Ask HN: What workloads would this VPS config be good for? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What workloads would this VPS config be good for?

2 pointscdvonstinkpot3 comments

I'm considering starting a VPS hosting company with an emphasis on speed, and I've got some gear on the drawing board which would provide just 2 instances, or tenants- and that's fine for my purposes, which are small to begin with.

I was wondering what kind of workloads the configurations I'd be providing would be good for, so I could get a handle on the target market for who would want this kind of VPS.

So I'm writing in to HN tonight to see if anyone here would care to advise as to what these configs would be good for. What workloads would these VPS' attract?

Each VPS:

4x vCPU @ 3.5 GHz (4GHz Turbo)

16GB Memory

100GB 6Gb/s Intel X25-E SSD-based disk in RAID0

Free 1st NIC/IP, 500Mbps Link, 10TB Bandwidth @ 0.10/GB Overage

+$5/month per NIC/IP Pair >1

-or-

4x vCPU @ 3.5 GHz (4GHz Turbo)

16GB Memory

1.5TB 12Gb/s HGST Ultrastar SSD800MH SSD-based disk in RAID10

Free 1st NIC/IP, 500Mbps Link, 10TB Bandwidth @ 0.10/GB Overage

+$5/month per NIC/IP Pair >1

Thanks in advance.

-c

I can't imagine what these would be used for. You're most likely looking for business clients that are going to be hard to find. The lowend market is much larger.

The most important factor is cost. Most VPS hosts will sell several dozen instances per machine. At $1-10 each, it takes several months to even make a profit. With just 2 instances on a $500+ box, you'd have to charge $50-100 per month and still be in debt for a while.

Resources:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=45

http://lowendbox.com

Ok, so these guys would have to be over allocating their boxes to put that many instances on what could only be so many cores per box. I wouldn't be doing anything that might slow down the instances so there are only 2 since I only have 8 cores available. Otherwise there could be slowdowns, which would be counter to the emphasis of the company. This would add to the value and price point. I certainly don't want to be part of the race to the bottom & get a mention on lowendbox.com- on the contrary, I prefer the harder battle to find the high end clients & cater to them. I just want to rent more than 1 per box- so 2 is good for me. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

The problem is that high-end clients would want somebody with stability, resources, and above all HISTORY.

There are too many people who setup hosting companies because it is comparatively cheap to get started; buy a box, fill it, buy another.

But doing it right involves having spare hardware, on-site access to pull out failed drives etc, etc. If you're one person and you have a single machine then I can't even rent two guests/machines from you and do load-balancing which rules you out entirely.

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