Pingdom with email2sms gateway for external/global checks and zabbix for internal checks
98 karma · joined April 17, 2008
- eat crap one day, eat healthy other.
- don't own a car/walk and take the stairs rather than lift.
- avoid public transport (where possible).
- work hard.
- get a good full 4 to 9 hours sleep per night.
- do some light weights every other day (or when bothered).
- drink lots of juices and waters and avoid fizzy drinks.
- alternate drinking beer and shorts without mixers.
Cacti for network traffic monitoring (and alerting using thold plugin).
Smokeping for network latency and availability monitoring and alerting.
We've got nearly 3000 domains under our enom reseller account, I wouldn't touch any our domains on their nameservers.
The batteries better perform as well as Apple is claiming or this could be a major fail.
When dealing direct with vendors (Dell, Sun and IBM from experience):
1) Price you're given is not only based on current purchase, but future purchase. Telling your sales rep 'I need X servers now, but I expect to need a further X per quarter growing to X after X time' then they'll fight harder for your business. Basically, present your business as a growth opportunity to the vendor.
2) When speaking to your first sales rep, ask at what price/order level they generally deal in. The reps who handle bigger clients have access to bigger discounts.
3) Don't under or over-specify your machines without calculating your later options. Buying an extra processor for one machine now will be a hell of a lot cheaper/easier than buying the matching processor in 3/6/12 months. In the same respect, not buying that extra processor now might be more prudent because a new chassis with the latest and greatest processor in 6/12/24 months might be a better option. (should be part of your scalability predictions anyway).
4) Know your stuff.
4.1) We all know reps bs, by knowing what you're talking about you can reduce this tedium.
4.2) If you ask which processor is better, then it'll always be the more expensive one (or more importantly, the one with the better margin for them which is not always the most expensive).
4.3) mmmurf said it, but to re-iterate. Time = Money. If a rep is holding your hand too much, then you won't get as good deals.
5) Know your vendor and their enemies. 5.1) When is there end of quarter? 5.2) How have they done compared to comparable vendors over the last quarter, year, etc? 5.3) Which vendors are pushing X line/type of servers at the moment? 5.4) Have comparison quotes.
6) Specify a date when you will be looking to purchase. 5.1 has a MASSIVE impact on this.
I think the /Mbps prices quoted are a bit on the high side (you can get cheap transit at 5GBP/Mbps if you deal in reasonable commits). Apart from dropping your own line in there's no cheaper way I know of to achieve the quality.
Use of a CDN would allow less capital outlay on the standard http hosting (could use dedis, vm, cloud) and somewhat instant scalability. Once you know your traffic patterns your implementation options sometimes get made for you.
whatever you choose make sure it can scale fast, but at the same time (depending on your presentation of the media), there's always the option of piggybacking on someone else (like youtube) who's made the infrastructure investment.
If I walked into your office and you gave me a "conversation starter" along that line, I'd think you had a chip on your shoulder. It's one thing to be proud of your achievements, a different one to use them as a crutch for your inferiority complex.
Been there, done that.
Additionally if you make this such a large pain point, then are they the correct co-founder to begin with?
Just an idea.
EDIT: Sorry, just saw noodles point.