Dilbert2234
11-29-2009, 03:50 AM
So, two buddies and I decided to change our seedbox provider. Looking around, we found an offer from Santrex.net we couldn't really say no to.
Configuration:
Unmetered Standard Dedicated Server - France
Core i7 (8 core) 2.66 GHZ CPU
12 GB RAM
4 x 1.5 TB drives
100 Mb unmetered network connection
Choice of OS
1 IP addresss
$160 / mo.
We contacted Santrex, they informed us setup for the box was three weeks so we went ahead and ordered the box with Redhat Linux for the OS.
At the end of three weeks, we didn't have the box. We contacted Santrex and they said there would be a delay of another week. Ok, things get busy, we decided to cut them some slack.
End of the fourth week, still no box... Not so happy about cutting them slack. They said it would take one more week to setup. We told them fine, one more week then refund the order.
End of the fifth week, no box. We asked them for a refund and the promised the box by Monday. We let them know that if we didn't have it by Monday, we'd be filing a grievance with the credit card company and Santrex could have fun with the CC company climbing down their throats.
Late in the afternoon on Monday, we received the login information for the box.
We log into the box and start looking around. What we had was a bare bones RedHat 11 install. For us it was perfect as I have no fear in Linux and one of my buddies is a Linux Guru. Word of advice: If you don't know Linux and you're afraid of it, this type of box is NOT for you. When I say bare install, I really mean bare install: No desktop, no torrent software, no DB software, nothing... Basic shell commands, SSHD and YUM... That's pretty much it.
First thing we notice when we log in, the OS was built on a 1.5 TB disk, nothing else was visible. Did a little digging and realized that they setup the operating system on a software RAID-1 with two if the disks, no other file systems were there. Dropped a note to support and received a quick reply back, the other disks were there, they just had not been mounted/formatted. Took a quick look with fdisk and sure enough, there they were.
Created a software RAID-0 volume with the two remaining disks, so now we have a 1.5 TB RAID-1 disk and a 3 TB RAID-0 disk. While we have all 4 disks promised, remember you lose one when they decided to setup the mirror. We discussed tearing the mirror apart and using that disk as part of the RAID-0 set, but since we can't physically get to the computer if there's a problem, we decided a RAID-1 mirror might be worth the list 1.5 TB of space.
We also discovered that the system is on the OVH network and that they left a backdoor into the system through an ssh key for root@rescue.ovh.net. That went away fast, but something to remember to look for.
We loaded Torrentflux, PHP, DB, FTPD and Python on the box, got torrent flux running and started playing around.
100 Mb/sec is not a problem, I've had downloads run upwards of 12,000 Kb/sec when the swarm could handle the requests. Uploads have hit 3-4 MB/sec, depending on being able to service it.
The CPUs on the box are pretty much idle all of the time. Every once in a while, one or two of the cores spike up to 50% utilization (SQL commit maybe) but it always evens out.
The reason we went with a box this size, we had problems with our last provider's server crashing, on average, once every two weeks. Their statement was that Torrentflux is a memory pig with large seeds and we had too many large torrents running. We have the same large torrents running on this box, top shows memory utilization as negligible. The box handles everything we can throw at it.
Because we had so much extra disk space on /root, we put a second instance of Torrentflux up on the box. For torrents we want to seed over time, but not see, we move them to a directory in /home and seed from the second instance. Even with a second instance of Torrentflux running, the box is effectively idle with minimal memory usage. This machine is a beast and appears to have been the right way to go.
Summary:
Pros:
Barebones system that can be run anyway you want
Price for what you get isn't bad
True 100 Mb/sec network connection, can be upgraded to GB for $40/mo.
Cons:
Butt-slow setup time, needed a credit card dispute threat to get the box pushed through
Undocumented root access from the provider
Lose one of the four disks listed as part of a software mirror if you don't specify to not mirror the drives
Overall:
Happy with the box, would recommend to a friend with the caveat of not believing their quoted setup time.
Configuration:
Unmetered Standard Dedicated Server - France
Core i7 (8 core) 2.66 GHZ CPU
12 GB RAM
4 x 1.5 TB drives
100 Mb unmetered network connection
Choice of OS
1 IP addresss
$160 / mo.
We contacted Santrex, they informed us setup for the box was three weeks so we went ahead and ordered the box with Redhat Linux for the OS.
At the end of three weeks, we didn't have the box. We contacted Santrex and they said there would be a delay of another week. Ok, things get busy, we decided to cut them some slack.
End of the fourth week, still no box... Not so happy about cutting them slack. They said it would take one more week to setup. We told them fine, one more week then refund the order.
End of the fifth week, no box. We asked them for a refund and the promised the box by Monday. We let them know that if we didn't have it by Monday, we'd be filing a grievance with the credit card company and Santrex could have fun with the CC company climbing down their throats.
Late in the afternoon on Monday, we received the login information for the box.
We log into the box and start looking around. What we had was a bare bones RedHat 11 install. For us it was perfect as I have no fear in Linux and one of my buddies is a Linux Guru. Word of advice: If you don't know Linux and you're afraid of it, this type of box is NOT for you. When I say bare install, I really mean bare install: No desktop, no torrent software, no DB software, nothing... Basic shell commands, SSHD and YUM... That's pretty much it.
First thing we notice when we log in, the OS was built on a 1.5 TB disk, nothing else was visible. Did a little digging and realized that they setup the operating system on a software RAID-1 with two if the disks, no other file systems were there. Dropped a note to support and received a quick reply back, the other disks were there, they just had not been mounted/formatted. Took a quick look with fdisk and sure enough, there they were.
Created a software RAID-0 volume with the two remaining disks, so now we have a 1.5 TB RAID-1 disk and a 3 TB RAID-0 disk. While we have all 4 disks promised, remember you lose one when they decided to setup the mirror. We discussed tearing the mirror apart and using that disk as part of the RAID-0 set, but since we can't physically get to the computer if there's a problem, we decided a RAID-1 mirror might be worth the list 1.5 TB of space.
We also discovered that the system is on the OVH network and that they left a backdoor into the system through an ssh key for root@rescue.ovh.net. That went away fast, but something to remember to look for.
We loaded Torrentflux, PHP, DB, FTPD and Python on the box, got torrent flux running and started playing around.
100 Mb/sec is not a problem, I've had downloads run upwards of 12,000 Kb/sec when the swarm could handle the requests. Uploads have hit 3-4 MB/sec, depending on being able to service it.
The CPUs on the box are pretty much idle all of the time. Every once in a while, one or two of the cores spike up to 50% utilization (SQL commit maybe) but it always evens out.
The reason we went with a box this size, we had problems with our last provider's server crashing, on average, once every two weeks. Their statement was that Torrentflux is a memory pig with large seeds and we had too many large torrents running. We have the same large torrents running on this box, top shows memory utilization as negligible. The box handles everything we can throw at it.
Because we had so much extra disk space on /root, we put a second instance of Torrentflux up on the box. For torrents we want to seed over time, but not see, we move them to a directory in /home and seed from the second instance. Even with a second instance of Torrentflux running, the box is effectively idle with minimal memory usage. This machine is a beast and appears to have been the right way to go.
Summary:
Pros:
Barebones system that can be run anyway you want
Price for what you get isn't bad
True 100 Mb/sec network connection, can be upgraded to GB for $40/mo.
Cons:
Butt-slow setup time, needed a credit card dispute threat to get the box pushed through
Undocumented root access from the provider
Lose one of the four disks listed as part of a software mirror if you don't specify to not mirror the drives
Overall:
Happy with the box, would recommend to a friend with the caveat of not believing their quoted setup time.