A sobering problem

[coandco]

Hello all!
So, bad news. I'm about at the point of giving up on our current host. I thought switching clusters might improve our rampant lag problems, but in testing today we're having identical issues after switching. The new management of HazeNet seems singularly uninterested in helping, with a long email chain only resulting in a recommendation to switch over to their (much more expensive) Thrust::VPS servers. The issues appear to be because of overcrowding -- when the server lags out, usually it's only taking ~10% or less of the CPU, which points to problems sharing with the other VPS instances on the cluster.

What's even worse is that I don't have a good replacement host lined up. One of the main reasons I went with HazeNet in the first place was because they offered plans that were approximately a third as expensive as I could find anywhere else for equivalent server stats. This was all well and good when we first joined, as their servers were decently well managed. After they got bought out, we were moved to a different server cluster that was apparently much more crowded, and ended up being completely unsuitable for running a Minecraft server. What's more, the only thing their support techs will do about it is recommend I switch to a plan by the company HazeNet got bought out by, which is three times as expensive as this one for nominally the same hardware.

Long story short, I'm looking for suggestions as to where to go from here. It's apparent to me at this point that HazeNet is no longer a viable host. We're currently paying $55 for every 3-month period, and we have a little less than a month left on our current contract. Most Minecraft-ready servers I've seen cost ~$50 per month, so we wouldn't be able to switch to them without a significantly higher level of donations. Do people have any suggestions?

Clint

EDIT: Luckily, the forums are hosted on my DreamHost account, so we can keep those indefinitely, even if we lack a server capable of running Minecraft.

[airsoftslayer93]

Yer, saw this on shamus's blog, i really wouldnt know what to suggest, damn takeover. i havent a clue about tchnology but im guessing a server costs alot to buy, so you can only hire them, cause if like shamus bought one he could host all manner of things on it, like the website and this server and a tf2 server, i really dont know what to suggest. damn my ignorance

[RussPixie]

It's not so much the hardware, but it's connection to the internet. Building your own machine capable of running a largish minecraft server isn't too difficult, but finding somewhere to put it that can handle the traffic is.

[airsoftslayer93]

i get you, my mum shouts at me enough when we go over our bandwidth limit in a month, haha, tricky stuff all the same

[kerin]

I swear I'm not trying to be smug or preachy here, but - yeah, what you're experiencing is why the VPS is so cheap in the first place. Looking at their numbers - the number of CPUs and amount of RAM per monthly dollar - leaves it patently clear that they simply can't do business with any degree of quality assurance. You get what you pay for, blah blah.

I don't know if you want suggestions, but [url='Linode.com']Linode[/url] is fantastic. Excellent systems, and my main node actually gets better disk IO than my home machine. That's a 512 system for $18/month, by the by - for rock-solid performance and a snappy connection. </shill>

How much by way of resources does the twentymine server chew through? I have a spare 512 slice that only exists to run a MySQL server without bogging down the production system, and maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement. I'm using less than 5% of its resources, so it could potentially work out pretty well.

[coandco]

[cyber_andyy]

Well this sucks :/

Will this effect the mumble server?

[fenixkane]

The mumble server is completely separate so it'll be ok for now.

[Epharian]

Yeah, based on what you said on Shamus' blog, the real issues are Memory, CPU & bandwidth, with the REAL cost coming from bandwidth. 500GB/month is a LOT of data.

Honestly, I suspect, but don't know, that *some* of that could be improved with better network code from Notch, but that's so out of our hands....

I don't have any real solutions.

Sadly.

I miss building on the server...

[kerin]