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@jcaleb - I recently gave away for free a 1GB Xen VPS to a school in East Africa. I like to think that it will do them some good. They were struggling to get a little bit of money together to get a VPS to install Fedena on it (educational software - http://www.fedena.com/). I found it shocking that they didn't even ask for charity, they just wanted me not to cancel the order for a day or two until they can get the money together to pay for it. So when I see people ask for free stuff or ridiculously low prices I find it very disturbing that a young man in Uganda has so much pride and integrity that he doesn't want to ask for charity. And I do have a sense of humor, and I know that you're just trying to tease me :-) However every now and then I like to speak my mind. Of course, if you can make a serious case for charity then I'd be more than happy to help.
@marcm I'm just kidding. In reality, I have too many LEB now more than I need.
@jcaleb - I know you are :P - But if you want to try one let me know. It will probably be like every other VPS, lol.
@DomainBop - Those chat logs were posted about two months after the fact. In my conversation with the Security Department at PNAP I was told that the person who posted those logs had their account cancelled just a few days before that forum post was made (February 20th, 2012). So basically those logs were posted in retaliation to PNAP cancelling that person's account. How those logs leaked I don't know, and I left the investigation up to PNAP and their Security Department. Suffice to say that leaked live chat logs are pretty embarrassing for any company, even if they are supposed to be secured by a third party (in their case LiveChat - http://www.livechatinc.com). Back in February 2012 my hosting business was still called Drupal Centric Hosting (and for a brief period after that it was called Toratek .NET and we finally settled on VPS Node Box) and we were providing high end shared hosting for Drupal and our servers were not yet hosted at PNAP. Never mind that we were just starting to offer OpenVZ VPS servers, and it wasn't until March of 2012 that we joined LowEndTalk (see @vpsnodebox). What I am trying to say is that we were not known here at all back then and we did not have any contact with this community, so clearly the reason for that forum post was to try and embarrass PNAP.
As far as the contents of those chat logs are concerned, what happened back then had nothing to do with my abilities as a system administrator. Heck, I maintain a CentOS repository that amongst other things contains a complete Xen distribution and a custom Xen kernel that is customized by me, I write software, do some web design, build custom computers and servers and so on. By no means do I claim that I am some kind of super smart guy, but I am not so dumb that I can't even install CentOS 6 on a server, even remotely.
If you want to know the entire story, it goes something like this: On December 31st, 2011, I made the stupid mistake and ordered a server from PNAP. Maybe around the holidays it is not such a good idea to order a server. I should have waited at least another week, especially since I wanted to order it just to try it out and see how their service and equipment is. Also couple that with the fact that back then they were still trying to maintain a 4 hour setup time for new servers (they promise 24 hours now), and combined with them being understaffed around the holidays the end result was absolute disaster. What I got in return was a rushed server and a botched setup. Never mind that no one bothered to tell me which port was for public access and which one was for LAN, I had to contact them again because I didn't get the right IP subnet for my server, the remote keyboard wasn't working when I inserted virtual media into the IPKVM console (Java) and when I finally managed to boot the server, IPKVM was so slow that I couldn't do anything. I also got mixed drives for my RAID array, and me being sort of a neat freak I like to have everything in order and properly working. So of course that I was pissed, and after about two days of struggling with this and not getting it to work the way I wanted it to work I gave up. I basically told them to either install identical drives in that server and provide me with a proper IPKVM device and a decent connection or let it be and refund my money. To their credit they did refund my money (after I had to pressure them for a little bit) and one of the managers ended up calling me. A few months later I talked to them again and I was assured that they improved their services and that I won't encounter those issues again. And I didn't. They apologized for what happened, I apologized for being a bit hard on them, we all had a laugh about it and from March until May I moved all my servers over to them one by one and became a decent sized customer over at PNAP. I can honestly say that PNAP has been the best data center that I have worked with and that I am very pleased with their services. Hardware issues are pretty rare and if something happens, they are pretty fast to replace anything that's faulty.
Now I have a few words for you @DomainBop: If you are the same person that posted those chat logs on that forum then I understand, I really do. I mean those logs are from the beginning of January 2012, and your account was cancelled around mid February 2012, so back then you wanted to somehow retaliate against PNAP. Then incidentally you came across me on this forum, which by the way wasn't very hard, because unlike you I am not trying to hide my identity like a coward behind a keyboard and a nick name. And assuming that you are indeed the same person, it's all good. You got your laughs back in February 2012, and now you thought that you could embarrass or make me look bad or something, but you didn't know the whole story. So far - so good - right? I can understand this, I really can.
But what I can't understand, and this is a big but, is this: if you are someone else and not the person who posted those chat logs on that forum, someone else that started to dig for dirt about me on Google then you have bigger issues than you think; the sort of issues that border on stalking a person online, and you definitively don't need to wonder around the Internet talking to people. No Sir, what you need is help, preferably the professional kind from a good therapist. Because if you took the time to dig around and find that on Google, and being over a year old that information is now buried pretty deep in the search results, then you either have nothing better to do all day long or you're a sick creep.
And with this being said I don't want to derail my own thread, however I don't like to send personal messages to other members to clarify some non-sense that was supposed to be private in the first place, non-sense that really doesn't mean anything at the end of the day. So just let me be @DomainBop, you had your moment, now move on and forget about me please. Thank you.
DomainBop is either involved in something or a dirt digger / stalker
@Voss - I agree, it's way too long but it had to be said. Sorry if it's an eye sore. :-)
Normally I don't bother much about this sort of people but I'm wondering, how did you get into contact with these people? It looks like something good to do and I also would like to donate 1. However that depends on the needs for it.
They found @marcm on LEB and opened a ticket with their story when they couldn't pay after being able to pay on time after months
wow lol! I never said how dare they demand a refund. They're welcome to it. I was simply impressed that people are that caught up over $1. I didn't expect people to sing my praises but I did expect a fair shake and that didn't happened. I simply lured a bunch of cheap opportunists. I did take my ball and go home. If you want to play with the ball, you can rent part of mine or buy your own.
Again people in this community want Dedicated Resources on Enterprise hardware all for $7.... People here want to tell me about a business plan. You show me a business that is turning a profit on $7 servers on enterprise hardware without overselling.
Eh? Pretty sure other than a couple of idiots, everyone knows that overselling is part and parcel of a LEB.
Well you would think that, but take a look around. There's quite a few people that want dedicated resources but don't want to pay anything more than $7
some kind of CO-OP?
That's a minority though, and those people generally aren't part of the 'community' on this forum, they're just bargain hunters. If these people were the reason you closed your doors, I don't think you've given the majority a fair crack of the whip.
Simple, just calculate using a provider using KVM as well as Supermicro or equivalent hardware. KVM can be oversold yes, but once the RAM hit swaps everyone can feel it pretty quickly, so unless the provider has a love for bad rep they probably won't do it.
BuyVM does 256MB KVM for $5. Their pricing is linear scaled so it's the easiest to use as an example. Assuming 28GB allocated per server, that's 112x 256MB. $560/month per server. Taking it that colocation will cost $150/month including bandwidth, SolusVM licence $10 (yes I know they don't use SolusVM, but for calculation sakes), $150/month on a 12 month ROI for hardware cost recovery. They'll be making $250/month per node for the first 12 months, and $400/month thereafter.
Money may look small on a single node, but if you have 100 nodes that's $25,000/month ($40,000 later) and you don't need a large staff base because everything can be automated and it's a no-support service. And please, don't give us the excuse that Buyvm has 100 nodes and all that's why they can do this. They started somewhere with 1 server just like every other provider.
Disclaimer All the numbers are based on estimates and by no means are these numbers representative of BuyVM's finances. I am in by no means affiliated with BuyVM and team, and simply using their KVM pricing to prove a point.
If you can really give me 1GB KVM for $1/mo, then I can retract my humor.
@jcaleb - Nah, it's okay, you can keep being funny.
Seen lots of these ideas get planend out, with Kimsufi's and Volumedrives, but as far as I know, never went anywhere.
I'm the one who started the Versaweb thread, and after seeing that and reading through this one, I can tell you why the single provider with many users model works so well. When I posted the Versaweb thread, there were many people people saying it wouldn't work for all the reasons that have been rehashed here. A few hours in, @curtisg PMed me and said he had grabbed one of the servers all on his own dime and asked if I'd be willing to share the cost and get a VM on the server. That never panned out either, but it's still the only realistic way sharing it would work.
But if you think about it, what's the difference between "one person paying the whole and then others paying him in exchange for portions of the server" and "a provider selling VMs on boxes they own"? Only difference is that the first way isn't "officially" set up as a provider with a brand and publicly available and all that. A fully shared model doesn't work because people don't trust each other, especially not at any large scale (as in, more than three people). Also they want something for nothing. And I'm no less guilty of this.
I retract my friendship. I will unfriend you in FB, and unfollow you in twitter
People will group, separate and achieve hierarchy - in other words, at the end, they are going to have to learn to respect each other level of "AUTHORITAH!":
If anybody here is seriously interested in doing something like this I am willing to manage the server. I could sell everyone vps's at $10 per 1gb of ram and will have absolutely no overselling. So what you pay for is what you get.
To add: It will be e3 1270v2 server