Chicago vs Atlanta - VDS vs Dedicated

[pro4never]

Hey, just wanted to say to start that I'm overall very happy with my experience at NFO (well over a year now) but this summer will be making some fairly large changes to how and what I'm hosting and was looking to get a bit of feedback from those a bit more experienced than me.

Currently I have 3 different VDS servers (one chicago that's barely used, one atlanta and one in frankfurt). I'm in the process of launching a new project which will by all indicators dwarf the current projects I'm hosting. Over the past few months my experience with atlanta has significantly degraded. I totally understand that almost all of the issues are due to changes on internap's side but it's still discouraging seeing issues on a near weekly basis. Generally these issues boil down to other users in the data center experiencing large attacks or incorrect configurations on internap's side but still, frustrating especially if we're looking to scale up our operations.


My current debate is between if migrating all of my NA based projects to Chicago would be better due to the larger network capabilities and improved peering done at that location is going to be worth the extra work or not and if in the process it'd be worthwhile to switch to a dedicated server (room to grow and all that jazz).

The projects I run includes a number of sub services (web servers, file servers, teamspeak, etc) and a couple of game servers. These are not that intensive to run but can balloon over time in regards to memory usage. Right now I'm running 6 core 6 gig ram VDS' with no real complaints or issue but the faster per-core speed does seem attractive given I force a lot of background logic to single threads to avoid race conditions (primarily pathfinding/AI and database functions, networking is of course running on on multiple threads).


So... Longer post than I intended but here's the breakdown of what I'm wondering.

Will Chicago likely result in less issues? The attacks against my projects historically have been laughably easy to handle, it's the collateral damage from other users in the facility being attacked that's bothering me.

Will upgrading to a dedicated server likely be worth while if I'm looking to visualize some of my services (EG: move the web hosting to its own container to avoid issues with it pulling resources from other projects) or with the limited information I've posted does a larger bundled VDS sound like it would function just as well...

[kraze]

Chicago would definitely be a good choice. Due to it's increased capacity we can generally work around most issues, such as an Internap problem or an upstream problem since we have so much capacity available there. I'd also recommend sticking with a VDS, unless you can utilize the extra CPU. Overall, a VDS is much more flexible and can easily adapt to a shifting business.

[pro4never]

Chicago would definitely be a good choice. Due to it's increased capacity we can generally work around most issues, such as an Internap problem or an upstream problem since we have so much capacity available there. I'd also recommend sticking with a VDS, unless you can utilize the extra CPU. Overall, a VDS is much more flexible and can easily adapt to a shifting business.

That's sort of what I figured. The only reason I was considering swapping to a dedicated server was that single core speed would be higher which could avoid some bottlenecks in the future. My old project does heavily abuse some single threads wheras the new project is much better designed with multi threading in mind.

Considering this is a MMO and there will be 100-200 players on a single map fairly often I felt that the extra single core speed might be a benefit but it's not as though the VDS' that are offered by NFO are using ancient processors or anything so it shouldn't become much of a concern.

The other drawback would be that I can't do 3-6 month bundled pricing with dedicated servers it seems so it's unlikely that it will make sense to take the plunge, at least right now.

[Edge100x]

I'd recommend starting with a VDS and upgrading if you start seeing performance problems due to single threads saturating a core. You sound like you know what you're doing and will be able to monitor for those.

Internap is in the process of upgrading its Atlanta location and we expect to see it stabilize more in the near future. Currently most of the issues that we see there are due to Internap-side limitations (internally and externally, they haven't have enough capacity to handle attacks against our customers or their other customers at the location).

[pro4never]

I'd recommend starting with a VDS and upgrading if you start seeing performance problems due to single threads saturating a core. You sound like you know what you're doing and will be able to monitor for those.

Internap is in the process of upgrading its Atlanta location and we expect to see it stabilize more in the near future. Currently most of the issues that we see there are due to Internap-side limitations (internally and externally, they haven't have enough capacity to handle attacks against our customers or their other customers at the location).

Thanks for the info. That being said I'm already looking to merge my existing VDS' servers so moving locations at the same time would be (fairly) painless.

Am I be correct in assuming that the network provisioning would be identical between a dedicated and VDS server? Unfortunately the information on the website is a touch vague on exactly how network resources are allocated within the data center but I would assume it's all handled by the same switches and nothing to do with the virtualization process.

[kraze]

I'd recommend starting with a VDS and upgrading if you start seeing performance problems due to single threads saturating a core. You sound like you know what you're doing and will be able to monitor for those.

Internap is in the process of upgrading its Atlanta location and we expect to see it stabilize more in the near future. Currently most of the issues that we see there are due to Internap-side limitations (internally and externally, they haven't have enough capacity to handle attacks against our customers or their other customers at the location).

Thanks for the info. That being said I'm already looking to merge my existing VDS' servers so moving locations at the same time would be (fairly) painless.

Am I be correct in assuming that the network provisioning would be identical between a dedicated and VDS server? Unfortunately the information on the website is a touch vague on exactly how network resources are allocated within the data center but I would assume it's all handled by the same switches and nothing to do with the virtualization process.

Yes, it'd be pretty much identical, at least on the backend.