Author Archive
20 Jan 2015
DDoS protection, does my server need it?
Many of us have heard about DDoS attacks recently, as they are becoming more and more common and reported in the news. Some of us may have been targeted by them, or otherwise impacted. A question we get from a lot of customers is “Do I need DDoS protection?” The answer is much like “what
14 Jan 2015
Managed or Unmanaged Dedicated Server provider?
A lot of hosts will offer either managed or unmanaged dedicated servers, with wildly varying prices in both categories. It can be difficult to know exactly how much service and support you get from either option. Should you choose managed? If so, what does that include? Should you go with “unmanaged”? If so, what will
08 Jan 2015
Why buy a dedicated server for web hosting?
Should I choose a dedicated server for web hosting, or a VPS? With dedicated servers becoming more and more powerful, older dedicated servers come down in price regularly but still offer a lot of “oomph”. If price were not a concern, then getting a high end dedicated server would always be best. For most of
05 Jan 2015
What is the best dedicated server hosting?
This is a question that comes up rather often, which is not surprising given how difficult it can be to find a good server host that will meet your needs, day in and day out. The truth is that there is no “best dedicated server” and no “best dedicated host”, however, there may well be a
02 Jan 2015
World Community Grid: Using idle CPU power to cure diseases
You may have wondered what to do with your extra computing power. You have a computer at home that sits idle all of the time, but what can you do with it? A good option is to participate in IBM’s World Community Grid. This will use the spare computing power of your home computer or
27 Dec 2014
Troubleshooting high linecard CPU use / exhaustion on Brocade MLX and MLXe routers
Today we’re going to be talking about a poor design decision in the Brocade MLX and MLXe series routers that can lead to CPU exhaustion on your router line cards. Overall we’re very happy with the Brocade MLX. After all, every routing platform has its quirks, so one small problem that is easily solved is
20 Dec 2014
CloudFlare agrees: Disk performance is improved when you get rid of hardware raid
I know this article is a little old, but I wanted to bring it up as it raises an interesting point. We’ve had a few articles here about hardware raid, detailing when we think it’s a good idea, and when it’s a waste of money (or worse). In general, if you’re looking for “big DD
18 Dec 2014
Dell C6100 BMC / IPMI Mac address all zeros after update? 00:00:00:00:00:00 — Script fix solution
Some of you may have noticed the Dell C6100 on ebay for a pretty cheap price. 4 servers in a single 2u chassis for as little as $800. Great deal right? I had a lot of trouble getting the IPMI / BMC firmware updated on these in the first place. After getting it upgraded, the
06 Dec 2014
IOFLOOD.com — Phoenix, AZ dedicated server BGP network improvements
IOFLOOD.com is proud to announce that we’ve completed a series of upgrades to our network to maximize performance and reliability for our dedicated server customers. Our new network topology now contains a blend of 4 carriers: Tinet — 1x 10gbps Telia Sonera — 1x 10gbps -New- Cogent — 1x 10gbps HE.net — 2x 1gbps Tinet
28 Nov 2014
e1000e NIC link failure / x9scm / x9scl / patch fix for Centos
If you’ve had problems with the nic driver failing on x9 / x10 supermicro motherboards with the intel e1000e NIC, we have a fix for you. Centos 6 on X9 motherboards (x9scl / x9scm) seems to have the most problems, but other motherboards and OS’s are potentially affected as well. There are a lot of