One of our SaaS apps is qSandbox (setup WordPress test sites in seconds) which was growing steadily and started hitting some limits.
It was time to look for another server.
Here are the questions I needed answers to in order to consider the VPS or dedicated hosting provider.
I am sure there are other important questions which you can add in the comments below the post.
How is the upgrade handled?
Instant or within day
Cancellation notice? Instant or 1 month
Are there any backups?
How often do they run? daily, weekly, monthly etc.
If there is a need can you make sure I get another server at the same location (data centre) but not on the same host?
... and the most important one is what is the inode limit (especially for VPSs)?
Today I ordered a VPS from 1and1 (XL) with nice specs.
It's good that I did only the basic security stuff and started transferring sites.
I was planning on installing the other packages later.
Because of that I learned that 1and1's VPS inode limit is at 750 000.
I did start with rsync because the current server had very little free space and I couldn't just archive the sites folder and send it.
Suddenly I started seeing some rsync errors
[code]
rsync: recv_generator: mkdir "/.../qsandbox.com/sites/" failed: Disk quota exceeded (122)
*** Skipping any contents from this failed directory ***
[/code]
I called 1and1 support to find out that that's their limit and I had to cancel.
It didn't work for me but if your app can run below that limit it's great.
To find out what is the current inode limit type the following command.
[code]
[root@qsandbox2 slavi]# df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
devtmpfs 210186 309 209877 1% /dev
tmpfs 212657 1 212656 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 212657 263 212394 1% /run
/dev/vda1 3,932,160 2,943,382 988,778 75% /
tmpfs 212657 12 212645 1% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 212657 1 212656 1% /media
[/code]
I used these parameters for the rsync command.
[code]
rsync -avuz -e "ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null" --port 22 /var/www/vhosts/qsandbox.com user@10.20.30.40:/home/user/qsandbox
[/code]
I specifically passed the port as some of the servers run on different ports.
I was curious to see what are the limits of my other staging server provided by BoltVM .
I was so surprised to see that their inode limits are pretty high for a low end VPS ($20/year)!
If you're looking for an affordable VPS that you can use as staging server give BoltVM a try.
[code]
slavi@usw1:~$ df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/simfs 100,000,000 209,198 99,790,802 1% /
none 131072 57 131015 1% /dev
none 131072 1 131071 1% /sys/fs/cgroup
none 131072 67 131005 1% /run
none 131072 4 131068 1% /run/lock
none 131072 1 131071 1% /run/shm
none 131072 1 131071 1% /run/user
[/code]
Now, I am considering vultr, linode and DigitalOcean (current) and possibly 1and1 dedicated.
Should I give another VPS provider a try?
What would you recommend?
Should I have asked different or more important questions?
