If we want to fail the statement about someone can interfere the price then web hosting industry today is the answer. There are no such a famous provider or famous buyer can affect the price of this industry, which makes webhosting service is a perfect competitive market in implementation. There are so many hosting companies and they keep growing because everyday people build a new hosting company. They are keep voicing that the best web are us. Various plans and lots of coupons are mandatory for the newly created hosting company. How could that thing happens? The explanation is simple, by purchasing one reseller account then you can instantly create a new hosting company. The effect for consumer is they getting confused how to choose the best between the requirement and price. In this case, web hosting reviews play very important role. The comparison between one to another hosting company provided by web hosting reviews where you can find a lot by typing web hosting reviews query in google is considerably help. But in order to find a best web hosting company from web hosting reviews, you also need to read the reviews from the trusted source, not just a bunch of text judging that a hosting company is bad because my site cannot be accessed in 24 hour but without any tests or proof.

Web hosting industry is a come and go business. I can told you that because you can easily enter the market with one reseller account, one domain name, and one copy paste web design for a few bucks and then leave the business as easy as you turn a palm of your hand. No one can ever interfere with that, even government. So that makes web hosting industry is like a jungle of business area, the best hosting company with good management, promotions, and ideas will survive.

Then how can you find a responsible and established web hosting company from reviews? The answer is very easy, as i said before you can see the content provider by web hosting reviews site, is it only a set of unclear texts or is it with some proof? Moreover, do not just trust a hosting review site like you trust your mom. If you have decided your choice, then test it for one to three months to make sure that your choice is not a come and go hosting company. Not just a performance, support is also very important, so they are like two sides of coins, cannot be separated.

Whois

Spec and Features

System Information

Download and Upload From International Location
Location: US – Port Speed: 1Gbit – Method: WGET & cURL

Location: DE – Port Speed: 1Gbit – Method: WGET & cURL

Disk I/O Test

Benchmark Test (I/O test disabled)

1 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Double-Precision Whetstone  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x System Call Overhead  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Pipe Throughput  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Pipe-based Context Switching  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Process Creation  1 2 3

1 x Execl Throughput  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)  1 2 3

2 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Double-Precision Whetstone  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x System Call Overhead  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Pipe Throughput  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Pipe-based Context Switching  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Process Creation  1 2 3

2 x Execl Throughput  1 2 3

2 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)  1 2 3

2 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)  1 2 3

2 x Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)  1 2 3

========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)

   System: server.xxx.xxx: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.18-274.xxx -- #1 SMP Mon Oct 24 20:49:2
4 MSD 2011
   Machine: i686 (i386)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
   CPU 0: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz (5665.5 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT,
SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
   CPU 1: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz (5664.5 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT,
SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
   05:36:41 up 49 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.42, 0.23, 0.09; runlevel 3

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Feb 03 2012 05:36:41 - 06:02:28
2 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       11861780.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     2604.8 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               4111.3 lps   (29.8 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                              823349.9 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 263677.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              12901.8 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   3335.7 lpm   (60.3 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                   276.8 lpm   (60.2 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    525.9 lpm   (60.3 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         726400.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Partial Index              BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   11861780.8   1016.4
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       2604.8    473.6
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       4111.3    956.1
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     823349.9    661.9
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     263677.5    659.2
Process Creation                                126.0      12901.8   1024.0
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       3335.7    786.7
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                     ---        276.8      ---
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        525.9    876.5
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     726400.8    484.3
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score (Partial Only)                          742.6

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Feb 03 2012 06:02:28 - 06:29:20
2 CPUs in system; running 2 parallel copies of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       11921027.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     5183.8 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               4289.9 lps   (29.9 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                              823052.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 281592.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              13055.4 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   4285.4 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                   299.4 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    573.8 lpm   (60.3 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         727678.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Partial Index              BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   11921027.5   1021.5
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       5183.8    942.5
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       4289.9    997.6
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     823052.4    661.6
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     281592.4    704.0
Process Creation                                126.0      13055.4   1036.1
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       4285.4   1010.7
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                     ---        299.4      ---
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        573.8    956.4
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     727678.4    485.1
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score (Partial Only)                          844.0

Summary
Let’s review this unmanaged vps hosting provide, Bass Host, if you take a look at the logo on their page, it is a bass (large mouth) fish showed within their logo. I don’t know maybe the founder of basshost’s hobby is fishing bass fish or something like that, but certainly it has nothing to do with the web hosting thing, lol. Allright, look at the whois picture of Bass Host, they are using server(s) from FDC Servers, i heard so much bad review about it but that’s just another people’s review, don’t trust. Okay next, for five bucks you got 384MB memory, 25GB storage, and 250GB data transfer @ i don’t have any idea how much port speed they are using, because sometimes they are fast and some other time they are slow, but i got a good speed when i tested from two of my servers located in United States and Deutschland. For the disk I/O test we cannot rely on this unmanaged (or we could probably say budget) vps, 50MB/s on average and around 800 for benchmark score (two Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz). I guess that is for my personal review, five bucks is still worthed for this VPS, 8 points from 10 points for this provider.

I assume you have installed NginX in your frontend and two backend servers, you can check the previous post for NginX installation. This GeoIP based location needs GeoIP database for the frontend server to determine where to put the visitor, so first we download and extract Lite version of GeoIP database from Maxmind with geo2nginx.pl script from http://markmaunder.com.

wget http://serversreview.net/pkgs/txt/geo2nginx.pl
chmod 755 geo2nginx.pl
wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoIPCountryCSV.zip
unzip GeoIPCountryCSV.zip
./geo2nginx.pl < GeoIPCountryWhois.csv > geo.conf
mv geo.conf /etc/nginx/

GeoIP database has been added to NginX directory, now to the configuration, here is the example of main configuration

user www www;
worker_processes  1;

events {
	worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
	include	mime.types;
	default_type	application/octet-stream;
	sendfile	on;
	keepalive_timeout	65;
	gzip	on;

	geo $geo {
		default default;
		include geo.conf;
	}
    upstream default.backend {
    	server 178.22.70.2:8080 weight=2;
		server 206.253.165.98:8080;
    }
    upstream UK.backend {
    	server 178.22.70.2:8080;
    }
    upstream DE.backend {
    	server 206.253.165.98:8080;
    }

	server {
		listen 80;
		server_name serversreview.net.net;
		location / {
			proxy_pass http://$geo.backend;
		}
	}
}

Let’s just move to the http section, as you can see geo.conf is declared with $geo as variable for the upstream, so

e.g. 1.1.1.1 = UK ; 2.2.2.2 = CN

• if visitor comes from 1.1.1.1, then $geo = UK, so the visitor will be sent to UK.backend upstream
• if visitor comes from 2.2.2.2, then $geo = default, so the visitor will be sent to either the first or the second backend

Backend setting is as the same as usual, you can check the previous post for backend setting. Simple and easy right? Next thing you do is trial and error to meet your best configuration.

Take a look once again at the illustration, besides NginX GeoIP based, there is also two different location of databases, here i want to talk about MySQL (the most widely used database) replication. Nowadays, websites are not only using static files, they are using dynamic script with database to save the resource of space, and most of them are using MySQL Community as a free and opensource database. So it is also good to have MySQL live backup for the prevention of -for instance- MySQL failure or another MySQL problem that could happened, more interesting, right? Told you so :p

I will use two CentOS 5 32bit VPS for MySQL master and slave, first we install MySQL in both master and slave server.

yum install libaio libaio-devel
wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/mysql-5.5.20-linux2.6-i686.tar.gz
tar -zxvf mysql-5.5.20-linux2.6-i686.tar.gz
mv mysql-5.5.20-linux2.6-i686 /usr/local/mysql
groupadd mysql
useradd -r -g mysql mysql
cd /usr/local/mysql
chown -R mysql .
chgrp -R mysql .
/usr/local/mysql/scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql –-ldata=/usr/local/mysql
chown -R root .
chown -R mysql data

choose one of MySQL configuration that meet your needs

/usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-huge.cnf
/usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-innodb-heavy-4G.cnf
/usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-large.cnf
/usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-medium.cnf
/usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-small.cnf

I will use my-small.cnf for example

mv /usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf
cp /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql
chmod +x /etc/init.d/mysql
echo "/etc/init.d/mysql start" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local
/etc/init.d/mysql start

Okay, MySQL has been installed on the first and second VPS, now we will configure the first and the second server to be master and slave.

MASTER
Login to your mysql root and use the following command to add and grant user for slave.

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -pyourmysqlrootpassword
mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.* TO 'slave_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'slave_password';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit

Where “slave_user” is your preferred user for slave user and “slave_password” is your preferred password for slave user password.

And then edit your master’s my.cnf, make sure “server-id” value in my.cnf is set to “1″

nano /etc/my.cnf

[mysqld]
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=1

And then restart MySQL

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

SLAVE
Edit your slave’s my.cnf “server-id” value to “2″

nano /etc/my.cnf

server-id=2

Restart MySQL

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

MASTER
We will backup target database for replication in master, but before that we need to close all open tables and lock it with command

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -p
mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
mysql> exit

and then backup the target database

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump selected_database -uroot -pmysqlrootpassword > database.sql;
gzip database.sql

After that, move that backup database to your slave server, you can use curl, scp, or wget from slave server.

SLAVE
Create new MySQL database

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE `my_database`;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit

extract MySQL database you have downloaded from master server, and then import to your newly created database in

gunzip database.sql.gz
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -pmysqlrootpassword my_database  < database.sql

MASTER
Login to your MySQL root and then type command show master status

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -p
mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS;
	+------------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
	| File             | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB |
	+------------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
	| mysql-bin.000002 |      107 | bijionta     |                  |
	+------------------+----------+--------------+------------------+

Keep that on your screen, and then move to your slave server.

SLAVE

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -p
mysql> slave stop;
mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='master_ip_address',
       MASTER_USER='replication_user_name',
       MASTER_PASSWORD='replication_user_password',
       MASTER_LOG_FILE='mysql-bin.000002',
       MASTER_LOG_POS=107;
mysql> slave start;

you can see more directives for Change Master To at: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/change-master-to.html After that, back to master server. MASTER Unlock all tables that you close and lock when you backup your target database

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot -p
mysql> unlock tables;

That’s it for MySQL replication, anyway if you are using MyISAM engine, then it is recommended for you to add the following settings to your my.cnf

innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
sync_binlog=1

Why don’t you use another web server as the backend?

I like NginX, for me it is easy to understand NginX configuration than another web server. Before we start to configure it, install NginX on the frontend and backend servers. I’m using CentOS 5 by the way.

wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/nginx-1.1.13.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-1.1.13.tar.gz
cd nginx-1.1.13
useradd www
passwd www
./configure --prefix=/usr --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/client/ --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/proxy/ --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/fcgi/  --user=www --group=www --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_mp4_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_xslt_module --with-http_image_filter_module --with-http_geoip_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_random_index_module --with-http_secure_link_module --with-http_degradation_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_perl_module --with-mail --with-file-aio --with-mail_ssl_module --with-ipv6
make
make install

in the configurations above, as usual i am using “www” user and group for NginX. Next download NginX init script and make it executable.

wget -O /etc/rc.d/init.d/nginx http://pkgs.serversreview.net/txt/nginx
chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
chkconfig --add nginx
chkconfig nginx on

Okay, NginX has been installed on the frontend and backend servers, now we configure the frontend server. Here is the very basic working NginX configuration for the frontend server.

user www www;
worker_processes  1;

events {
	worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
	include	mime.types;
	default_type	application/octet-stream;
	sendfile	on;
	keepalive_timeout	65;
	gzip	on;

    upstream backend {
    	server backend_ip1:backend_port_other_than_80;
    	server backend_ip2:backend_port_other_than_80;
    }
	server {
		listen 80;
		server_name serversreview.net;
		location / {
			proxy_pass http://backend;
		}
	}

}

As you can see from the above, the very first configuration is “www” user and group for NginX, the second configuration is “EventsModule”, that is for how NginX deal with connections, and the configuration you need to take a look is within the “HttpCoreModule”, check the “upstream” tag. NginX HttpUpstreamModule is used for load balancing across backend servers.

upstream backend {
    server backend_ip1:backend_port_other_than_80;
    server backend_ip2:backend_port_other_than_80;
}

set your backend server ip 1 and 2, also set the port other than 80, for instance 8080. And then you call the backend variable with

location / {
	proxy_pass http://backend;
}

another directive for upstream module is “weight”, this can be used if you want to be more specific about weight request of your backend servers, for instance you want the first backend server serves more requests than the second backend server, than you can set

server backend_ip1:backend_port_other_than_80 weight=5;
server backend_ip2:backend_port_other_than_80;

those configuration above means 5:1, five from six request will be sent to the first backend server and another one will be sent to the second backend server.

more directives for failover is “max_fails” and “fail_timeout”

server backend_ip1:backend_port_other_than_80 max_fails=3 fail_timeout=30s;
server backend_ip2:backend_port_other_than_80;

the request will be sent to the first backend server for 3 tries at 30 seconds timeout before sent to the second backend server.

Okay we have finished the basic settings for the frontend server, now for the backend server, the configuration is as same as the usual NginX virtualhost setting. First we create the folder for domain, public_html, and logs under “www” user.

mkdir /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html /home/www/serversreview.net/logs

And this above is the basic setting for the backend server.

user www www;
worker_processes  1;

events {
	worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
	include	mime.types;
	default_type	application/octet-stream;
	sendfile	on;
	keepalive_timeout	65;
	gzip	on;

	server {
	  listen 8080;
	  server_name serversreview.net;
	  access_log /home/www/serversreview.net/logs/access.log;
	  error_log /home/www/serversreview.net/logs/error.log;

	  location / {
		root /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html/;
		index index.html index.htm index.php;
	  }
	}
}

check the server tag inside HttpCoreModule

• “listen 8080;” so i am using port 8080 for backend server, set port 8080 also in the upstream directive at you frontend server.
• “root /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html/;”, this is the location of my public_html directory, under domain folder and www user.

After add or edit nginx.conf, do not forget to restart your NginX

/etc/init.d/nginx restart

Okay your configuration for backend and frontend is finished, now test whether if the configuration works or not, write one html file inside “/home/www/serversreview.net/public_html” and try to access it via browser, if your html file appears in your browser then success!

Yeah, yippie, yippie!!!

Wait, there are a few configuration’s that you can use to optimize your virtualhost setting:

• First, you may not want if your visitor accessing your site via ip address from the backend server, e.g. your site should be accessed is via domain: http://serversreview.net:80 (frontend), but your visitor can access your site from http://212.121.212.121:8080 (backend). Then you need to add the following directives within your “location” tag of your backend server

  allow your_frontend_server_ip_address;
  deny all;

  so if your visitor accessing your site via backend server, then they will meet your 403 error page. That’s good but i think it is still not very good to have that 403 error page appear from accessing the ip address. How about we redirect 403 to your domain? So if someone accessing your backend ip, it will be redirected to your main site, add the following directive inside your “server” tag

  error_page  403 http://serversreview.net;

  where http://serversreview.net is your frontend / domain.

• Second, if you want to add more than one domain, you can just add another virtualhost configuration in the frontend and backend just like the above, but you need to add “proxy_set_header Host $http_host;” directive to each of your frontend’s virtualhost

  location / {
  	proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
  	proxy_pass http://backend;
  }

  That will make NginX read your request-header “Host” (domain, not the ip), if you don’t, then each request of your domain will be sent to your first virtualhost in your backend server.

Is that all? Yeah that’s all for the second part, in the third part we will go to the more exciting section, later.

Nuff said for the appetizer, let’s get to the main course. The simplest failover method for website is round robin dns, the illustration would be like this:

where the server has been assigned with two or more ip addresses, so if end user fail to access the server with the first ip address, it will be routed to the second ip address. To use that settings, you simply

• Install DNS in your server and create nameservers with your ip addresses
  

  ns1.domain.com 212.121.212.121
  ns2.domain.com 212.121.212.122

  after that assign the nameservers to your domain in your domain panel.

• If you don’t want to use DNS, you can add your ip addresses directly in your domain panel by creating A Record for each ip, for instance:
  

  A Record domain.com 212.121.212.121 100ms
  A Record domain.com 212.121.212.122 100ms

  but not all domain panels support two or more of the same hostname, so you can do research for supported domain panel or using DNS.

The illustration below is as same as the failover method above, but this is more reliable because using an additional / separated server for live backup.

If the network or assigned ip address in server a is troubled or have an issue, then it will automatically routed to the second server’s network. The setting for ip addresses is same as the above, add the first server’s ip address to your domain A Record and same thing for the second server’s ip address. The files within both server is synchronized one each other with a software like rsync. Here is the way to install and run rsync.

wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/rsync-3.0.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf rsync-3.0.9.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

Here’s one example of using rsync, you want to synchronize all of your files inside your public_html directory to the second server, and the public_html directory is located in /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html/, so here is the command

rsync -avz /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html/ user@second_servers_ip_or_host:/home/www/serversreview.net/public_html

now take a look at below command

rsync -avz /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html user@second_servers_ip_or_host:/home/www/serversreview.net

the command is almost the same with the first command, but the second command is syncronizing / copying public_html directory and its content to the path /home/www/serversreview.net of the second server.

I usually use rsync with cron daemon, the command will run either every x minute or every x hour depending on my needs, for more information about commands and manuals you can visit rsync documentation page.

The advantage of using this trick is you do not need to spend large money, especially for the first method, you only need to spend about one or two more dollars to get the second ip address assigned to your server, or double your server cost by adding one more if you want it to be more reliable. Also the setting is not too complicated, just add the nameserver / ip and install rsync. If there’s advantage, so there will be disadvantage, the dns failover depends on the end user’s dns, if end user’s dns is good then the dns shifting from the dead ip to the live ip will not be taking a long time, resolving the dns will be fast and smooth, otherwise if there’s a problem with end user’s dns, then the shifting will take more time, especially if you are implementing the second way and your both servers are located in two different areas or datacenters.

So that’s it for the simple failover (dns and static only files), we will continue later with the more advance failover.

Whois

Datacenter Whois

Spec and Features

System Information

Download and Upload From International Location
Location: US – Port Speed: 1Gbit – Method: WGET & cURL

Disk I/O Test

Benchmark Test (I/O test disabled)

1 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Double-Precision Whetstone  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x System Call Overhead  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Pipe Throughput  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Pipe-based Context Switching  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Process Creation  1 2 3

1 x Execl Throughput  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)  1 2 3

2 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Double-Precision Whetstone  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x System Call Overhead  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Pipe Throughput  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Pipe-based Context Switching  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 x Process Creation  1 2 3

2 x Execl Throughput  1 2 3

2 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)  1 2 3

2 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)  1 2 3

2 x Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)  1 2 3

========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)

   System: marlin: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-x-xxx -- #1 SMP Thu Nov 3 04:23:54 UTC 2011
   Machine: i686 (unknown)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
   CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz (4800.8 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT
   CPU 1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz (4798.5 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT
   23:34:10 up 21 days, 17:29,  2 users,  load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01; runlev
el 2

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Jan 17 2012 23:34:10 - 23:58:21
2 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       13891196.0 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     2514.5 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               3592.8 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                             1627274.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 323155.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                               9063.1 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   6728.0 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                   743.2 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   1473.6 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                        2786067.0 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Partial Index              BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   13891196.0   1190.3
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       2514.5    457.2
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       3592.8    835.5
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    1627274.3   1308.1
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     323155.8    807.9
Process Creation                                126.0       9063.1    719.3
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       6728.0   1586.8
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                     ---        743.2      ---
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       1473.6   2456.0
System Call Overhead                          15000.0    2786067.0   1857.4
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score (Partial Only)                         1107.3

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Jan 17 2012 23:58:21 - 00:22:35
2 CPUs in system; running 2 parallel copies of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       28201519.6 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     5059.9 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               8966.0 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                             3257035.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 646900.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              29956.3 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                  11452.2 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                   728.7 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   1464.8 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                        3960326.0 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Partial Index              BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   28201519.6   2416.6
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       5059.9    920.0
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       8966.0   2085.1
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    3257035.4   2618.2
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     646900.5   1617.3
Process Creation                                126.0      29956.3   2377.5
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4      11452.2   2701.0
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                     ---        728.7      ---
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       1464.8   2441.3
System Call Overhead                          15000.0    3960326.0   2640.2
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score (Partial Only)                         2105.3

Summary
Yeah, again i got special promotion VPS, now it is XEN-HVM VPS product of AmeriNOC, but i am not going to write down about this discount, because it is just a regular packages with discounted prices for a special day, not special packages with special prices. Okay so now let’s start with CPU Power, just like stated in their sales page, Dual Xeon Westmere E5620 @ 2.4GHz, great CPU Node actually. For the speed, the information i read they are using Dedicated Gigabit Network Interface Card per node and 100Mbps VNIC per VPS, that’s why i only got 6 – 10 megabyte per second maximum, i suppose if they are using also Gigabit VNIC it will be very good, lol. Next, disk I/O tests result was great, 210MB/s in average, because most of VPS provider’s disk I/O tests only 150 – 180MB per second in average. The final test is benchmark using UnixBench, and the score is 2105.3 points, this provider can be classified as mid to hi-end vps provider. AmeriNOC price versus box specification is reasonable, i mean it is not very cheap also not to expensive. So i will personally give 9 points out of 10 points for AmeriNOC XEN-HVM VPS.

Example one Server with one IP address using cPanel

cPanel root / super user -> master reseller -> reseller -> shared

further down that many users / domains would use the ip

also cPanel shared hosting usually creates user directory under /home directory, so normally it will be hundreds of user directory right? but the screenshot says different, there is only one user directory

and when I up to directory above /home, there is no root directory

It is a little bit odd right? Yes and so it is called jailed SSH.

Basically, jailed ssh creates a shell scene within a particular directory where your shell activities locked in there. This intended to locked you into that directory instead of you being able to go freely to any other directories, something like ftp server does restrict you to your home directory. Also system administrator or host can decide or restrict what command or program can run in the jailed shell scene, usually they are disabling super user commands, so only basic shell command allowed to run in the jailed ssh.

Whois

Spec and Features

System Information

Download and Upload From International Location
Location: US – Port Speed: 1Gbit – Method: WGET & cURL

Disk I/O Test

Benchmark Test (I/O test disabled)

1 x Dhrystone 2 using register variables  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Double-Precision Whetstone  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x System Call Overhead  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Pipe Throughput  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Pipe-based Context Switching  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 x Process Creation  1 2 3

1 x Execl Throughput  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)  1 2 3

1 x Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)  1 2 3

========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)

   System: snapper: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Thu Nov 3 04:23:54 UTC 2011
   Machine: i686 (unknown)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
   CPU 0: QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6) (6784.9 bogomips)
          x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET
   01:48:30 up 1 day, 19:58,  1 user,  load average: 0.24, 0.07, 0.02; runlevel
2

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Thu Dec 29 2011 01:48:30 - 02:12:35
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       19050443.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     3291.8 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               7224.8 lps   (29.9 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                             2355731.2 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 459056.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              26374.1 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   8588.7 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                   563.6 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   1125.3 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                        3855864.2 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Partial Index              BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   19050443.3   1632.4
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       3291.8    598.5
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       7224.8   1680.2
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    2355731.2   1893.7
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     459056.4   1147.6
Process Creation                                126.0      26374.1   2093.2
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       8588.7   2025.6
Shell Scripts (16 concurrent)                     ---        563.6      ---
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       1125.3   1875.6
System Call Overhead                          15000.0    3855864.2   2570.6
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score (Partial Only)                         1610.6

Summary

It was a good offer from Hostingation, “Get it while it lasts, will not be seen again”. I will start with the VPS specification. 5GB space, 128MB Memory, 1 Core CPU, 500GB data transfers, and it is KVM. See the benchmark score of this box, 1610 points, it is very good and i guess because KVM. Disk I/O test also quite good, 100MB/s rate average. Next about the speed access, unfortunately i only got 1 Megabyte per second, or maybe 10mb/s. If this box used 100mb/s port then it will be a really good Xmas gift, but with 20 dollars a year or $ 1.6 per month it is worth it than your $3 or $5 OpenVZ VPS . So i will give Hostigation’s Xmas KVM special 9 points from 10 points.

Whois

Datacenter Whois

Spec and Features

System Information

Custom cPanel

Download and Upload From International Location
Location: US – Port Speed: 1Gbit – Method: WGET & cURL

Load Time

Summary
This is the first time ever i reviewed Cloud Hosting (Shared) provider, Site5 offers 30 Day trial before you decide to go with them, okay let’s begin. First about their engine, take a look at the CPU, Intel Xeon X5675 @ 3.07GHz, what a great CPU Power. Unfortunately, great CPU Power doesn’t come with huge memory power, i detected that they are using only 8GB memory. For the speed, 100Mbps port i guess, i got 80% of their port speed when i tested with wget, it is good. Load test result was also good, 40 clients accessing this hosting took 1 second to complete the request, i am using wordpress standard installation anyway.

Last thing i want to talk about is the price, but before talking about the price, i want to review about the cloud hosting first. Here is what i know about cloud hosting, more than one set of computer and located in different place (we could say datacenter / network), all of those sets of computer are interconnected and we can access all of those sets of computer’s resources through the internet network. I may say that i have one PHP wget script in the first drive of computer one in the first cluster on the first datacenter, i run that PHP script and the result of the script is downloaded to the second drive of computer six in the third cluster on the second datacenter, at the same time the script using the power of the tenth computer’s cpu in the seventh cluster on the fifth datacenter. So cloud computing is scalable and full accessible, unimaginable how much cost to create such computer structure, and also the advantages that we could get from cloud hosting, for a basic example is failover. From those explanation, i guess their price vs spec is equal. So 9 points out of 10 points will be given to Site5.

So i guess it will be good for PHP programmer / developer to have PHP version 5.2 and 5.3 installed and running on the same machine (more economical than using two machines for each PHP version). So let’s get started.

Anyway i will use NginX as the webserver, so the main principle of two PHP version running on the same machine is CGI works using different localhost port.

Before installing PHP, we usually install webserver and database first, i assume that you all have installed NginX and MySQL, so i just skip to the PHP installation.

note: the configuration below is my usual config and dependencies, if you are experiencing error while configure or make php, try to find out about the missing dependencies by looking at this blog’s older posts or googling. The first four configuration of PHP will be the important note because we will separate PHP 5.3 and 5.2 configuration (php.ini) path.

--prefix=/usr/local53 --libdir=/usr/local53/lib --with-libdir=lib --with-config-file-path=/usr/local53/lib
--prefix=/usr/local52 --libdir=/usr/local52/lib --with-libdir=lib --with-config-file-path=/usr/local52/lib

Install PHP 5.3.8 with PHP-FPM

wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/autoconf-2.13.tar.gz
tar -zxvf autoconf-2.13.tar.gz
cd autoconf-2.13
./configure
make && make install

wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/php-5.3.8.tar.gz
tar -zxvf php-5.3.8.tar.gz
cd php-5.3.8
./buildconf --force
./configure --prefix=/usr/local53 --libdir=/usr/local53/lib --with-libdir=lib --with-config-file-path=/usr/local53/lib --enable-force-cgi-redirect --enable-fpm --enable-cli --with-mcrypt --enable-mbstring --with-openssl --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --with-mysql-sock=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock --with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-gd --with-zlib --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib --with-png-dir=/usr/lib --with-png --with-jpeg --with-gmp --with-sqlite --enable-pdo --with-xpm-dir=/usr/lib --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/freetype2 --with-ttf=/usr/include/freetype2 --enable-gd-native-ttf --enable-fileinfo --disable-debug --with-pic --with-bz2 --with-curl --with-curlwrappers --without-gdbm --with-gettext --with-iconv --with-pspell --with-pcre-regex --with-imap --with-imap-ssl=/usr/lib --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-magic-quotes --enable-sockets --disable-sysvsem --disable-sysvshm --disable-sysvmsg --enable-track-vars --enable-trans-sid --enable-yp --enable-wddx --with-kerberos --enable-ucd-snmp-hack --enable-memory-limit --enable-shmop --enable-calendar --enable-dbx --enable-dio --with-mime-magic --with-system-tzdata --with-odbc --enable-gd-jis-conv --enable-dom --disable-dba --enable-xmlreader --enable-xmlwriter --with-tidy  --with-xml --with-xmlrpc --with-xsl --enable-bcmath --enable-soap --enable-zip --enable-inline-optimization --with-mhash --enable-mbregex
make
make install

cp php.ini-production /usr/local53/lib/php.ini

Install PHP 5.2.17 with PHP-FPM patch

wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/libevent-2.0.16-stable.tar.gz
tar -zxvf libevent-2.0.16-stable.tar.gz
cd libevent-2.0.16-stable
./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib
make
make install

wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/php-5.2.17.tar.gz
tar -zxvf php-5.2.17.tar.gz
cd php-5.2.17
wget http://pkgs.serversreview.net/files/php-5.2.17-fpm-0.5.14.diff.gz
gunzip php-5.2.17-fpm-0.5.14.diff.gz
patch -p1 < php-5.2.17-fpm-0.5.14.diff
./configure --prefix=/usr/local52 --libdir=/usr/local52/lib  --with-libdir=lib --with-config-file-path=/usr/local53/lib --enable-force-cgi-redirect --enable-fastcgi --enable-fpm --with-libevent=/usr/lib --enable-cli --with-mcrypt --enable-mbstring --with-openssl --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --with-mysql-sock=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock --with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-gd --with-zlib --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib --with-png-dir=/usr/lib --enable-zend-multibyte --with-png --with-jpeg --with-gmp --with-sqlite --enable-pdo --with-xpm-dir=/usr/lib --with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/freetype2 --with-ttf=/usr/include/freetype2 --enable-gd-native-ttf --with-mime-magic --disable-debug --with-pic --with-bz2 --with-curl --with-curlwrappers --without-gdbm --with-gettext --with-iconv --with-pspell --with-pcre-regex --with-imap --with-imap-ssl=/usr/lib --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-magic-quotes --enable-sockets --disable-sysvsem --disable-sysvshm --disable-sysvmsg --enable-track-vars --enable-trans-sid --enable-yp --enable-wddx --with-kerberos --enable-ucd-snmp-hack --enable-memory-limit --enable-shmop --enable-calendar --enable-dbx --enable-dio --with-mime-magic --with-system-tzdata --with-odbc --enable-gd-jis-conv --enable-dom --disable-dba --enable-xmlreader --enable-xmlwriter --with-tidy  --with-xml --with-xmlrpc --with-xsl --enable-bcmath --enable-soap --enable-zip --enable-inline-optimization --with-mhash --enable-mbregex --enable-memcache
make
make install
strip /usr/bin/php-cgi
sed -i 's/extension_dir/;extension_dir/g' php.ini-recommended
cp php.ini-recommended /usr/local52/lib/php.ini

Next the configuration for php-fpm.conf PHP 5.3 and 5.2, the point you need to take a look is localhost and listen port

Version 5.3

mv /usr/local53/etc/php-fpm.conf.default /usr/local53/etc/php-fpm.conf
nano /usr/local53/etc/php-fpm.conf

check listening port and set it to 9000, also don’t forget to change user and group to www

user = www
group = www
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Version 5.2

nano /usr/local52/etc/php-fpm.conf

check listening port and set it to 9001, change user and group to www

name=listen_address 127.0.0.1:9001
name=user www
name=group www

I am using “www“user and group for NginX and PHP, the rest setting for PHP 5.3 and 5.2 is yours.

Now we create init script for both PHP-FPM 5.3 and 5.2

Init script 5.3

nano /etc/rc.d/init.d/php-fpm53

case "$1" in
	start)
		/usr/local53/sbin/php-fpm --fpm-config /usr/local53/etc/php-fpm.conf
		echo "PHP-FPM started successfully"
		exit 1
	;;

	stop)
		pkill php-fpm
		echo "PHP-FPM stopped"
		exit 1
	;;
	restart)
		echo "Stopping php-fpm"
		pkill php-fpm
		sleep 2
		echo "Starting php-fpm"
		/usr/local53/sbin/php-fpm --fpm-config /usr/local53/etc/php-fpm.conf
		echo "PHP-FPM restarted successfully"
		exit 1
	;;
	*)
		echo "Usage: start - stop - restart"
		exit 1
	;;
esac

Init script 5.2

ln -s /usr/local52/sbin/php-fpm /etc/init.d/php-fpm

make those init scripts executable

chmod +x /etc/init.d/php-fpm53 /etc/init.d/php-fpm52

Now let’s start both init scripts

/etc/init.d/php-fpm53 start
/etc/init.d/php-fpm52 start

Check both PHP 5.3 and 5.3 binary files if they are already running

ps aux

Okay PHP 5.3 and 5.2 is now running together on the same machine, last thing you have to do is determine whether you want to use PHP 5.3 or 5.2 or both, here is the example of virtual host configuration using serversreview.net as domain.

user www www;
.....
.....
http {
	  server {
	  listen 80;
	  server_name serversreview.net;
	  access_log /home/www/serversreview.net/logs/access.log;
	  error_log /home/www/serversreview.net/logs/error.log;

	  location / {
		root /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html/;
		index index.html index.htm index.php;
	  }

	  location ~ \.php$ {
		include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
		fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
		fastcgi_index index.php;
		fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/www/serversreview.net/public_html$fastcgi_script_name;
	  }
	}
}

you just need to switch the port 9000 for PHP version 5.3 and 9001 for PHP version 5.2 in this line

fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;

That’s it! You are ready to roll your machine with PHP 5.3 and 5.2, if there is something you don’t understand or error while you are setting this up, remember that Google is your first aid, or we can discuss toghether about your confusion here.