View Full Version : Load balancing question
So how does this work? You have taken several http servers and put them behind one load balancing server that fields all requests?
+ >You can spread the load around more servers so performance should be better?
+ >One http server goes down and no big deal (other than more load on the others)?
- >You now have one server which much more exposure that is a failure point for several http servers? Or is that a redundant server?
even >still single server solution for the MySQL servers? so if you are a mysql user that vulnerability stays the same?
+ >You can spread the load around more servers so performance should be better?
Yes, but thats not all. An abusive CGI script or customer can usually be found before they cause any outage.
+ >One http server goes down and no big deal (other than more load on the others)?
Yes, but with groups of 8 to 10 servers per cluster, more than one server would have to go down for anyone to notice any sort of load impact on the others.
- >You now have one server which much more exposure that is a failure point for several http servers? Or is that a redundant server?
I think your referring to the content switch. This is not a server per say, its hardware. There will also be two of them so if one does fail there won't be a service interuption. We are actually waiting on the other one to load balance all our servers. This has never failed, and its not likely it will be a problem (no customers scripts run on it).
even >still single server solution for the MySQL servers? so if you are a mysql user that vulnerability stays the same?
we intend on load balancing all of our services. DNS has been for some time. HTTP and FTP will be soon. There is a lot of work to be done before mail (IMAP, POP3 and SMTP) can be load balanced. mysql has a whitepaper out for load balancing mysql servers. We may do this in the future, but right now there are no immediate plans to load balance mysql.
Thanks for the answers.I think your referring to the content switch. This is not a server per say, its hardware. There will also be two of them so if one does fail there won't be a service interuption. We are actually waiting on the other one to load balance all our servers. This has never failed, and its not likely it will be a problemI have spent many years around this business. Everything fails, and all that hardware has plenty of code inside. Good to hear there will be redundancy.
This is a great tech improvement :)
You guys probably never realized it because the load balancer is a layer 2 pass through and doesn't even show up in a traceroute. However, you guys have been behind the same load balancer for over 2 years now without a single second of unplanned downtime. In fact not one peice of our network equipment has had any downtime that wasn't intentionally caused for an upgrade or some other reason.
Whether there's code or not doesn't really matter. There's an enormous difference between dealing with static code on static hardware and end user code. We don't have to contend with messed up forums, horribly written scripts, irc eggdrops etc etc on the load balancer. It is in a controlled environment (literally a pass-through)similar but even better then this forum is in. however, this forum is a decent example as it has never had any unplanned downtime itself either for the same reason. No end user scripts are running on it.
Here are some of the load balancers.
http://www.foundrynet.com/products/webswitches/serveriron/index.html
it is plenty failsafe and _still_ improving. The level of service difference between the old way and the way its all being transitioned to aren't even comperable. We will soon be posting some pics of our facility and equipment because we're very proud of it. It is unparalleled in our target market and we don't need to hide behind generic "NOC" pictures like some other hosts.
here are some examples of the routers and switches you guys are on. FastIron 1500 and BigIron 4000 (router). I can only upload 2 images otherwise i'd show more of the equipment. The one on the left (almost 3' tall) is the FI1500 distribution switch. One of the distribution switches anyway.
I read the announcement where the "lower" servers were load balanced now. So now my site is no longer hosted on www06 right? I will be loaded on what ever server is available. But OPS still says www06.
Our provisioning scripts, ect, will still assign you to a specific machine in a group of servers until we have all our servers load balanced and begin making changes to how this stuff works.
BerksWebGuy
11-3-04, 12:08 AM
We have 5 servers at my job location that are load balanced. They are for a single website. So if one goes down (intentional or not), no one would be able to tell. Its all about the switches/routers...good ol' Cisco is what we use.
We used to have one http and one database server...but of course everything expanded...and this is absolutely the way to go.
I'm not quite sure how it all works on a shared host though...
Sometimes you just have to chuckle a little and have a sense of humor. Quotes form this threadI think your referring to the content switch. This is not a server per say, its hardware. There will also be two of them so if one does fail there won't be a service interuption. We are actually waiting on the other one to load balance all our servers. This has never failed, and its not likely it will be a problem (no customers scripts run on it).Thanks for the answers.I have spent many years around this business. Everything fails, and all that hardware has plenty of code inside.And now from this outage thread:
http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?t=45145
Earlier this morning, we experienced some problem with our content switch (load balancer) which caused some http service interruptions. . .
cyberCrank
1-8-05, 07:01 PM
And now from this outage thread
Murphy at work again and he'll be back... ;)
** watching as Reputation points drop further :) **
Hey keyplyr - I had not gone out to your site before. Now I get it - Key Player. That is a very nice site.
If powweb staff would just be honest and more realistic about this stuff, I don't think it's customers would be so enraged. But all this "zero downtime" advertising pushes our BS meters pretty far.
Thank you for your feedback. Our "Zero Downtime Hosting" platform is based on our web hosting architecture as described at http://powweb.com/PowWeb/Technology/Overview. Through "load balanced" servers, our customer’s websites will experience no downtime during server reboots, server maintenance, and server hardware failure. This is the most common problem faced with web hosting providers. By eliminating those common problems, we can offer 100% uptime (under that scenario). However, this does not stop problems that arise from natural disaster such as an earthquake or something beyond our control.
More than half our customers based are already on our new web hosting platform and we have seen great improvements in performance and uptime. We are able to remove web servers from their cluster and customers are experiencing no downtime. However, during heavy DOS attacks, we did experience some service interruptions. We are working with our hardware provider to stop these heavy DOS attack so it'll be transparent to our customers in the future.
Again our "zero downtime hosting" is the "platform" that we're using. We do not guarantee that all our customers will have 100% uptime although that is what we're after (excluding natural disaster). You will see that PowWeb offers the best uptime in the web hosting industry because we are constantly working on new technology to offer just that for our customers.
Thank you for your feedback. Our "Zero Downtime Hosting" platform is based on our web hosting architecture as described at http://powweb.com/PowWeb/Technology/Overview....
Again our "zero downtime hosting" is the "platform" that we're using. We do not guarantee that all our customers will have 100% uptime although that is what we're after (excluding natural disaster). You will see that PowWeb offers the best uptime in the web hosting industry because we are constantly working on new technology to offer just that for our customers.So what is the difference between 100% uptime and zero downtime? Answer: The platform doesn't crash, just the web-sites become un-reachable.
Sorry, I think this is getting silly. In plain English, 'zero downtime' means downtime doesn't happen EVER! Now I'm not stupid enough to believe advertising hype that claims it offers a 'Lifetime Guarantee' of never failing and I think that the 'zero downtime' falls into the same category, advertising hype.
cyberCrank
1-9-05, 12:52 PM
Sorry, I think this is getting silly
I totally agree...
Zero Downtime may be a desire or a goal, but it is surely not reality by any means and simply not true. Any mature and pragmatic admin, manager, or user also understands that it is impossible to have Zero Downtime and to claim it to be true crosses the border of being silly and approaches the border of being deceptive.
** granted -- Powweb has improved, there is down time whether they want to admit it or not (if a "site" is down it is down for whatever reason and it makes no difference), they are not perfect (nor is anyone else nor should they claim to be), but I had much rather see Powweb earn real "Reputation" points for being honest, working to resolve and prevent problems, and for being responsive and supportive to customers **
Respectfully,
cyberCrank
ticoroman
1-9-05, 01:20 PM
I totally agree with you cyberCrank!
I agree! If powWeb isn't going to give 100% uptime they need to change their Zero Downtime line...
Again, thank you for everyone's feedback. We alway value our customer's opinion and what they have to say.
So, let's say if PowWeb offers a "100%" uptime guarantee based on our network infrastructure. Meaning, if our customers websites experience downtime because of our hardware, we will offer some kind of compensation. But, of course, it would not include natural disaster. Thoughts?
And of course, the price goes up to $49.99/mo, right? :p
On the face of it, a compensation method (service credit would make the most sense) would be attractive, but you'd have to strictly define what qualifies. Perhaps in addition to hardware, any outages caused by software misconfiguration (it has happened) should be eligible.
Again our "zero downtime hosting" is the "platform" that we're using. We do not guarantee that all our customers will have 100% uptime although that is what we're after (excluding natural disaster). You will see that PowWeb offers the best uptime in the web hosting industry because we are constantly working on new technology to offer just that for our customers.
And for those who are going to complain about the pre-scheduled downtime tonight, what host do you know of that would have a 2-day turnaround for replacing faulty hardware - especially doing such on a weekend?
I'm asuming that the hardware work their doing tonight is to replace the issue talked about in http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?t=45145 or perhaps something else that failed thus allowing the recent attack talked about in http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?t=45158. If that's the case, then CHEERS to PowWeb for being on the ball.
ticoroman
1-9-05, 06:08 PM
In my opinion there is really no need for any kind of compensation. I am aware that outages can and will occur for whatever reason, and I'm satisfied as long as I know that PW-staff is doing their best to fix the problem as soon as possible.
What I don't like with the "zero downtime" advertising is that it sounds just unreal. Sure, it also stands that it just cover server failure, reboots and similar, but when new potential customers read "zero downtime" they expect zero downtime under any circumstances. It just sounds to good.
Besides that I am real happy with PW.
Compensation for down time in a volume business is a can or worms. Kudos to Andrew for putting that up, but if you do that then every time something happens who is going to decide who is at fault - and won't the forum posts be fun. PowWeb will just make it worse when they do not compensate people who feel they should be. You will not convince them otherwise.
> Overall PowWeb does a great job.
> They seem to be working hard to improve what they have.
> They could do better at testing before putting things in production. There are far too many blow-outs.
> They would be better servered, IMHO, to drop the zero downtime pitch as it not believable by anyone.
But the compensation for downtime idea . . . that is just asking for more trouble.
That's my view :)
I don't think the compensation is a good idea.
It's going to be a lot of job to implement it.
And if the attack was coming from the competitor or someone who hates PowWeb,
it will give more motives to continue attacking. And we don't want that.
I think the problem is the way PowWeb advertises.
Current version:
Zero Downtime Hosting
PowWeb's proprietary "Zero Downtime Hosting" solution eliminates all single points of failure. By load balancing our servers, your website will have multiple paths to its destination. This is the same technique used with large corporations hosting mission-critical websites.
I would put it this way:
Our goal = "Zero Downtime Hosting"
PowWeb's proprietary "Zero Downtime Hosting" solution virtually eliminates all single points of failure. By load balancing our servers, your website will have multiple paths to its destination. This is the same technique used with large corporations hosting mission-critical websites.
Also, you should change raw log to nearly raw log
or whatever conforming to the reality.
Although most customers don't seem to care about logs,
some of new customers will be shocked about the logging when they find out.
ditto with extra.. However Andrew - Any "natural disaster" are the hosts fault. You can't tell me a DOS attact is a natural disaster as being a host you need to stop any script kiddies from taking down your network...
I would have to say from what I've read PowWeb hasn't had any "natural disaster" All downtimes are your fault....
BerksWebGuy
1-9-05, 08:54 PM
extras put it most eliquently...and realistically possible...just to change the wording.
One added point . . . kudos to PowWeb for even having this discussion. Many companies would not.
Actually I think I started the discussion . . . but Powweb has not only let it go on but the onwers are contributing. That says a lot about the company culture - and I like that.
ditto with extra.. However Andrew - Any "natural disaster" are the hosts fault. You can't tell me a DOS attact is a natural disaster as being a host you need to stop any script kiddies from taking down your network...
I would have to say from what I've read PowWeb hasn't had any "natural disaster" All downtimes are your fault....
A DOS can rank up there with natural disasters. It is something beyond our control and when it is distributed from many different hosts on the Internet, even with firewalls and ironclad ACLs, it can bring a network down.
A few years ago a particularly nasty DDOS attacked large sites such as Yahoo and Ebay and were successful in knocking those networks offline. But I suppose that was Yahoo and Ebay's fault for not being able to handle a few script kiddies.
Cheers,
I agree with David. Anytime the host's network is down, It's their fault.
Short of an earth quake..
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 09:23 AM
I agree with David. Anytime the host's network is down, It's their fault.That's not what Dave was saying. I think he was being sarcastic...
Compensation for down time in a volume business is a can or worms. Kudos to Andrew for putting that up, but if you do that then every time something happens who is going to decide who is at fault - and won't the forum posts be fun. PowWeb will just make it worse when they do not compensate people who feel they should be. You will not convince them otherwise.
> Overall PowWeb does a great job.
> They seem to be working hard to improve what they have.
> They could do better at testing before putting things in production. There are far too many blow-outs.
> They would be better servered, IMHO, to drop the zero downtime pitch as it not believable by anyone.
But the compensation for downtime idea . . . that is just asking for more trouble.
That's my view :)
I agree with you. Although in the past an extra 6 months was added to my package time for 'Outages' (I didn't actually notice them) I think that the case for compensation is a dangerous path to travel.
If you admit liability (unusual in any walk of life) you open yourselves up to litigation for further monetary compensation. At present I'd bet that the TOS deny liability for loss of revenue due to outages (someone find it for me?).
I stand by my earlier contribution, someone new to web-hosting will not understand the difference between their web-site being up 100% (or rather not being up) and a zero-down-time claim that is referring to hardware/servers.
Congratulations to Powweb for attempting to have zero-downtime, but technology and human understanding hasn't kept pace with each other. The language is difficult for me as a native British English speaker, think of the confusion if you're working in a foreign language!
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 11:46 AM
At present I'd bet that the TOS deny liability for loss of revenue due to outages (someone find it for me?).http://powweb.com/PowWeb/Company/Policy/TOSPowWeb is not responsible for any interruption in service or down time that may occur, whether due to external network disruptions or negligence of PowWeb. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, equipment failure and any and all other service interruptions caused by PowWeb. More in next post (character limit exceeded in this post :) )
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 11:46 AM
Continued:Limitation of Liability
You agree that PowWeb will not be responsible for any losses that may incur where Services are accessed by third-parties through illegal or otherwise unauthorized means, including but not limited to situations where data is accessed through the exploitation of security gaps, weaknesses or flaws (whether known or unknown to PowWeb at the time) which may exist in the Services or in PowWeb's equipment used to provide the Services.
Under no circumstances will PowWeb be liable for any consequential, indirect, incidental, special or punitive damages, or loss of profits, revenue, data or use by Customer, any of its customers, or of any other third party, whether in an action in contract or tort or strict liability or other legal theory. PowWeb will not be liable to Customer, any of its customers, or any other third party, for any loss or damages that result or are alleged to have resulted from the use of or inability to use the Services, or that results from mistakes, omissions, interruptions, deletion of files, loss of data, errors, viruses, defects, delays in operations, or transmission or any failure of performance, whether or not limited to acts of God, communications failure, theft, destruction or unauthorized access to PowWeb's records, programs, equipment or services.
Deskdirect
1-10-05, 11:56 AM
You agree that PowWeb will not be responsible ......
exploitation of security gaps, weaknesses or flaws (whether known or unknown to PowWeb at the time) which may exist in the Services or in PowWeb's equipment used to provide the Services.
Isn't this sorta like depositing your money in a bank and one of the bank employees forgets to lock the door at the end of the day?
If Powweb is not responsible..... who is?
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 12:01 PM
I merely pointed out IanS's statement about PowWeb's responsibility. I didn't write the policy. ;)
In all seriousness, I suggest contacting qa@powweb.com with your question because I don't know if it would be seen/addressed in the forum.
Deskdirect
1-10-05, 12:05 PM
Tom,
I guess I'm like most, had never really read the policy.
Powweb hosts my sites because I am not capable of doing the very things the statement said they are not responsible for.
Talk about eye opening!
I merely pointed out IanS's statement about PowWeb's responsibility. I didn't write the policy. ;)
In all seriousness, I suggest contacting qa@powweb.com with your question because I don't know if it would be seen/addressed in the forum.Thank you Tom.
To follow up the TOS, and Andrew's question about compensation - a major change is obviously is going to be required if Powweb are to offer monetary or other compensation as they seem to have a fairly 'good' exclusion system - nothings their 'fault' and you 'can't blame or sue us if things go wrong'
I'd bet most host's have something similar ones though (anyone care to quote from 'unnamed' competitors?) Everything supplied now seems to have the 'if you use this and it doesn't work, don't blame us unless it is faulty equipment we've provided, and even then our responsibility is limited to the price of the equipment we've sold you'. (And they only have the last part in because of laws making them).
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 02:38 PM
No problem Ian. :)I guess I'm like most, had never really read the policy.To be quite frank and honest, it astonishes me that people enter into agreements (contracts) without reading the fine print, in this case the Terms of Service. I would personally never go buy a car without reading the fine print on the financing terms.
No problem Ian. :)To be quite frank and honest, it astonishes me that people enter into agreements (contracts) without reading the fine print, in this case the Terms of Service. I would personally never go buy a car without reading the fine print on the financing terms.Reading the words and comprehending aren't the same :rolleyes:
Further, contracts on the internet are a matter of take or leave, not negotiate. If I'm signing a bit of paper and it has a clause I don't like I delete it on my copy and on theirs - initialling the deletion. Then it's up to them to accept my changes :D (Doesn't usually work tho'!)
No one 100% reads the TOS. Therefore when you say "Zero Downtime Hosting" you better mean no downtime or else you're going to start a big fight with your clients that can lead to bank bankruptcy....
Psan you should avoid the exaggerations. You say, "No one 100% reads the TOS."
I write contracts for a living and because of that I can tell you that not only did I read it, I printed it out and filed it, just as I have done on every anniversary of my hosting package since.
While "Zero Downtime Hosting" may be a bold statement, one that many a marketing guru would be proud of, you must also operate under "reasonable expectations". Expecting zero downtime of a particular site is not a reasonable expectation. Not any more reasonable than expecting the airlines to really have nonstop flights... trust me... they all stop sooner or later. ;)
symo
No one 100% reads the TOS. Therefore when you say "Zero Downtime Hosting" you better mean no downtime or else you're going to start a big fight with your clients that can lead to bank bankruptcy....Only one side can win that fight - read the TOS and you'll see that you'd lose not Powweb.
Isn't this sorta like depositing your money in a bank and one of the bank employees forgets to lock the door at the end of the day?
If Powweb is not responsible..... who is?Well, in the case of a bank in the U.S., the federal government is responsible if the bank fails and you lose all of your money. As for someone forgetting to lock the door, that's not a fair analogy. We've locked the doors, but sometimes people come at them with battering rams and all we can do is react.
But every web host has virtually the same wording in their terms regarding outages. This isn't something that we have cooked up to pull the wool over people's eyes...
Psan you should avoid the exaggerations. You say, "No one 100% reads the TOS."
I write contracts for a living and because of that I can tell you that not only did I read it, I printed it out and filed it, just as I have done on every anniversary of my hosting package since.
While "Zero Downtime Hosting" may be a bold statement, one that many a marketing guru would be proud of, you must also operate under "reasonable expectations". Expecting zero downtime of a particular site is not a reasonable expectation. Not any more reasonable than expecting the airlines to really have nonstop flights... trust me... they all stop sooner or later. ;)
symo
If "Zero Downtime Hosting" isn't a reasonable expectation then PowWeb should not clame to have it.
Simple as that...
Also avoid the exaggerations, people tend to believe what a host says they offer. In powWeb's case is it a good thing?? Depends who you ask...
cyberCrank
1-10-05, 08:16 PM
One added point . . . kudos to PowWeb for even having this discussion. Many companies would not.
Actually I think I started the discussion . . . but Powweb has not only let it go on but the onwers are contributing. That says a lot about the company culture - and I like that.
I ditto that B&T, and Powweb garners real "Reputation" points for so doing...
While I might be seen on these forums as a Moderator, I'm first and foremost a customer of Powwebs.
While there have been periods of problems, they are not anything different than what every other hosting company goes through at some point. I see most of the current issues as being from growing pains that is a by product of Powweb trying to make their server system better for everyone. Given time these issues will soon be nothing but a memory and those of us with enough patience will be smiling once again.
I've been with Powweb several years and do not see me leaving here for many more, fact is, I just ordered (for other people) 4 new packages within the last 7 days.
As for the TOS, I never "sign" an agreement without first reading what I'm agreeing to and neither should anyone else. Those who don't read TOS or EULA agreements would probably be really surprised if you went back and read some of the things that you've agreed to in the past. Many of the spyware products out there all rely on people who do not read those EULA agreements before they install that "free program".
joshuamc
1-10-05, 09:44 PM
I see most of the current issues as being from growing pains that is a by product of Powweb trying to make their server system better for everyone. Given time these issues will soon be nothing but a memory and those of us with enough patience will be smiling once again.
Very well put. Powweb is growing by leaps and bounds and that can only be possible by excellent service and happy customers. We have made great strides on staying up to date with state of the art technology and maintaining the best customer service available for our customers.
There are not a lot of hosting companies anywhere near prepared taking on the challenge of load balancing nor offering the services and support for the price you are paying. If you go with another host, chances are that if your site goes down, you will either:
1. Have no idea what is going.
2. Have no one to complain about other than the "leave a message" response which you will almost never receive a response back from.
3. End up sending emails to support@badhost.com that eventually lands in a bit-bucket.
4. Talk to Bendi, your friendly tech support agent located in India.
With Powweb,
If there is an outtage or an issue:
1. You can consult with other people in the community having the same problem.
2. Openly complain (this is important to a lot of people)
3. Send emails, private messages, phone us, or speak with us in Live Chat and receive a response and/or have it resolve dfor the most part within 24 hours.
4. More importantly, you can rest assured knowing that providing excellent service to over 60,000 customers is a top priority.
PowWebs racest too. Nothing wrong with people in India......
j/k
joshuamc
1-10-05, 09:52 PM
My point was that we all want someone to speak with who is ON or NEAR the problem, not across the country.
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 09:52 PM
Josh's point was also that we don't outsource our tech support to people who know absolutely nothing about Powweb. :)
OK - I started this thread, but it is now getting very painful. Everything has been said. The thread has degraded. Time for someone to close it.
tbonekkt
1-10-05, 10:04 PM
OK - I started this thread, but it is now getting very painful. Everything has been said. The thread has degraded. Time for someone to close it.You're absolutely correct.
Thanks for everyone's input. Thread closed.
alphadesk
1-10-05, 10:05 PM
OK - I started this thread, but it is now getting very painful. Everything has been said. The thread has degraded. Time for someone to close it.Agreed on both points ...
Thread closed.
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