New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster
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It doesn't make any sense to have a 5 year contract where you set pricing and only be prepared for 3 years of provisioning
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I think what everyone needs to realize here is that the original advice was bad, and the original design almost certainly bad, and the length of contracts definitely didn't work out well... that's the past and that's one thing.
Then there is today. He's locked into a lot of stuff. He already owns gear, he already paid for the physical infrastructure, and the lines can't be cancelled to save money.
There is little doubt that either some bad decisions were made original (by whom, we don't know) or perhaps good decisions were made and the market just changed in unforeseeable ways, whatever. Doesn't matter.
There is too much mixing of an attempt at forensic analysis of why it is how it is, and not enough looking at what needs to be done. Partially that is because not enough information has been given at this point to come up with a good direction. We still don't know enough about the type of hosting for sure to know what kinds of options are available even with the hardware that he has on hand.
But how he, or the company, got to where they are now, is an unrelated discussion. Maybe an interesting one. Maybe a useful one to dig into, but a totally different discussion.
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@IRJ said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
It doesn't make any sense to have a 5 year contract where you set pricing and only be prepared for 3 years of provisioning
Must have been more like an eight year contract.
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@scottalanmiller said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
I think what everyone needs to realize here is that the original advice was bad, and the original design almost certainly bad, and the length of contracts definitely didn't work out well... that's the past and that's one thing.
Then there is today. He's locked into a lot of stuff. He already owns gear, he already paid for the physical infrastructure, and the lines can't be cancelled to save money.
There is little doubt that either some bad decisions were made original (by whom, we don't know) or perhaps good decisions were made and the market just changed in unforeseeable ways, whatever. Doesn't matter.
There is too much mixing of an attempt at forensic analysis of why it is how it is, and not enough looking at what needs to be done. Partially that is because not enough information has been given at this point to come up with a good direction. We still don't know enough about the type of hosting for sure to know what kinds of options are available even with the hardware that he has on hand.
But how he, or the company, got to where they are now, is an unrelated discussion. Maybe an interesting one. Maybe a useful one to dig into, but a totally different discussion.
Right. Maybe a loan would make sense here since contract is in place, and he could reduce his monthly cost and make more margin. Then sell scale once everything is migrated over.
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@IRJ said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Right. Maybe a loan would make sense here since contract is in place, and he could reduce his monthly cost and make more margin. Then sell scale once everything is migrated over.
Maybe, but honestly I doubt it. He's stuck with X amount of stuff, and it is a lot. He's got enough hardware to probably ride out his obligations at least until the fiber lines expire. If not, he can at least hold off a purchase for a few years until said purchase is way smaller than it would be today (and time to budget for it.)
After he moves from Scale to the random R510s or whatever, he might sell the Scale and make a small amount on that, too. He just can't do that first. Then he could bank that small amount towards hardware upgrades in three years or whatever.
He can't liquidate the building, generators, HVAC, etc. I suspect. And he can't turn off the lines.
To do anything, he's have to maintain the costs that he has today. To do anything other than using the hardware that he has, he'd have to either buy new hardware or lease cloud space or whatever. That's all more cost.
I think he is probably right, past decisions have left him needing to use what he has for the time being. There's no way to recoup that cost until the lines expire.
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@scottalanmiller said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
I think what everyone needs to realize here is that the original advice was bad, and the original design almost certainly bad, and the length of contracts definitely didn't work out well... that's the past and that's one thing.
I think everyone here already knows that was originally proposed clearly was wrong solution and what he's looking to do with ovirt is still the wrong solution.
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Bankruptcy is always an option. . .
Seriously. If the options are so starkly horrible.
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@DustinB3403 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Bankruptcy is always an option. . .
Seriously. If the options are so starkly horrible.
It is, but that's a bit extreme. If his contracts cover the costs, then you just ride it out. Then look for profit opportunities after that is done.
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@DustinB3403 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Bankruptcy is always an option. . .
Seriously. If the options are so starkly horrible.
Don’t, ever, think about running your own business. You are clueless.
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@scottalanmiller said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@IRJ said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Right. Maybe a loan would make sense here since contract is in place, and he could reduce his monthly cost and make more margin. Then sell scale once everything is migrated over.
Maybe, but honestly I doubt it. He's stuck with X amount of stuff, and it is a lot. He's got enough hardware to probably ride out his obligations at least until the fiber lines expire. If not, he can at least hold off a purchase for a few years until said purchase is way smaller than it would be today (and time to budget for it.)
After he moves from Scale to the random R510s or whatever, he might sell the Scale and make a small amount on that, too. He just can't do that first. Then he could bank that small amount towards hardware upgrades in three years or whatever.
He can't liquidate the building, generators, HVAC, etc. I suspect. And he can't turn off the lines.
To do anything, he's have to maintain the costs that he has today. To do anything other than using the hardware that he has, he'd have to either buy new hardware or lease cloud space or whatever. That's all more cost.
I think he is probably right, past decisions have left him needing to use what he has for the time being. There's no way to recoup that cost until the lines expire.
Right with the new information, the best thing here is to get the Scale unit under support contract for the remainder of the fiber contract term.
Or, if Scale offers, look at the single incident support costs to repair things as (if) they fail over the rest of the term of the fiber contract.
One of those options are your only real choice aside from spinning up new servers in a cluster mode designed for web hosting.
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Here is my environment and what I would like to be able to do. I have custom made app that I made similar to wp-engine. That when I get a new client on Wordpress, I spin up the vm and setup them up and there up and running. I am in the process of build my OWN Whmcs, I want to be able to spin up vm from my website just like Linode does.
I am currently running over 45 vm's. Cpanel, Custom VM for Wordpress, DC's , CRM, Jira, Billing, Clients custom EHR. PBX.
Correction I have 42 vm's running
tb
Scale specs are 24 cores, 188gb of ram 10tb. -
@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Here is my environment and what I would like to be able to do. I have custom made app that I made similar to wp-engine. That when I get a new client on Wordpress, I spin up the vm and setup them up and there up and running.
So dedicated VM per client. Semi-standard model, makes sense. But different than we were imagining with the mention of web hosting.
So in this design, each VM is a self contained "per user" ecosystem of database, web server, etc.
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@scottalanmiller Correct
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@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
. I am in the process of build my OWN Whmcs...
Like this?
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@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Scale specs are 24 cores, 188gb of ram 10tb.
This helps a lot, thanks. Especially the drive capacity.
Are you thinking that you will yank the drives from the Scale and put them into the non-Scale hosts? Or are those well situated with drives already?
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Yes. My billing system is all automated so every cpanel server can suspend users etc.
However HTML websites are only on cpanel, Wordpress sites are on a custom build through linux running hhvm, ubuntu, Varnish
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Your list looks like it is almost entirely Linux, I'm guessing. But I see DCs mentioned, those are Windows AD DCs? Is that the only Windows workloads, or are there more?
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Yeah I am mostly all linux. Not a fan of Microsoft. the DC's Were some of my old computers that I had on a domain that I just haven't had time to migrate stuff. and demote the dC. also I try to start current in windows but there is not enough time. I am running server 2012.. Which I originally figured I would create 3 hyper v servers. that turned into a cluster nightmare for me.
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@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
Yeah I am mostly all linux. Not a fan of Microsoft. the DC's Were some of my old computers that I had on a domain that I just haven't had time to migrate stuff. and demote the dC. also I try to start current in windows but there is not enough time. I am running server 2012.. Which I originally figured I would create 3 hyper v servers. that turned into a cluster nightmare for me.
So if I can assume that in this move that you can either... 1) finish the demotion and eliminate the Windows machines or 2) leave them behind on the Scale HC3 to deal with later...
Then I'd recommend looking into LXC containers (with LXD front end, just makes it easy.) It might be so fast and easy to automate that you want to go this route.
An oVirt / KVM / Gluster cluster could work here, but feels heavy. But it might be the simplest to set up (without throwing money at it.)
But long term, LXC will give you more capacity and what I feel is an easier time automating things.
But the oVirt path has built in failover if you go with Gluster, DRBD or CEPH. Whereas with LXC you are a bit more on your own for that. But doing really rapid recovery might be trivial to script. But still, a little "making it yourself."
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LXC is "Linux only", in case that wasn't clear as a limitation.
