Do you tell a customer your server specs if he asks?

[devonblzx]

Spare me the E3's are capable, they are.  But I don't use them and I won't buy VPS services running them.

It depends on what you're running.  Our processor intensive line runs mostly on E3s because of users who need higher clock speed.  An E5-2600 series with only ~2GHz clock will perform worse for heavy single threaded applications than an E3.   It all depends on the purpose the node serves.

 

[OSTKCabal]

**SNIP**

drmike,

I'd appreciate the chance to defend our usage of E3 processors if you're willing to take the time to consider my points.

The first, and arguably most important, thing in my view is that the E3s offer excellent performance. Not to diss E5s, but the entire E3 series simply kicks any E5's ass in terms of single-threaded performance. It's what they were designed for. We utilize this performance to match our target audience, which is game server and performance consumers. The ones that need the clock speed and performance the E3s supply.

The second thing I'd like to bring up is that they're cost-effective. They're easy to buy, easy to deploy, and use much less power than most E5-based setups. This allows for a higher density and more physical servers per rack, which is also arguably important to almost any hosting provider. I can also attest to the fact that a host doesn't need to oversell to make the investment worth it; we can easily meet our intended ROI and still support a decent level of service without overselling of RAM, CPU, or I/O.

Before you think I'm trying to discredit your entire argument, I should throw in that I agree that the VPS and hosting industry in general is filled with dishonest hosts and "experts" who are completely blinded by money, money, money. But users have to be on the lookout for those rare gems that are honest and open about their business, and supply what they say they're going to supply every time. When I think of a good VPS provider, only a few names come to mind. But they're there, they're around, and they're known by the community as a whole. I suppose the base message here is that you shouldn't throw out the entire batch because of a few bad eggs.

Just my thoughts. Typed out really quick, so sorry if it doesn't make much sense.

 

[fm7]

Linode:

model name: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz (CPU Mark 16,000)

bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync: 840 MB/s

UnixBench 5.1.3: 540

And then, so what?  Hardware matters but in virtualized servers (fancy name for a glorified shared hosting) it is more a marketing ploy as also are the "number of vCPUs",  bitrate and everything else. Unfortunately the average buyer of VM decides based on price and resources advertised, and sometimes data center, carriers (but not capacity or  % of each one in the mix), node  hardware specs and crap synthetic benchmarks (DD, Unixbench, downloads). Of course these data may be enough for many people but an informed prospect could ask more detailed info and I don't see good reason to not answer (or come clean).

 

[NullMind]

its not unheard of providers not wanting to give their topology details, some spend allot of time perfecting the perfect setup (switches, networking types, san types, hardware bands, etc) and don't wish to make it public because of competition (so others don't steal their topology, the perfect setup is indeed an advantage), not customers, but the spec of the hypervisor/host machine itself, most providers don't have an issue with releasing those details.

Carlos

 

[drmike]

Welcome to vpsBoard @NullMind.

The inside blended mix creation has its place and semi valid.   But big picture, pretty darn rare.

By the time you usually start talking SANs and exotic network configs you are looking at big interconnects, lots of interconnects and generally other disk storage approaches [like devaluing the use of in chasis storage so much or using it strategically].

Even in these instances running a Xeon E or L whatever, E3 or E5, about 95% of the time.  So disclosing that, nearly always tells little to nothing about the special sauce, formular, high end deployment that makes the magic.

Toppology as you said, yes, feel free to protect that No reason to disclose such big picture in great detail.

 

[Serveo]

Interesting to read the E3 vs E5 pros and cons. We personally are now looking to invest and test the microcloud from Supermicro. Here the desision might go to the E3 as they deliver high clock speed and have a lower TCO. Though our concern lays in the L3 cache.

 

[OSTKCabal]

Interesting to read the E3 vs E5 pros and cons. We personally are now looking to invest and test the microcloud from Supermicro. Here the desision might go to the E3 as they deliver high clock speed and have a lower TCO. Though our concern lays in the L3 cache.

If your concern lies mainly in the cache but you still need good per-core performance, the E5-1600v2 (or even E5-1600v3 if you wait a bit for wider availability of DDR4 RAM) series will bring you closer to E3-style performance than anything else from the E5 range, with the added benefit of 10MB-15MB (v2) or 10MB-20MB (v3) of L3 cache.. The downside is that these things are power hogs, though this has been more balanced out recently.

 

[Shivam]

Well to be quite frank i'd tell them the server specs because their isn't a reason why you shouldn't its not like anything will happen ? so my answer would be tell them the exact specs of the node their on or the one they wish to go on.

 

[msp - nick]

Well to be quite frank i'd tell them the server specs because their isn't a reason why you shouldn't its not like anything will happen ? so my answer would be tell them the exact specs of the node their on or the one they wish to go on.

What comes to mind is honesty is the best policy as I said ;- people will lose trust in your brand.

 

[eva2000]

Linode:

model name: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz (CPU Mark 16,000)

bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync: 840 MB/s

UnixBench 5.1.3: 540

And then, so what?  Hardware matters but in virtualized servers (fancy name for a glorified shared hosting) it is more a marketing ploy as also are the "number of vCPUs",  bitrate and everything else. Unfortunately the average buyer of VM decides based on price and resources advertised, and sometimes data center, carriers (but not capacity or  % of each one in the mix), node  hardware specs and crap synthetic benchmarks (DD, Unixbench, downloads). Of course these data may be enough for many people but an informed prospect could ask more detailed info and I don't see good reason to not answer (or come clean).

knowing some hardware specs is important for some i.e. how well the servers will perform for https/SSL and openssl is real world

i.e.



still trying to figure out what processors

 

[Ravi-EstroWeb]

Oh no!

"Genuine Intel CPUs"

I see that crap all the time from newbish hosts in mass.

Is there some black market out there for counterfeit Intel CPUs?  Do we have hosts running non-genuine CPUs?

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: ............

On topic:

I cant see any reason for Hiding exact server Specs [hardware specs].

Disclosing of setup is quite reasonable....as its the main key for better stable performance

 

[Minmeo]

Thank you everyone for all the responses. I understand better now.

 

[jvkz]

Customer should know what he is going to get and on what hardware... Even if a provider is going to use different hardware config if he ask he should be given details to hardware config so that he scale the number of cores as per his needs and CPU speed.

 

[iann_lfcvps]

We've always shared our specs. This particular market considers all of the details when making a purchase so it reduces a lot of the questions that might be initially asked before ordering I've found.

 

[raindog308]

Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"

Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."

 

[devonblzx]

Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"

Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."

Or there are 500 virtual servers sharing that system. 

It is all relative with virtual servers.   A VPS on a Xeon 5400 could be faster than a VPS on an Dual E5-2600 depending on how many users are sharing the system and what the neighbors are running.   Hardware is more important for the host than the customer.   It all depends on how the host allocates and manages that hardware.   I've never heard of a host upgrading their equipment to host the same amount of servers, it is always a benefit to upgrade systems because they can host more.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"

Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."

That was me with Datashack. 

"Oh snap a Dual L5420 for 30/month!  I'd use this for super processor-intensive work!" 

* a little later*

"Wow trying to download the calculations I did on this is painfully slow.  I wonder why." (Only has Cogent and HE).

F7U12

I mean, HE isn't bad, but I have a much better connection if they had Level3 (we're talking almost 80-100 ms difference) 

 

[DomainBop]

Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"

Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."

Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out he's sharing that 1Gbps port with 300 torrenters and will be lucky to get dial-up speeds"

Vendor "Heh, wait until he finds out I oversold the CPU and I/O on that E5 to the point where he'd get better performance from a Pentium Pro"

"Wow trying to download the calculations I did on this is painfully slow.  I wonder why." (Only has Cogent and HE).

If you want painfully slow get a VPS with a provider in Iceland who relies solely on FarICE to connect to the rest of the world.  You'll be lucky to get over 1.5 Mbps speeds.  tl;dr don't even think of using anything in Iceland as a backup server

 

[NullMind]

Good points there guys, thats the problem, also benchmarks can be misleading, if you have just happen to hit a provider new HV with near 0% utilisation and another at 80%, you have no way to know that the HV you are on is at 80%, performance might be worse, thats why a continuous performance check is sometimes required.

Also people tend to forget about support, having the fastest system in the world does you no good when it's not working.

C

 

[incloudibly]

Yes, server specs are available to any client who would ask for.