Post AQbwVvDHsvSPG95GbY by finite@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by finite@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AQbuK6bZVOGtCsgFpQ by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T21:43:05Z
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Setting up a reliable "status page" (i.e. a service that can monitor other services to alert and record outages) is way more difficult than it should be.
(DIR) Post #AQbuK75Lig5ghEc2F6 by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T21:46:15Z
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Obviously you don't want to host it from the same infrastructure that hosts the stuff you're actually monitoring. Preferably, it should be at a completely different ISP. That being said, it's an incredibly basic task, so it's hard to justify spending a ton of money on it.You'd think you can just get any old cheap VPS and set up an open source monitoring service, but there are shockingly few options and low-end VPSes may struggle to run them reliably.
(DIR) Post #AQbuK7Va994g0asz8C by lamp@mastodong.lol
2022-12-14T21:52:39Z
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@finite just write an app to ping your stuff and render an html page?
(DIR) Post #AQbuKBCER1yNRjraWe by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T21:48:57Z
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There are plenty of commercial services that will do this for you, some will even do it free of charge, but I really dislike the idea of relying on centralized commercial services for something like this.
(DIR) Post #AQbvM2IUamLiNcEzQm by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T22:04:00Z
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@lamp So, even if I had the time and energy to write the software (I don't, really, I'd rather modify existing software if it comes to that), that does not address the reliability issues. Even if the network uptime on a cheap VPS is good, you won't always be able to get a consistent number of CPU cycles. In other words, noisy neighbors can negatively impact your results.
(DIR) Post #AQbwGZWWFFB9e6lBPU by lamp@mastodong.lol
2022-12-14T22:14:09Z
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@finite How? You don't need much CPU to ping some sites every few minutes.
(DIR) Post #AQbwVvDHsvSPG95GbY by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T22:16:47Z
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@lamp Actually establishing SSL/TLS connections and sending requests to 100+ services every minute takes a little bit more than just shooting over an ICMP packet. I'm not trying to make sure the server is up, I'm trying to make sure that the website is actually reachable and working properly.
(DIR) Post #AQbxCbyxGHnG4DjhGC by lamp@mastodong.lol
2022-12-14T22:24:53Z
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@finite Yeah a little bit more. 3 connections per second isn't hard. Fedi servers on cheap systems are dealing with a lot more. Also you can keep-alive.
(DIR) Post #AQbxrlNHFK0b4Njdq4 by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T22:32:18Z
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@lamp The difference is that your fedi server stalling for a couple seconds won't stop any connections from reaching it as soon as it comes back. If your VM stalls for a few seconds while it's gathering metrics, it will massively increase the recorded latency, or it will time out and cause false downtime to be recorded.
(DIR) Post #AQbyO23yjWWy5z5z4C by lamp@mastodong.lol
2022-12-14T22:38:12Z
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@finite Well don't use a host that stalls for a few seconds, that's unacceptable. What sort of cheap VPS's are you talking about?
(DIR) Post #AQbyXKShhEYdlT5rZg by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T22:39:49Z
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@lamp You may be underestimating what I mean by "cheap". I don't think this would be a problem on something that costs like $5/mo.I am not willing to spend that much for this.
(DIR) Post #AQbzL0wIYUJRhAczJY by lamp@mastodong.lol
2022-12-14T22:48:51Z
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@finite i guess go by user reviews; you should be able to find a rock-solid $1 vps cause it's fair for the tiny allocation of resources you need. If it ever locks up for _seconds_ then they must be really overselling or something and they should be called out in reviews hopefully. Also the software can detect and account for it.
(DIR) Post #AQbzhHYzQbEZcnLNDM by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T22:51:18Z
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@lamp Most systems under $2/mo are OpenVZ, which are notoriously easy to oversell and prone to these types of issues. Finding a KVM server under that price point that natively supports both IPv6 and IPv4 has proved quite challenging.
(DIR) Post #AQc04zCpKexDdkHQky by lamp@mastodong.lol
2022-12-14T22:56:40Z
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@finite both can be oversold, it's all up to the provider. openvz is cheaper cause it has less overhead. i've had a $16/yr openvz running rock-solid for years
(DIR) Post #AQc0lqXFRf23CVGkyG by finite@mastodon.social
2022-12-14T23:04:50Z
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@lamp KVM has better process isolation. With OpenVZ, how fast it is really depends on how much the provider has done to mitigate the noisy neighbor issues and what the other people on the same node as you are using their VMs for. I hosted my personal stuff from an OpenVZ for a few years and there's a reason I've moved over to dedicated hardware with KVM containers.The OpenVZ I'm using seems pretty solid so far, just that the processing speed of certain operations varies throughout the day.