What Hypervisor would you recommend for a 1u 1 server Collocation

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citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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I am nearing the end of my lease on me Dedi and have long since chosen to not renew. I am going to self host via collo but to start with only plan on 1 server. Since I do plan over next few years to expand this setup into a cluster I plan to use a hypervisor to allow for HA once able to do so. I am most knowledgeable about Hyper-V and have Licenses but I am not married to this and not sure it would even be correct setup if I did this. What would you as a community recommend. One like but not required would be able to send PCIe lanes to Client VMs as accelerators but not required. Most VMs will be CentOS8 and most of these will have WHM/Cpanel but a few will be others as needed.

Known Choices but open to more
Win19-Core/Hyper-V
CentOS 8/KVM
Proxmox VE- ZFS 2 way delta backups, starting with local storage and add to cluster later?
XCP-ng - Better networking and clustering (Prox) but only 1 way delta backups - no larger then 2tb images.
ESXI - Would be standard
Windows/Centos with VM Workstation (I personally think extremely bad idea)

I have already purchased a the following server and specs but looking for the best setup as my company grows do plan to expand to more servers in colo.

Server Specs
HP DL 325 (New)
Epyc 7402
8 * 32GB ECC 2933
8* 2TB SSD Sata - no HP branded
May buy 2 more drives as OS Dom
iLO Advanced
P408i-a - i may not use depending on raid setups and go to mobo

Colo Specs
iLo
1 U
1 Amp power (208) - I think I will have to upgrade to 2amp
/29

Desired storage minimums
2-3 drive fail protection
raid/equivalent
Raid 10
Raid 6
Z2/Z3


Note Min Spec of primary vm will be
16/32 Core
128GB Ram
4TB storage
3 ips min
CentOS/WHM Cpanel/LiteSpeed Professional
 
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Serverking

The quieter you are, the more you can hear...
Jan 6, 2019
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1 Amp power (208) - I think I will have to upgrade to 2amp
You are likely to be pulling close to ~400W. 1A of 208V only gets you to ~200w. AMD EPYC 7401 - PSU Calculator - Build 7wqcPq

WHM Cpanel
If you or your clients have some sysadmin skills you won't need Cpanel. There are other open source panels out there like Webmin, ISPConfig etc.

Known Choices but open to more
There is also XCP-ng which is based on XenServer.
 
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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Depends what’s your most comfortable with.
As for the 1a vs 2a power it depends how they measure it and average the usage. You may be ok just on 1a if the system isn’t too heavy loaded.
 

citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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As said in 1st post I know I may need 2 amp but on simulation of 65% load still in budget if 1 amp but not by much will do more tests before sending to colo as want at least 20% buffer electrical as and most fail buffer margin so strong chance of needing 2nd amp so far

I will lookup xcp-ng

Many clients are web developer that know their sites and clients but do not know backend so need to keep it simple for them and if they seem hard or just don't want to do it they call me. So need simple but customizable and allows me to assist as per client need

Note other vm client are minor and most clients do know what they are doing but minor for project

Have looked at a few cpanel alts programs mostly due to price JUMP but not seeing many that are full featured, stable updates, and can be done with little to no instructions but still looking and if none show it will be whm at least for 1st year after that will revisit when adding next server(s) to bring to cluster level.

Keep in mind I know a vm config that will work for clients. And know I can do this in almost any hypervisor. So this thread is mostly to find hypervisor that works great with local storage can be expanded to a cluster with long term goal of dual ha fail over (several years out), choose raid method, partition setup, stipe size if applicable
road blocks project may take (such as cited power issue) Perhaps one day help others get a stable setup they can use to grow out too.
 

citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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So far hostdimes new orlando dc but have quotes out on other 5 centers seems as the 1U 1Server is a turn off for most dc and I do understand why
 

Serverking

The quieter you are, the more you can hear...
Jan 6, 2019
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So far hostdimes new orlando dc but have quotes out on other 5 centers
How much are the prices? Are you fixed on the location or are you open to other areas in FL or nationwide, if so I might be able help you.
 

citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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Note willing to do a contract for 1 or 2 years if necessary or saves an amount, but as I plan to move to a cluster in less then 3 years I will probably need 1/4 rack by then. Per 1st setup trying to stay in Florida for build out reasons and not needing remote hands as much but not required. After this one my only requirement would be in USA and less then 2ms from USA Internet backbone. Due to contract reasons I legally can only Host in a USA Data Center for this server. And for Tax reasons Nothing in New York, California, and any other states with similar tax laws.

HostDime quote Orlando was for 140/Mo. 1 or 3U with 2 amp 208, 50Mbs, 1 Power Drop, /29 included, No locking
Atlantic quote Orlando was for about ~340/Mo. 1U with 4 amp 120, 20Mbs, 1 Power Drop, /29 included, No locking
For Atlantic it was only about 100 more to get 1/4 rack and 5 times the power
HE only would quote a full rack at 400 a month 10 amp 120 + internet + ip and it was in New England area.
A un-tiered DC in Texas had a quote for $175 2 amp power but unmetered internet with /29 (uplink cap 1Gbs) - the Un-Tiered scares me a lot
No response for quotes on several other DCs and DC Companies.

Other Known Costs per month
cPanel Would be 45/mo
Immunity 360 w/ KernelCare care
Code42 Backups real-time / weekly cPanel backup to local storage.
Hypervisor may or may not have a cost
More IPs - possible

50Mps is about the lowest I would like Data Uplink.
on a /29 i will have all but 1 ip used so a /28 is desirable
I do own a few ip6 IPs subnets Space so don't want to pay more for ip6 but if free add on ok
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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We use proxmox for this and use ZFS mirrored pool local storage with 100% NVME drives and run additional proxmox host with similar local storage for redundancy and local backup then use cPanel built-in backup for off-site additional backups per-client account. You may also want to check into KernelCare and CLoudLinux, a bit more $\mo but worth it IMO.

No complaints aside from the ZFS slow down in proxmox, which I hope they resolve soon, but we're soooo over built it's not an issue now or in the near future ;)

For web apps \ sites higher frequency is noticeable so we go for lower cores higher frequency.

$140 for 2AMPS @ 208V and 50Mbit is nice.
 

citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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I did forget to say I already have Immunity 360 w/ KernelCare care (will add it to above post). To date never saw value in CLoudLinux over CentOS but open to be swayed if a good argument is made.

So yours is 2 servers in DC via Proxmox with of site backups via cPanel to External location. Similar to where I want to be in 3 years


But the only way I could do that now if if 1 was DC and 1 was in a local server rack to me on an old Server for a mirror client back but this would kill my bandwidth due to wan rsync.


Note I do have a current backup plan with Code42 on cPanel Server + cPanel weekly local backup (will state above too.)
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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I did forget to say I already have Immunity 360 w/ KernelCare care (will add it to above post). To date never saw value in CLoudLinux over CentOS but open to be swayed if a good argument is made.

So yours is 2 servers in DC via Proxmox with of site backups via cPanel to External location. Similar to where I want to be in 3 years


But the only way I could do that now if if 1 was DC and 1 was in a local server rack to me on an old Server for a mirror client back but this would kill my bandwidth due to wan rsync.


Note I do have a current backup plan with Code42 on cPanel Server + cPanel weekly local backup (will state above too.)
Yeah, we have multiples in the DC for local backups at high level and then account-level off-site via cPanel\WHM methods which has improved a lot in recent years. I used Plesk first then Webadmin then cPanel, on cPanel and leasing servers for 20 years now, it's crazy to think about really all the changes the industry has seen and who's come and gone, and all the M&As with the big players. Their price change sucks, but it's minimal and honestly the only people ditching it I think are those selling hosting for $1-2\mo because it's pennies\account\month, not a big deal unless you're a bottom chaser which I have 0 to do with and would never consider.

Cloudlinux controls within WHM is the reason I like it.
You can limit each account in cPanel by:
  • CPU usage
  • Ram usage
  • Concurrent connections
  • Number of processes
  • IOPs
This will prevent 1 client from taking down your entire Server\VM by hogging a resource. You can have a default settings for all accounts, and then tweak them for specific client needs. You can check stats, history and get email alerts for limits hit. There are other things you can do like limit mysql and use different versions of python too.
 

citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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By your limiting I can do that via my LightSpeed license and immunity allows process limiting as new server is 8 SSD raid IOPs is no longer an issue but did cause many an issue on prior server. So can see your point but I have already found workarounds that do those features so far.

While I do hate the new cPanel Lic fee structure the cost is not as much an issue to me as I cant lock in the price for X years. As I could in old one. It has only been a year since last price hike and they are doing this again. They do have a great product that is simple for clients the biggest weakness I have with them is the lack of HA support and it took over a year to add limited Centos8 Support. In 2020 for a website they should allow Native HA support with out odd VM setups to allow it. This would even increase the revenue as it would require both servers to have a Lic to do the HA. But this is an argument for another day.

I have looked at Plesk and Webadmin but features and usability always seem to be why I skip adding them.

And no I do not allow hosting contracts for 1 and 2/mo clients as they expect the world and used to overrun with support calls. So this part did not affect me.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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They'll bleed cPanel until it swings the other way, sadly they have to to keep their investors happy now :(

Good to know about lightspeed I'll have to check that out, it's been on my list for awhile.

Yeah, I wouldn't consider plesk or webadmin that was 15+ years ago and even then they had issues and were less useful than cpanel.

We looked extensively at CP and hA and yeah, didn't even try to cobble that to work... :p for that (if\rarely needed) we build it into the software. But we have no problem hot migrating the entire cpanel VM to another server or booting up a backup copy of it elsewhere, etc, etc. Making that portable outside proxmox would be nice, but it's also fast to load a CP backup elsewhere, with other IP update. I'm sure our process would change a bit if we were dealing with many servers with 100s of accounts on each.
 

citizen

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Dec 1, 2020
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So far I have been doing test setups with proxmox and Xcp-ng. As these seem to allow for best growth over time per my needs. I am looking at storage and performance. What do you think Should I break the Raid/ZRaid space into 1 or more then one volume. If 1 Volume What size stripes have you found as a best general case. Or would it work better to be 2-3 volumes (1 raid) with 4k, 128k, 1mb stripes. Keep in mind the use cases sited above.