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vpsBoard - Future Discussion

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Time4VPS

New Member
Verified Provider
Does any one knows what happened to vpsboard.com support? They ignore requests regarding advertisement and banner changes. Impossible to submit ticket via support section.
 
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clarity

Active Member
I don't think that it is dead, but the owner has been pretty absent for a long time. HalfEatenPie is a moderator or admin, and he is still pretty active. MannDude has posted about his absence, and you can see that response in the same thread that you created on LowEndTalk or find it here. I think that it was his last post on the forum.


The main issue is that the new post content on the forum has essentially dropped to zero. There used to be a community here, but it seems that most of them have disappeared. There are days when the forum receives no new posts, and I think that it is a combination of MannDude disappearing and forum software issues. For a long time, DrMike was driving the conversation with new posts and topics, but he was pretty unhappy after the last software upgrade from what I could tell. He has slowed down as well.


I hope that it comes back, but I am not holding my breath. It seems that most of the providers that were here have moved back to LowEndTalk, and they were the reason I joined here. People like KuJoe, Aldryic, Francisco, miTgiB, and others who I respected had moved away from the other forum, and I still wanted to read what they had to say.
 

MannDude

Just a dude
vpsBoard Founder
Moderator
Apologies. The request was not purposely ignored. I've responded to your ticket.


I believe you have me on Skype as well. I usually leave it on 24/7 even when I'm not home. Keep in mind that it's always set to 'invisible' so it'll look like I'm offline, just leave a message as I usually check Skype first thing when I get in for unread messages. :)
 

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Howdy folks!


i'm on vacation right now so sorry about my inactivity!  It's been two years since I actually took any vacation time off (all the other travels have been due to work), so this has been something I've wanted to do for a long time.  


To be honest, anyone can start up their own discussion at any point, but most people who check vpsBoard regularly usually wait for something interesting to discuss about.  I'll be back in a week or two and we'll get this show back on track.  Until then, stay classy. 

Yes, its dead, as now spam appearing in general talk forums.

Fair enough.  if that's how you feel, I can't change anything about it.  
 

TheLinuxBug

New Member
Problem is this sector of 'web hosting' has taken a huge hit over the past 18 months.  A lot of small business have sold out or are in the process of selling out to big players.  As this happens it means less small companies running VPS/Cloud businesses.  I hate to say this but I originally doubted it when @mao on LEB started saying it about 24 months ago that things were going to change, but he was right.  As these small businesses get purchased, there is a lot less new loans or capital being handed out by banks/VC capitalists for this type of business.  It is sad because it makes it feels like this industry went from a Honda NSX to a old Ford Fusion in terms of new businesses and participation in the market, but it is what it is.  Most customers are now just going with players like Digital Ocean, Vultr, Arubacloud, OVH, etc instead of looking to purchase services from smaller providers.  As this continues to happen, again we will see less and less offers in forums like VPSBoard and LET.


Also a lot of companies who were in contracts with different data centers with long term contracts (read cheap colo, power, network), the contracts have started to expire and data centers are now trying to get more money out of their customers than they were at the original lease time (prices are going up) as that happens it also makes this type of business less realistic in big Datacenters (as you keep seeing small hosts moving to different DCs), instead the ones which are flourishing now are European DCs and stuff in LA.  You can tell this by the super cheap deals being offered out of LA as well as Romania, France, Italy and Lithuania.


At this point because of the slow down in this sector it is making both VPSBoard and LET seem much more slow as far as content.  Especially so here as we don't cater to the 'Low End' crowd like LET does.  If VPSBoard is going to stay relevant we will need to either have a major development in this industry (new technology) or we need to start utilizing the 'off topic' forums and start threads on different things, such as the ARM threads here which has been marginally popular.  If we don't adapt, yes, it will slowly get more quiet around here.


@MannDude I must admit though, with you not being around and @HalfEatenPie's time limited as well, that does also have a bit of an effect on how things are around here.  I get you have a new job and it takes precedence over this forum, but you may consider trying to find some others who can help around here when you can't be available. (Any volunteers?)


my 2 cents.


Cheers!
 
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DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
Problem is this sector of 'web hosting' has taken a huge hit over the past 18 months.

The infamous 2GB/$7 'low end' OpenVZ market peaked about the same time that VPSboard was getting started in mid-2013, and according to a recent Gartner report the overall server virtualization market has also peaked and reached the saturation point which means as LinuxBug said, the forum needs to adapt to changing times.  Based on virtualization trends that will probably mean a transition in focus away from the small SolusVM and OpenVZ providers that dominated discussion in the forum's early days to to more talk about cloud, docker containers, and alternatives like bare metal Scaleway type ARM deployments, HP Moonshot, etc.)
 

fm7

Active Member
Tech hiring is down 40% and nobody’s talking about it — Medium

I run a job board that caters to tech jobs, primarily web professionals. We’ve been around since 2005. This year has been pretty bonkers compared to previous years.

  • Roughly 40% fewer jobs were posted to our site in January 2016 compared to the average volume of every January since 2012.
  • Job volume for April 2016 was nearly half the volume of April 2015.
  • Currently our annual posting volume is trending at 63% compared to 2015 and 59% compared to 2014.
 
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drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
I'll toss my hat in here about what is broken, big rambler on this one.


1. The last oh 6+ years have a been a tech go-go-go constant distraction.  Smartphones, apps and legacy websites.  Data all over, everyone vying for attention span no one has anymore.  Average attention span in US adult is now less than a fly I think quite literally.


2. Humans cannot live very long being constantly interrupted.  Tech for chunk of 10 years has been constant distraction and overload. 


3. Fatigue and abandonment happen quickly.  Burn out.  With burn out, people go outside, find real things to do instead.  They may or may not include technology in such.


4. Tech since I've been on this planet was supposed to provide solutions and allow one to do less while having more to show for it. This hasn't been realized by the average Jane or Joe.


5. Tech = high cost.  Sure devices cost less than ever, however incomes are way off in US and buying audiences are shifting towards developing world where even fewer can afford the high ticket prices.


6. Technology =/ fashion.   We are years into this Apple product portable device distortion with other vendors trying to make luxury goods out of a digital utility knife / Leatherman tool aka Swiss Army knife.  One only can be robbed for that and robbed in real life for that to get that it's moronic.


7. Mass adoption / commonness of tech makes it blah.  Tech commonplace and refinement to single devices for 10 things has wrecked jobs and companies.  You have endless stupid things to do with tech as the human setting flipper of these devices.  Most days I feel like I work for the machines instead of the other way around.


8. Tech isn't rewarding.   A job is a job.   Desk jobs = blobs.  Men aren't made to sit at desks.  At some point we all hit that realization and work gets demoted and tech interests or we change careers.


9. Giant corporations now it.  Look at media, online. Look at music, look at devices, look at all of it.  How many companies own most it?  Not many.  For a number of years huge deals have been done to gobble up everything under these giant mega corps.  Soulless bastards, the next wave to replace them, they finance it.  It never ends unless we run off to anti-corporate dark net and setup local nets on our own.


10. Consumption.  Like a morbidly obese person, technology encourages you to consume until you die.  Only need to buy so many apps, so many courses, try learning so many things before you realize your hobby is out of control and would be more sane pursuing other things.


I look around at people I know who were tech diehards, some even bonafide nerds.  When the tech hit this mainstream adoption, it took the glitter off their interests.  It caused incomes to slag unless you were slinging code in the SillyCon Valley for a handful of evil companies.  Rest of the flyover states, minus NYC, hard to find many tech jobs.   Reminds me of the great education push of a degree fixes everything. For a lot of folks, they fell for the tech version of that and got fleeced by trade schools and even universities.


Tech has outside of the Valley and NYC been mostly a novel illusion.  Sure it pays well, sure their are some jobs.   However, it never has delivered on its promises to be where to go work.  Very few good employers in tech, and even those are rampant on corruption and destruction of humans.


All of this is happening.


In hosting, we ran a multi-year spell of cheap VPS and everyone being a greedy loser with 0 knowledge.  They came and went.  Now the youngsters don't even know what a summerhost really is.


IP mythology has created artificial scarcity, driven up entry costs, baseline floated upwards per IP cost and thusly per data service cost. Sure we still have hosts that can't do math < $1 per month.  They will be gone soon.


Many hosts have just failed outright in the past few years.  I've been yelling this for years, so has Mao, so have other people with nose to grind.  Most of those shops sucked.   Guys with cash on demand and auto-pilot operations.  Failed to support customers, failed to be present in the marketplace, just earned their fail more often than not.


vpsBoard, well...


I did my share to beat up the bad hosts here.  That drove shady people mostly away from here.  Not a bad thing other than bullshit volume metrics, but effected the participation level.


Some of us lost our free time.  Others lost their passion.  Some found real jobs, some went outside, some found a lady.  Others just checked out.  Many though continue to read and lurk, quietly.


The REBOOT is coming.  Those still passionate, still into technology and hosting, vpsBoard will be reborn.  Soon(tm).
 

MannDude

Just a dude
vpsBoard Founder
Moderator
Posting from work right now. I only get a little time on the computer to check emails and write reports but I'm still very much here. I know I'm backlogged on responding to PMs but I still check the reported content (spam) and remove items as needed. :)


I'll be back later once I get home.
 
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HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Honestly, I've been following the docker and Cloud and proper cloud + SaaS setups more recently.  Personally, owning a ton of dedicated servers as well as a hand full of crucial VMs, I've focused most of my attention on setups that are more robust.  By that, I usually break it down into two groups:


- Infrastructure Robustness
- Service Robustness


Infrastructure robustness I'd like to focus on physical redundancy and reliability.  Physical redundancy includes setups such as power, cooling, and fiber/network setups.  One place I really will comment is how Incero has their dark fiber network and basically have their entire setup redundant (this is not a paid ad, I simply love using their setup).  However, in places where redundancy is difficult, you then look at the reliability of the setup.  


Now Infrastructure reliability is what everyone's familiar with and what the "LE*" market and to be honest our current group of people talk about and know.  But what I am now really interested, and to be fair this is what docker and "cloud" setups really shine on, is service robustness.  We've developed Infrastructure Robustness to a good enough level that additional investments in their robustness would be nice, but really isn't that necessary.  Docker and proper cloud setups allows us to simply deploy our application or service and trust that the provider will be able to handle everything else.  Now there's two levels to this obviously.  


- Application Level
- VM/Container Level


Application level is where Docker excels at in my opinion.  It's one of the better platforms for automatic application deployments and (if developed properly) allows for easy scaling either vertically or horizontally.  It's one of the best automatic deployment setups that I can think of and is a much better fit than some of the options out there.  There's tech summits and other really great organizations that are focusing on this.  One provider I am aware of who focuses on the Application level is ScaleWays.  They leave the Cloud setup with Google/AWS/DO, but offer management for server level for simple application deployment.  


The VM/Container level is just like a regular VPS we have today.  However, the entire infrastructure (this is there IaaS comes in) is redundant and set up where it has automatic healing and redeployment.  This is where options like OpenStack or some of the current "cloud" stack deployments excel at.  In addition, this would also come with regular backups of the VM to an offsite location and well...  another "just setup and forget" instance would be the best, except you probably should be regularly updating the VM.  This is where some services, like InnoScale, IWStack, or Cloud.net really look into continued development and excel at.  


Now for vpsBoard to grow, my thought is simply have us focus on the VM/Container level development and expansion, since that is usually the natural transition.  When you get a VPS, you get logins and an IP.  Nothing more, nothing else.  But from a VPS we should all be transitioning into a Cloud setup.  All the complaints and people bitching about this and that provider on LEB, so many of that can be solved with a proper Cloud setup (in my opinion).  I mean a proper setup should be self healing as well.  


But we don't know how the market will move forward.  VPS in and of itself has stagnated.  


As a consumer, anything important to me/mission critical I simply deploy on a cloud service provider and just stop caring about it.  I pay a bit of premium to make sure they have a backup and that it will be self-healing.  Granted I do have some automated private backups involved, but to be honest I'll be relying on provider-level backups first before redeploying from my own private backups (because again, that's why I pay those companies more for).  My time is more valuable doing other things than configuring to get the last bit of efficiency and deploying (and maintaining) my own backup setups. 


As a provider, my focus is to deploy my hardware and instances in some of the most stable and yet high performance deployments.  Self-healing and self-mitigation/automation is where everything has been going to, and anyone who doesn't follow will need to catch up quick.  I'm hoping these requirements and continued developments will improve the barrier of entry so that we have less summer hosts, but at the same time allow our industry and field become more stable and focused on creative/innovative deployments and setups, rather than simply fighting over getting the cheapest price.
 

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
I thought this would be more organized, but it's more of a brain garbles and I've had a fair amount to drink today for my flight to my next destination.  But you get what I mean.  I have some great ideas on how I think we all (as a community) can improve our own deployments/businesses/setups, but also help the vpsBoard community as a whole.  LE* is targetting the end user.  Fair enough.  I want to focus on Vendors and DC operators/Server Hosters/etc.   I think we can really share some great ideas and continue getting our corner of the internet happy. 


Remember when the first version of vpsBoard didn't have the offer location?  I actually really miss that. I think the offer posting forums really detracts from what the forum is really meant to be.  However, some people really just don't want to participate and just want to leave their ad and go.  I'd rather have us all work together than to fight for clients and making vpsB another one of those "web hosting selling/buying forums".  Any thoughts? 
 
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HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
TRIPLE POST.  OH NOES! 


Yeah I'm a dick for this, but I was writing the two posts above for a few hours (by that I meant I was writing parts of it at my hotel, went out and got some lunch with a friend and a few beers, and then went back to the hotel, wrote some more, then got on a van and finished writing and posting at the airport).  I didn't see the response yet that @drmike and @DomainBop and @MannDude posted, so this is the response post.


I think some of the "big company is bad" argument isn't something we should be going towards.  As much as I love the "small-medium business hooya" aspect, I don't think everyone wakes up and says "I'm going to be a dick today".  I think the same thing applies to large businesses.  Those large businesses are there because they had a really popular idea and ran with it and it worked well for them that they could expand their work.  Yes some expanded in sometimes unethical ways (as some would put it), but in the end it makes sense in a business way.  All I think or focus should be is improving our own work and sharing our knowledge with those who seek it.  
 
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drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
I think some of the "big company is bad" argument isn't something we should be going towards.  As much as I love the "small-medium business hooya" aspect, I don't think everyone wakes up and says "I'm going to be a dick today"

They eventually get there.  Scale = liability from every corner and repeated extortion beat downs... You become a protective / self preservation dick out of necessity.   It's why I left corporate world a long while back and won't be returning.


Plus you have "experts" on all corners punting you and capping things, even if you are the CEO.  Becomes a slog fest to get a pencil sharpened and lose agility needed to usually stay relative.  Exception is if privately held by a wealthy owner... But that is rare and tiring for that person.  Thankless often for them.

I think we all (as a community) can improve our own deployments/businesses/setups

This is good content.  Problem with such is thankless too.  I mean if you make a recipe and want to share, I am baking brownies in the kitchen sort of vibe here.  I mega appreciate it, but unless we dumb it down to a simple one liner, most won't go near it.   I think of Nyr's OpenVPN script and the FreeVPS speed script as examples of the level of simplicity to get traction / use. 


I like most am routinely pissed off at the complexity and boiling down doc and lack of simple HOW-TO for all sorts of stuff.  Starts at Docker and ends at Docker for me until someone points to more docs and more human stuff that is run and use and am productive finally.  Sure hip stuff and I get it, just am not willing to spend XX-XXX hours to get basic stuff done.  Learning should get easier and documentation a hell of a lot better.  Others will disagree, yeah, you were an early adopter likely and have been riding that rug, I know, do that myself and get blind about it being mess to mortals.

focus on Vendors and DC operators/Server Hosters/etc

For a long time I said this community was providers.  What do providers want / need?  See issue now and in the future is the legit providers aren't providing free Associates degrees to the competition.  Self defeating and eats their clock.  So that angle become mostly ad-vertorial in nature--- more marketplace content in essence with a dash of approachable content often derived from vendors hawking the wares.


But yes, in principal, agree.

corner of the internet happy

Wrong site for that :)

some people really just don't want to participate and just want to leave their ad and go

Yeah and we don't want them here.  That's how I feel about it.


Offer ads need yanked from top right main screen "vpsBoard Discusssions" block.  Will deter them a bit.  I have plenty of ways to creatively make the ad spammers go bye bye.  They are plague (the ad pump and dumpers).


I'd be glad if the offers were removed and put elsewhere.   Dailyserverdeals was a good island for those. Superior platform and worked well.  Lazy hosts couldn't be compelled to actually fill in a form and structure their data = work.  So refer to what I said above... ad pump and dumpers, you lazy shits, even guys who aren't doing that but too lazy to fill in a form... Pfft.

VM/Container level development and expansion

Yeah this is a natural evolution and often distortion of actual VPS.  I mean plenty of people running Docker inside of VPS containers on KVM and Xen.   OVZ, not really since kernel is stuck way back at 2.6xxx.


Kind of wanting to head this angle my side on ARM devices locally, but haven't time and patience for the learning curve namely with Docker while living inside of Linux (need some GUI tool to orchestrate and control things more sensibly).  Pure CLI and memorizing more stuff isn't my thing at my old age.  Recommend young man :)

focused on creative/innovative deployments and setups

Redundancy, backups, etc.  Count me in and slacking behind the curve.  Become viable when people have a platform and know how to rapidly deploy or straight run short script that does the heavy lifting and provisions things inside of whatever (VPS, ARM, baremetal, etc.).   Orchestration is  what I call that magic.  Probably other industry names.  Anything from straight BASH scripts to workbooks to Docker + whatever, Ansible or one of too many options.


Let's go :)
 

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Fair enough with the direction you want to take it @drmike.  I mean after all this community is as much mine as it is yours and everyone else on this forum.  Just because we do try to keep the backside running doesn't mean we're not part of the community as a whole ;)


I have some counterpoints to some of your statements, but honestly I don't think it's that big of a concern to be addressed right now.  Either way I'm sure we'll walk away from that basically saying the same things but with different meanings.


Tbh, I love the introduction of ARM and the ideas behind it and that come with it.  ARM has been a really interesting platform for me mostly in the sense that it offers cheap prices in hardware and power (so easier for "dedicated" instances to go) but some shortcomings regarding architecture and such.  I'm perfectly fine with you guys going ahead and going deep into ARM's sector and approach interesting points in that area, however it's not a journey I can follow in (unless I get to reading some docs and getting some specialized hardware for home automation).  My Pine64+ apparently came in the other day but seeming I'm sitting in a hostel in Boston right now meeting some professors from universities around here, I probably won't be able to play with it anytime soon.  


I personally am really interested in developing best case uses and scenarios for redundancy and reliability.  I did some work as a reliability engineer for a research project I was involved in (disaster prevention setups, you know as in flood mitigation and drought mitigation assessment) and I mean the exact same concept is applied to Datacenter level reliability assessments.  However, that entire field I'm sure is saturated in regards to Datacenter and Server usage. 


I've been keeping an eye on DevOps and automated deployments and I gotta say, the developments there are extremely exciting.  What's great is reading Netflix Dev blog and reading up on each individual deployments.  Similar to some Medium.com articles that people post. It gives some pretty awesome insights on what goes on in a different setup.  


I will admit, VMWare looks pretty attractive right now with all of their features and certain benefits over KVM.  
 
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drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
1. Fair enough with the direction you want to take it @drmike.  I mean after all this community is as much mine as it is yours and everyone else on this forum.  Just because we do try to keep the backside running doesn't mean we're not part of the community as a whole ;)


2. I have some counterpoints to some of your statements, but honestly I don't think it's that big of a concern to be addressed right now.  Either way I'm sure we'll walk away from that basically saying the same things but with different meanings.


3. Tbh, I love the introduction of ARM and the ideas behind it and that come with it.  ARM has been a really interesting platform for me mostly in the sense that it offers cheap prices in hardware and power (so easier for "dedicated" instances to go) but some shortcomings regarding architecture and such


4. I personally am really interested in developing best case uses and scenarios for redundancy and reliability.  I did some work as a reliability engineer for a research project I was involved in (disaster prevention setups, you know as in flood mitigation and drought mitigation assessment) and I mean the exact same concept is applied to Datacenter level reliability assessments.  However, that entire field I'm sure is saturated in regards to Datacenter and Server usage. 


5. I've been keeping an eye on DevOps and automated deployments and I gotta say, the developments there are extremely exciting.  What's great is reading Netflix Dev blog and reading up on each individual deployments.  Similar to some Medium.com articles that people post. It gives some pretty awesome insights on what goes on in a different setup.  


6. I will admit, VMWare looks pretty attractive right now with all of their features and certain benefits over KVM.  

1. It's a community, even if a quiet one... otherwise two of us just exchange pleansantries over IM :)


2. Same bird, just some different feathers.  Too similar to be different I think.


3. ARM is ARM, it has legs.   As it matures it will be much more relative.   For now it's a real interesting niche for projects.  Sure you can do mass scaled and HA with it.  I need a Docker buddy and we'll build some neat stuff I think.  Docker + ARM has me real interested if anything really does right now.


4. Redundancy and reliability we all have a super big need for. Topic comes up often and solutions are mostly off cuff and when researched by most, out of technical reach.  Encourage you to chat more about redundancy and reliability.


5. Automated deployments, yeppers, speaking to where things need to be especially with outsourced computing be it VPS or baremetal.  Otherwise you get smacked on time, uneven on installs and annoyed when it's moving time.


6.  VMWare, interested in hearing about.  Recognize it, but haven't gone near it.
 
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drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
... rambling...


I keep re-reading this thread and the term that keeps punching me in the gut = solutions.


The day of computing and server buys for idle terminal to ping and wget things is gone mostly.  DItto for VPN use really.  Yeah I realize CN tunnels out daily as 'necessity'.  Rest of the world it's niche really with privacy purpose, piracy evasion, or corporate mandate on such.


What we all want is a box of solutions for a bunch of common problems, needs, etc. Something we can be up and running in minutes to an hour and running right.


Part of why quirky Scaleway has been so popular - bundled ready to go open source solutions.


We are in the age of MAKERS, but most MAKERS are admitted novices and only so tolerant about time invest and learning curve.


ARM fits on center of that movement --- along with Arduino.


So I see us going the ARM + MAKERS angle for the hands on types still cobbling.  Heck ARM is kind of nice because well, self hosted, on-LAN, another environment I see need to promote more.  Plus it's one time low low cost.  Some of the ARM boards I've picked up have been < $10.  Run great, mega useful, as much as most VPS I've bought.
 
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