosters.com/2007/08/02/dreamhost-private-servers/

It's great if you need a lot of space/bandwidth mot not a lot of cpu/ram :)

How can i get an invitation ?

EDIT : ok i didn't saw you can get it from panel, i just subscribe, i'm in the waiting-list.

i loved it!
dreamhost keeps surpreending me every day!

but i think would be better if we could choose the cpu and ram separetly...

This is very nice!

I wonder if this really does guarantee that you can't be shut down by CPU hogs on your server? If so, I'm getting this just for the better uptime!

I would get it just for consistency of service. I've had my gallery database moved around and always notice differences in response times. Lately, it's on a downward trend.

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This is very nice!

I wonder if this really does guarantee that you can't be shut down by CPU hogs on your server? If so, I'm getting this just for the better uptime!

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That's exactly what I was thinking, if people on the server can still burst up to the max cpu speed, I wonder what affect that has on another account that all of a sudden wants a large chunk of CPU time.

All I'd need is the minimum cpu and ram, since my sites aren't overly busy or processing heavy, but if it can guarantee me that someone else on the server can't for all intents and purposes kill my sites while their number crunching goes on I'm in.

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What I'm guessing that they'll do is put a certain number of VPS'es on each physical server up to some percentage allocation of the original server. They'll do this by painstaking simulation and mathematical analysis involving either number theory, set theory, stochastic calculus, or maybe just algebra and decide on a percentage somewhere around 50%. (j/k)

Now people really have to do some thinking and performance analysis to figure out what the loads are on their sites and how much dedicated CPU and memory they need to handle this. This is brilliant!

I do wonder how the "burst memory" works, though. Maybe the blog post will point us to a technical implementation paper or something. :)

More technical information can be found in http://linux-vserver.org/Welcome_to_Linux-VServer.org

Fascinating reading. Thanks miikka!

What I'm interested in finding out is whether one can end up worse off with DreamHost-PS.

From the description of the CPU limit implementation, it seems unlikely that you could end up worse off, as long as the unlikely combination of DreamHost configuring the servers close to 100% with all your neighbors using close to 100% of the CPU. (I find my server to be mostly lightly loaded)

The memory limit implementation seems to have more potential to be problematic for a DreamHost-PS customer.

If your purchased limit is the Resident Set Size (RSS) hard limit (unlikely), there are many situations where you'd be worse off.
If your purchased limit is the RSS soft limit (likely), there are not many situations where you'd be worse off.
If your purchased limit is the Address Space (AS) hard limit (unlikely), there are many situations where you'd be worse off.
If your purchased limit is the AS soft limit (likely), there are not many situations where you'd be worse off.

But if they've used only the soft limits, it's unclear how they can guarantee memory to customers. It also seems that even with soft limits, since the report memory is smaller than physical memory, there's a chance that you wouldn't be able to allocate as much memory if you're well-behaved and observe the limit. OTOH, you'd be less likely to trigger an actual OOM or paging situation. At any rate, it's still unclear to me exactly how bursting would apply to memory.

One thing I haven't seen considered is the effect on users not using the PS service.

If the private servers are on the same servers as the standard accounts how would this affect others on the same server. Would they end up with less resources available?

Or are these servers going to be moved to new servers, after all they did recently consolidate some racks to free up space http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/07/30/rack-consolidation/.

More codes

Can you run things like a shoutcast server in these machines??

Thx!

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Can you run things like a shoutcast server in these machines??

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As always, the definitive answer would have to come from support, but everything I've have read indicates you *may* run a shoutcast server (you will have permission to run it).

There is still the consideration of how much memory/CPU to devote to such a server, and that is directly related to whether or not you *can* run it (effectively).

The number of streams/listeners etc. would still be limited to the resources available to you on your machine/plan, but at least if you "killed" it, you would only kill yourself so there is nothing to stop you from running it into the ground.

--rlparker

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One thing I haven't seen considered is the effect on users not using the PS service.

If the private servers are on the same servers as the standard accounts how would this affect others on the same server. Would they end up with less resources available?

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According to the blog entry, you account is moved to a new server with other PS customers - and is easily moved between boxes so they can accommodate changes in how many resources you're requesting.



--Matttail
art.googlies.net - personal website

If anyone have registered for this feature can you please share back to this forum ?

Consider this as a second request.

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Consider this as a second request.

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A second request for what, people to announce that they're on the waiting list?

A second request for reports of experience with the service.

Obviously I could sign up for it and find out for myself but I simply don't have any sites that would benefit from it - yet.

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

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A second request for reports of experience with the service.

Obviously I could sign up for it and find out for myself but I simply don't have any sites that would benefit from it - yet.

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Yeah, I was just wondering if you were repeating the previous request which I pedantically take to literally be a request for people have requested the feature, not who have a DreamHost-PS account (which is what you've requested and which would make more sense).

The feature sounds like it could be useful for sites that have a bit of trouble under the standard settings.

This feature really seems to have popped out of almost no where very quickly without much talk on the beta forum.

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

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The feature sounds like it could be useful for sites that have a bit of trouble under the standard settings.

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Yes, some site like marketplace site or classified ads ?

Well, I imagine any suffciently high-load dynamic site would qualify. We could probably do a survey of posts here from people who've complained about getting into trouble for CPU usage to get a good idea of good application candidates. :)

The candidates that I see are forums, WordPress sites with lots of dynamic plugins, and MediaWiki.

I'm thinking a SEO link site. (grin)

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

So why does that feature of Dreamhost's need its own separate domain, instead of a logical subdomain of dreamhost.com, anyway?

-- Dan

I was going to answer your question here... but I think it would be easier if I register MyAnswerToDansQuestion.com and post it there instead.

Maybe since they have to register the domain anyway to prevent someone else from doing so and using it in ways DreamHost doesn't approve of, they figure they may as well use it?

Can't wait to hear any good sharing for this. I just come out with other post about MediaTemple's grid hosting. Is it a same kind of technology ?

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I just come out with other post about MediaTemple's grid hosting. Is it a same kind of technology ?

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No, the two are completely different.

Grid hosting involves having a cluster of servers all able to serve up the pages for a single website. The load between the servers is load balanced.

As Mikka references, DreamHost PS uses Linux VServer, which is a server virtualization technology. This is all about accounts being tied to a "dedicated" virtual server. So you get what amounts to a server-within-a-server all to yourself.

Here are Wikipedia articles on the two technologies:

Clustering
Virtualization

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Grid hosting involves having a cluster of servers all able to serve up the pages for a single website. The load between the servers is load balanced.

As Mikka references, DreamHost PS uses Linux VServer, which is a server virtualization technology. This is all about accounts being tied to a "dedicated" virtual server. So you get what amounts to a server-within-a-server all to yourself.

Here are Wikipedia articles on the two technologies:

Clustering
Virtualization

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Ah... Got it ;)

Thanks Lensman !

does anyone know what the expected wait time is for those on the beta wait list, as well as the full service rollout?

Yeah, sign me up. Then when DH's network goes down (as it invariably does every 6 months or so) I can think of all those dedicated CPU cycles that I'm still getting!

I signed up almost immediately after seeing the first post and have just gotten switched over. I still have a few glitches that I've had to work around but will report back when I get everything up and running again.

I signed up to that offer, but after a few days I cancelled it, because I was afraid about I could be missing all of those nice different IPs (I'm thinking from a SEO perspective) that DH offers.

Is it that way? When you pass to a VPS solution, will all of your domains pass under an unique IP, or you can choose which one have to be "VPSized"?

All your sites go on your private server. You get one IP, but can buy additional ones.

I was just wondering... how much do people purchasing the 15$ package actually earn in the sense of CPU and RAM. How much RAM / CPU is a normal shared user guaranteed as a minimum and maximum?

Umm, isn't the minimum zero?

I've also gleaned from some other posts that your processes get targeted by the process killer if they go above 100MB. This is different from the 150MB guaranteed minimum memory for your private server.

How long does it usually take to get it set up? I believe I requested it through my control panel at least a month ago, probably longer.

I posed a summary of related threads in this other thread a week or so ago.

We have no actual information about this and no one has posted recently saying they got switched over and when they signed up, so it looks like there might be a long queue. There was the one post saying that after submitting a support ticket regarding some problems on their server, they got moved over to a PS server since they were waiting in the queue anyway.

If you do submit a ticket and find out how long the wait is, let us know!

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If you do submit a ticket and find out how long the wait is, let us know!

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And please let us know the big difference if any

I'm curious yet no exact informations from customer about this service that I've heard :(

Supernova

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I'm curious yet no exact informations from customer about this service that I've heard :(

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What kind of "exact" information are you looking for, supernova?

I get guaranteed cpu and memory. These bounds set the minimum performance of my site.

From the memory perspective, the *performance* of a majority of sites won't be affected. The guaranteed memory just means that you will be able to run any processes up to that memory limit.

From the CPU perspective, depending on the CPU utilization of your site, you should have a *minimum* equal to the performance on a CPU at your mininum CPU allocation - in my case a 150Mhz processor or roughly 7% of a single typical CPU (of which there are either 2 or 4 on our servers).

OTOH, I think the fantastic thing about the VPS implementation is that it more fairly allocates CPU time after you've exceeded the guaranteed limit. On our normal shared server, a single user can create thousands of processes that end up eating up a disproportionate amount of cpu resources, even when there are processes that other users want to run. Under either of the Linux VServer alternative implementations of CPU token buckets, each virtual server would get their proportionate share of the CPU - so you not only get your minimum, but you get your proportionate share of the otherwise unused excess CPU!