Hostd8 VPS Review

Josh / June 9, 2011 / No comments

Hostd8 4 Month Review

So i have been with hostd8 for about 4 months now. Just for the record, Ever since i was with Hostd8 and not any of the other companies, Their service has been nothing less than perfect for me.

Here is a quick background of how i ended up at hostd8. I was with Hostestate when they were still active and had a great package with them. After a couple months, Hostestate decided to sell their company to 859compute. 859compute was honestly one of the worst companies i have been with. Took them more than 2 weeks to get my VPS online. They lost ALL of my data from the VPS. I was lost. Then i saw Hostd8 was starting to handle my VPS. I thought it was the same company as 859compute but it was not. 859compute sold their hosting services to Hostd8. Thats how i ended up with them.

Now on to the good stuff. Their VPS has been great. Im on a great network with no downtime. In the past 4 months, I have had no downtime except for when it was me that caused it.

Network: 10/10

I have had to talk to support a few times and it has actually been a pleasure talking to them. Not to many hosts out there go above and beyond what they have to do. I get VERY fast responses (usually within 30 mins) from a knowledgeable staff.

Support: 10/10

Now for the VPS itself. As far as performance i can not complain. I use it as a backup WHM server to host friends websites, Family websites, etc. The VPS is very fast and responsive. Here are some stats from my VPS as proof.

time sync command:

Quote:
root@vps1 [~]# time sync

real 0m0.194s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.003s

Disk I/O:

Quote:
root@vps1 [~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 47.5947 seconds, 42.7 MB/s

VPS Performance: 9/10

So all in all i am VERY pleased and happy with my VPS a long with a dedicated server i have with them. I will keep this thread updated as time goes on. If you would like to check them out, Visit their site at http://billing.hostd8.com/portal/. Don’t let their website fool you, They have a great service for a great price.

Category: Hosing Reviews /

Hostd8 Review

Josh / June 8, 2011 / No comments

So i have been trying out a dedicated server from hostd8. I purchased one of their Mega32 servers and all i can say is WOW! The server is a great server for doing anything that you may need to do. The network is AWESOME and i have no complaints about my services. I would recommend Hostd8 to anyone. Below is a little bio of their company.

 

HostD8:

We are a client driven business. We understand that the customer has a need and we want to give them everything that we can at the best price possible, this is why our slogan is “the client comes first”

About our company, well there is not a lot to say here, we are a young company striving to change the hosting world. We first came to the drawing board about a year back. We sat down and listed everything that we LOVED and HATED about hosting providers in general. Unfortunately I can’t list everything we came up with, but I am sure they are close to what you have.  One major CON stuck out in our minds. Everyone had to conform to a predesigned prepackaged form. Why? Not everyone needs the same thing some need more some need less. Why can’t we say here are the packages what would you need changed to fit you and your budget.

From this simple thought we reversed the roll here is our top package what do we need to do to get it to your budget. From this HOSTD8.com was born.

We love the fact that we have interaction with our clients so they know we are more than just a website and billing software.  We have a wide range of people with a wide range of talents. For instance we have a few Iphone app developers on staff now. Sounds crazy in a dedicated and vps hosting environment but it is what some of the business clients wanted so that is what we did.

If you want to keep up with specials that we are running then follow us on twitter @realhostd8 we try to keep all news and specials posted there.

Category: Hosing Reviews /

Linux srcds installation tutorial

Josh / June 8, 2011 / No comments
1) Getting started with HLDSUpdatetool

First of all download hldsupdatetool from the VALVe webserver. Make a dir called srcds_l, and save hldsupdatetool in that dir and run it. (Check this out when you have an uncompress error.)

Command(s):

mkdir srcds_l
cd srcds_l
wget http://www.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin
chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin
./hldsupdatetool.bin
./steam

The new version of HLDSUpdateTool will be downloaded now. You will be returned to the console after its done.

2) Downloading the files

We can start downloading the files. This can take a few hours depending on the connection the server uses.
Command(s):

./steam -command update -game “Counter-Strike Source” -dir .

If you want to install a Half-Life 2 Deathmatch server, use “hl2mp” for the game switch.
Go get yourself a cup of coffee.

3) Starting srcds

First edit (or create) srcds_l/cstrike/cfg/server.cfg like you want it to be. Now we are ready to run the srcds.
./srcds_run -console -game cstrike +map de_dust -maxplayers 16 -autoupdate
and press enter. (-game hl2mp if it’s a HL2DM server ofcourse)
Your srcds is now up and running.

Extra) Running srcds in background (re-attachable)

We will make a script that will run the srcds in the background in a “screen”
you will need to have screen installed for this. make a file called server.sh and put this in:
Command(s):

#!/bin/sh
echo “Starting Cs:Source Server”
sleep 1
screen -A -m -d -S css-server ./srcds_run -console -game cstrike +map de_dust +maxplayers 16 -autoupdate

Save the file, and chmod it to run
Command(s):

chmod +x server.sh

If you want to start your server, simply run server.sh . It will start your srcd server in the background, to open it type:
Command(s):

screen -x css-server

If you want to close it again press ctrl+a+d, and it will detach the screen and keep it running in the background.

Revision 2: No Login information required anymore.

Category: Game Servers /

Installing Proftpd on CentOS 5.4, 5.5 or 5.x

Josh / June 8, 2011 / No comments

So I’ve been testing out webmin which is a free control panel for linux servers on one of my VPSs’ and I wanted to install an FTP server. Problem was this.. when I tried to run the proftpd module in webmin, it couldn’t find the proftpd rpm package to install on CentOS. So what did I do? Yes, google is the devil. I googled it. Found a website that explained how to do it but I can’t remember the website, I just remembered saving the command to install proftpd on CentOS. Hope this helps someone else out there

Do the following:

rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Then do the following:

yum install proftpd

and that should install proftpd so you can administer it via webmin :)

Good luck!

Category: Server Management /

Volumedrive 2 month review

Josh / June 8, 2011 / No comments

This is a repost of my thread on WHT.

 

So i figured i would give another review about my volumedrive service. After 2+ months of service, I am still 100% happy with the server, support and uptime. I originally wanted to get one of the xeon deals but the wait time was quite a long time at that time. So i decided on the phenom 2 quad core server. To my surprise, when i got the server, it was a core 2 quad which i was 100% ok with.

Server: 10/10, I have had NO problems with the server what so ever. I can’t really do a review on the server because there is absolutely nothing wrong with it past or present.

Network: 10/10, The network has been great for me. I have not had much downtime at all. I think in total over a 30 day period, I had 10 minutes of downtime. The network is very fast and reliable. Here is my pingdome report: http://share.pingdom.com/banners/5ce395d5

Support: 10/10, What can i say here. They are a unmanaged provider. Whenever i have had any problems or questions, They (Josh and Jeff) were VERY responsive and i never had to wait more than an hour for any kind of support. I think that is exceptional support for a unmanaged company.

All in all, I would strongly recommend volumedrive to anyone. The setup times should not drive anyone away from their company just for the fact billing does not start until the server is delivered. I recently ordered a OLD and i mean OLD athlon 3400+ with 2 gig of ram and it was setup within 48 hours as promised. I will do a review about my 2nd server once its been online long enough. If you have any questions, Just reply here and i will try and answer any questions i can.

Category: Hosing Reviews /

Changing the default SSH port on your VPS – CentOS 5

Josh / June 6, 2011 / No comments

This is not in anyway a game changer when it comes to security. But, by simply changing your SSH port you can cut down on over 95% of automated brute force attempts. By default SSH utilizes the port 22; here’s how to change it:

Login into SSH and edit the sshd_config file which is located in /etc/ssh/.

    nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

If you prefer to use vi, then simply change nano to vi.

Scroll down until you see the following line:

    #Port 22

Delete the # symbol and change the 22 to a different port to your liking. It should look like this:

    Port 5757

Save the file (CTRL-X), Y, and then enter. Finally, you just need to restart SSH

    service sshd reload

That’s it! Next time you SSH into your server, be sure to utilize the port 5757 instead of 22.

Category: Server Management /

Test the Disk I/O of your VPS

Josh / June 6, 2011 / No comments

There are a few commands that allow you to test the disk I/O speeds on your virtual machine. Please note that scores do vary and are not a completely accurate assessment of disk I/O.

hdparm -t /dev/sda1

Example output:

    [root@server~]# hdparm -t /dev/sda1
    /dev/sda1: Timing buffered disk reads: 1158 MB in 3.01 seconds = 385.34 MB/sec
    [root@server~]#

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync

Example output:

    [root@server~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
    16384+0 records in
    16384+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 4.89845 seconds, 219 MB/s
    [root@server~]#

There is an ongoing thread posted on WebHostingTalk which will allow you to compare your score.

Category: Server Management /