Newb Questions

[piper]

I am outgrowing my shared hosting plan. I've been reading about VPS and the plans look great. I do have some questions though:

Is bandwidth really unmetered? What if I eat up 500 gigs a month? (Not that I would)
Will I be completely on my own? Do I have to manage and upgrade Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc., myself?

[AdrianB]

You won't be on your one, the VPS plans are all manage VPS plans.

[Vin DSL]

Is bandwidth really unmetered? What if I eat up 500 gigs a month? (Not that I would)

If I understand your question, yes, it's unmetered. Unthrottled and unmetered... At least that's MY understanding.

Will I be completely on my own? Do I have to manage and upgrade Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc., myself?

My experience here is, JagPC won't let you down, e.g. drown, no matter what.

For instance: I was administrating a site here, and the owner had an UNMANAGED dedicated server. He had started with a shared account, but quickly grew out of it.

Anyway, he immediately botched a PHP ugrade, and JagPC saved his bacon. They pulled his ass out of the fire a few more times too -- even though they weren't required to do so under the terms of the agreement.

Eventually, I think they told him, if he expected 'them' to manage his unmanaged dedicated server, he was going to have signup for that service.

The point is, these guys want to see you succeed. Really! They won't shaft you...

[piper]

Thanks for the replies. I'm feeling a little more confident about opening a VPS account.

[piper]

More questions, similar to my first ones but I just want to be clear.

If I understand your question, yes, it's unmetered. Unthrottled and unmetered... At least that's MY understanding.

Unmetered, unthrottled bandwidth? What is that in plain English? Can I use as much bandwidth as I want?

Anyway, he immediately botched a PHP ugrade

So I will have to install, patch, upgrade Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, myself? Does this mean I'll have to upload upgrades and patches or are they already provided by JagPC and all I have to do is install/upgrade?

Sorry, if these questions seem stupid...

[Ron]

http://www.jaguarpc.com/services/vps/compare.php

It's a terminology thing....

Assuming you're on a plan with 1Mbps:

You are unmetered, but you are only guaranteed 1Mbps. I may have read that the VPS plans allow you to burst over that speed, but I may be mistaken. In either case, should the 1Mbps limit be firm or whether the system needs to enforce it, at that point you WILL be throttled back to your guaranteed limit of 1Mbps.

Now, you CAN use 1Mbps constantly 24/7, for a theoretical limit of 86,400Mbits or approximately 10GB per day.

(I'm sure someone will come in and correct something I've written here, if not this statement! )

[AdrianB]

One thing about the VPS plans: If you want to use the Cpanel control panel, forget about the Discovery Plan, you need at least the Freedom Plan according to the support.

I was thinking about moving up from shared hosting to the Discovery VPS plan, but the support told me the Cpanel (which I'm using on the shared hosting - alla shared hosting are, I guess) requires more than the Discovery plan offers.

[Gwaihir]

I am pretty sure that 1 Mbps (or 1,5, 2 or 3, depending on plan) is throttled (maximized) at that speed. Otherwise, with 100Mbps (or more) network cards and equally fast speeds to the internet backbone, you'd have way, way too much more.

In another thread on this board I have recently asked whether unthrottled (i.e. burstable) plans are still available, which I think they're still brooding on. IMHO you're almost allways better of with 250GB/month burstable than 1Mbps throttled (even though that can get you 324GB/month).

You can definately get Apache / PHP/ MySQL installed for you. I'm not sure how much of the upgrades you can "sign up" for in advance, but I'm sure they'll help you out when in need. The thing is: most people get a VPS because they want to do something not entirely the same as every other server in the datacenter, so they would definately NOT appreciate it if JagPC went in and upgraded that to the latest standard applications every time. Upgrading standard stuff should however be a pretty simple matter, especially if you get the right control panel.

[Spathiphyllum]

(I'm sure someone will come in and correct something I've written here, if not this statement! )

Are you sure a "" is appropriate here and not a ""?

[Spathiphyllum]

I am pretty sure that 1 Mbps (or 1,5, 2 or 3, depending on plan) is throttled (maximized) at that speed. Otherwise, with 100Mbps (or more) network cards and equally fast speeds to the internet backbone, you'd have way, way too much more.

I don't think any user node will ever reach such speeds (100Mbps). Most routers, particularly at the terminal router closest to requesting agent, are capped to much less than the maximium capabilities of modern NICs. Your intranet may peak near hardware maximums but the traffic onto the internet will typically be much less. I guess it would be helpful to know how throttling is employed and whether it is calculated by some algorithm that using averaging or instantaneous sampling.

[Gwaihir]

I'm a bit confused as to what you're saying. We are talking about the servers here, right, not an individual user behind his browser?

Jag has some pretty serious hardware there. Put 20 of those big 3 Mbps throttled VPSes on one of those latest 8 core opteron machines - which doesn't sound over the top to me at all - and you'd be wanting to offer 60Mbps from one server (one NIC) straight onto the internet. Why would JagPC want to throttle that - unless at some point the total bandwith out of the data center is saturated?

[piper]

Thanks for the replies.

I clicked on the VPS sign-up page and there were some options to upgrade to CPanel, add more bandwidth etc... Do I pay for these extras just once or is this going to be added to the monthly price of the plan?

Now, you CAN use 1Mbps constantly 24/7, for a theoretical limit of 86,400Mbits or approximately 10GB per day.

So would that be my approximate limit - 10Gigs a day/300 gigs a month?

[Gwaihir]

I clicked on the VPS sign-up page and there were some options to upgrade to CPanel, add more bandwidth etc... Do I pay for these extras just once or is this going to be added to the monthly price of the plan?

Monthly, unless it says otherwise (like "one time" or "setup costs").

So would that be my approximate limit - 10Gigs a day/300 gigs a month?

Well; you can't really express it in those terms. It truly is unmetered and in that sense without limit (you won't ever see an over-use bill). But it is throttled, so at busy times the delivery speed of your pages will slow down a bit, as no more than 1 (or 1,5, 2 or 3) Mbps is let through.

Now, if you keep it busy all the time, you'll get about 324GB/month out of that; that's 1Mbps * 30 days (*24*3600 seconds/day) - as Ron posted, but expressed in GB instead of bits. However, if you really do keep it that busy, you'll probably want to upgrade, to be able to serve your users better.

[piper]

Monthly, unless it says otherwise (like "one time" or "setup costs").
Well; you can't really express it in those terms. It truly is unmetered and in that sense without limit (you won't ever see an over-use bill)..

Thanks! That's what I was wondering.