MUD Administration

obit · 05-20-2012, 03:50 PM

I'm trying to decide on a hosting service to run an instance of this codebase:

my basic requirements are SDK or JRE 1.6 or better, mySQL or posgreSQL, shell access, and some sort of webpage hosting(very basic). It uses minimal resources and I can't imagine bandwidth ever being an issue.

I own my own domain name and I'd like to be able to point it at the server.

I'm not too worried about the price, as long as my requirements are met and I'm not paying for a zillion features that I don't need and will never use. Good customer service is a must. Any suggestions at all are greatly appreciated.

Thanks
obit

dentin · 05-21-2012, 11:01 AM

Try any one of the various VPS hosts. I've used blue mile before and had a pretty good experience:

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

obit · 06-23-2012, 01:24 PM

Thanks! I ended up going with rackspace VPS. Couldn't be happier with the results unless it was free. And it nearly is, tbh. 10 bucks and some change/month got me enough RAM/diskspace/bandwidth the keep me happy. The server pings nicely from most locations; playability is good and the website loads fast. Would definitely recommend their service to others.

dentin · 06-23-2012, 01:42 PM

If you don't mind, keep an eye out for kernel 'stalls' when trying to do disk access. One common problem I've seen across all VPS's so far is that sometimes, when you try to do more than one or two disk read/writes in succession, the kernel I/O syscall will simply 'go away' for an extended period of time depending on server load.

I've actually had my entire VPS not respond in any way whatsoever for up to a minute at a time. Now that we're on a multi-processor partition, it's generally just a single process that blocks, and intercepting the syscall shows that it's blocked in the kernel trying to talk to the hypervisor.

There also appears to be at least one hypervisor/kernel issue where filesystem write calls simply never complete. Ever.

At any rate, if you happen to notice stuff like this, please post here or send me a mail. Most people never see it, but AA is substantially larger than most games and from what I gather has a lot more disk I/O. If you notice it also, it would be a good data point.

We are running linux kernel 2.6.32-305-ec2 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

obit · 06-23-2012, 02:14 PM

I'll keep an eye on it and let you know if anything strange happens. Mtrek runs pretty light and I've only rebooted once since I fired it up a month ago (before the game was running in fact). I've had no real issues so far. It's running on Ubuntu 10.04, which is one of the many pre-installed options for the cloud vps hosting.

05-20-2012, 03:50 PM	#1
obit Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Home MUD: telnet://we-dont.gotdns.org:1701 Posts: 64	hosting service suggestions? I'm trying to decide on a hosting service to run an instance of this codebase: my basic requirements are SDK or JRE 1.6 or better, mySQL or posgreSQL, shell access, and some sort of webpage hosting(very basic). It uses minimal resources and I can't imagine bandwidth ever being an issue. I own my own domain name and I'd like to be able to point it at the server. I'm not too worried about the price, as long as my requirements are met and I'm not paying for a zillion features that I don't need and will never use. Good customer service is a must. Any suggestions at all are greatly appreciated. Thanks obit

05-21-2012, 11:01 AM	#2
dentin Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Home MUD: Alter Aeon Posts: 245	Re: hosting service suggestions? Try any one of the various VPS hosts. I've used blue mile before and had a pretty good experience: -dentin Alter Aeon MUD

06-23-2012, 01:24 PM	#3
obit Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Home MUD: telnet://we-dont.gotdns.org:1701 Posts: 64	Re: hosting service suggestions? Thanks! I ended up going with rackspace VPS. Couldn't be happier with the results unless it was free. And it nearly is, tbh. 10 bucks and some change/month got me enough RAM/diskspace/bandwidth the keep me happy. The server pings nicely from most locations; playability is good and the website loads fast. Would definitely recommend their service to others.

06-23-2012, 01:42 PM	#4
dentin Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Home MUD: Alter Aeon Posts: 245	Re: hosting service suggestions? If you don't mind, keep an eye out for kernel 'stalls' when trying to do disk access. One common problem I've seen across all VPS's so far is that sometimes, when you try to do more than one or two disk read/writes in succession, the kernel I/O syscall will simply 'go away' for an extended period of time depending on server load. I've actually had my entire VPS not respond in any way whatsoever for up to a minute at a time. Now that we're on a multi-processor partition, it's generally just a single process that blocks, and intercepting the syscall shows that it's blocked in the kernel trying to talk to the hypervisor. There also appears to be at least one hypervisor/kernel issue where filesystem write calls simply never complete. Ever. At any rate, if you happen to notice stuff like this, please post here or send me a mail. Most people never see it, but AA is substantially larger than most games and from what I gather has a lot more disk I/O. If you notice it also, it would be a good data point. We are running linux kernel 2.6.32-305-ec2 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux. -dentin Alter Aeon MUD

06-23-2012, 02:14 PM	#5
obit Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Home MUD: telnet://we-dont.gotdns.org:1701 Posts: 64	Re: hosting service suggestions? I'll keep an eye on it and let you know if anything strange happens. Mtrek runs pretty light and I've only rebooted once since I fired it up a month ago (before the game was running in fact). I've had no real issues so far. It's running on Ubuntu 10.04, which is one of the many pre-installed options for the cloud vps hosting.

MUD Administration

hosting service suggestions?