Donations

[Illegal_Alien]

Need to slap Paypal to make the whole stuf working again and you will get some from me.

[VPN-User]

May I propose to switch the hosting partner instead of wasting your/our money? AFAIR the Forums are currently at a vServer with 35% CPU, 96MB RAM less than 12.5GB HD and less than 150GB bandwidth...

I as well own a vServer hosted at http://www.netcup.de which superseeds that specs (especially incl. TRAFFIC FLATRATE!) and is A LOT cheaper. Hosting location is Karlsruhe, DE - a very big Internet node location in Germany. Huge providers like United Internet / 1&1 are located here, too.

May I suggest looking at this page: http://www.netcup.de/vserver/vserver_restposten.php (Personally, I own a "vServer BRONZE").

I know it is German and that may cause some other (law?) problems, but I could take over that part.

No offense but I think the fundraiser is a waste of money for something that we could get A LOT cheaper somewhere else.

Host system is an Intel Core i7 920 with 8 Cores a 2.66Ghz - enough raw horsepower.

Code: Select all

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0-7
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 26
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         920  @ 2.67GHz
stepping        : 5
cpu MHz         : 2673.072
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 8
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 11
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc
arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx
est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 lahf_lm ida tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
ept vpid
bogomips        : 5346.14
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

BTW: My public OpenTTD server runs on that machine as well ("[DE] KiK-vServer 24/7...")

[Hyronymus]

Good lucking convincing orudge there .

FYI: Zernebok Hosting is orudge's own company.

[VPN-User]

Then I am very glad I don't have to donate in that case and don't have to feel mad about it

[Rubidium]

Sorry to disappoint you, but their site is very misleading. They say the server has e.g. 2*120 GB HDD, but then they only guarantee you 3 GB with a maximum of 9 GB for 30 euros a month (360 euro/year) [0]. For 2 GB with a maximum of 6 GB you pay 21 euros a month, so 1 guaranteed GB costs 9 euros a month, of 3 maximum GB for 3 euros [1].

Given that the forum used 25 GB in early 2007 [2] you'd pay 30 + (25 - 9) * 3 = 78 euros, giving 936 euros a year. Now.. the forum is 7-ish years old, so 2.5-ish years older than in 2007. Linear extrapolation (which will definitely be wrong given the non-linear bandwidth usage increases) would tell the server is using about 40 GB today. With your company that would be 30 + (40 - 9) * 3 = 123 euros a month, giving 1476 euros a year.

And then I'm talking about the MAXIMUM allowed space usage, not the guaranteed space usage, because then the number would be more like 30 + (40 - 9) * 9 = 309 euros a month, giving 3708 euros a year. So the 600 pounds (little less than 700 euros) is a bargain compared to them.

[0] http://www.netcup.de/bestellen/produkt.php?produkt=92
[1] http://www.netcup.de/bestellen/produkt.php?produkt=91
[2] http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=557449#p557449

[VPN-User]

Sorry to disappoint you, but their site is very misleading. They say the server has e.g. 2*120 GB HDD, but then they only guarantee you 3 GB with a maximum of 9 GB for 30 euros a month (360 euro/year) [0]. For 2 GB with a maximum of 6 GB you pay 21 euros a month, so 1 guaranteed GB costs 9 euros a month, of 3 maximum GB for 3 euros [1].

No you just misinterpreted the information .

When they say the server has 2*120GB HDD (raid1) it means you get 120GB mirrored - that is 120GB usable HDD space. What they mean with 3GB max. etc is guaranteed physical vs, maximum theoretical RAM + SWAP. Theoretical RAM is shared amongst the other vServers on the physical host.

They have different offerings. Please check out the link I posted: http://www.netcup.de/vserver/vserver_restposten.php

[John]

Sorry to disappoint you, but their site is very misleading.

Arbeitsspeicher is RAM not hard-drive space.

However, I very much doubt anyone could match Owen's value for money in using his own servers...

[Rubidium]

Sorry to disappoint you, but their site is very misleading.

No you just misinterpreted the information

Oh, then it was the translator I was using that made it misleading. Ah well, better luck next time.

[orudge]

Over the years, we have been through a great many hosts. Many of them offering what seems to be a relatively decent amount of resources for very little money. Often, they were good with the forums for a while, then things started to creak along, pages would take a while to load, resource errors would appear, and so on. We are currently hosted on a custom Zernebok Hosting VPS, which offers really excellent specifications for the price, and has been really very reliable.

For the record, too, we use a lot more than 96MB of RAM... 1GB of RAM is generally enough at average times, more if the forum is particularly busy. In terms of disk space, we currently use about 35GB, and as for processor, we basically have 8 2.33GHz cores at our disposal. Plus we get a very good rate on quality bandwidth. Basically, the upshot of all of this is that pages should just appear when you click a link, no waiting about. And, in my experience, that does seem to be the case. Our current facility offers us plenty of room to grow in the future, meaning we won't have to keep changing provider every year or two!

Anyway, of course, nobody is obliged to donate. But I have always tried to offer a quality experience on the forums, and if you're going to be serious about things, you really do want to go with a quality host. One may well be able to get the base specs cheaper elsewhere, but I almost guarantee that the experience in the long run will not be as pleasant... I know, I've been there.

[John]

Oh, then it was the translator I was using that made it misleading. Ah well, better luck next time.

I'm not surprised - "Arbeitsspeicher" translates literally as "Work store" - I too was confused at first and I speak the language!

In the end I just put the word into the German Wikipedia and had a look at the pictures

Anyway, of course, nobody is obliged to donate. But I have always tried to offer a quality experience on the forums, and if you're going to be serious about things, you really do want to go with a quality host. One may well be able to get the base specs cheaper elsewhere, but I almost guarantee that the experience in the long run will not be as pleasant... I know, I've been there.

Indeed, the experience with you Owen is always quality

The above becomes particularly apparent when things go wrong and during maintenance. We are always informed of server maintenance and software maintenance - and when things go wrong they always get fixed quickly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but downtime that stretches beyond 2 hours is extremely rare?

[jonty-comp]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but downtime that stretches beyond 2 hours is extremely rare?

Except for the time one of the datacenter admins tripped over a network cable and the VPS server was out for ages.

I will forward a contribution in due course, but I'm waiting for my paycheck to clear first. Not that my bank account is empty or anything, I just like saying "I'm waiting for my paycheck to clear".

[JamieLei]

I have to agree that the current hosting is absolutely excellent. I remember the days before Zernebok private hosting, and coming to the end of a month and finding immensely slow pageloads was not uncommon. I have full confidence that Owen (as someone who studied and works in the Computer industry) is using our money as well as possible. Except for that tenner I gave him that got spent at Burger King!

[Redirect Left]

I shall donate OVER£100.

...sometime in 2010.

[Dave]

For the record, I donated £13.37 on Christmas Day to Owen Rudge Inc.

[noofnoof]

For the record, I donated £13.37 on Christmas Day to Owen Rudge Inc.

lulz. I really should donate...

[Paxinum]

Are the donation links still active and valid?

I really consider donating money to this project!

[orudge]

Yep, you can still donate with those links. I should update the total for the fundraiser actually, I think we are probably very close to our goal.

[Paxinum]

Yep, you can still donate with those links. I should update the total for the fundraiser actually, I think we are probably very close to our goal.

Ah, nice!
I just donatet $40, with the title "OpenTTD Project costs".

Hope it comes to good use.

[orudge]

Are you sure you meant to donate to OpenTTD and not the forums? Or split between both?

[HeroBiX]

I will soon also make a donation =) it's a really nice forum and the speed is good