Author Topic: Blockland Glass Hosting Service [Closing]  (Read 54803 times)

by really ups the price, can we get a clarification on how much

Looking like I would need to charge $20-25/mo for 500Gbps ddos protection and more RAM than Blockland could ever deplete. The API for this option isn't friendly so I would likely need to manually set these up. I would like to find something more affordable (and with a better API) than that but if there's interest I can pursue it. If not, I'll still keep that option open for event hosting as it has better performance all around and I can sponsor that for short amounts of time.

Alternatively, I can offer premium servers with limited DDoS protection and have three grades of servers

Essentially looking at the following lineup:

Class  Monthly PriceCPUMemoryStorageProtectionPremium Features
Economy$7/mo1/2 vCPU1 GB RAM10GB SSDNoneNo
Premium$15/mo1 vCPU2 GB RAM15GB SSD10GbpsYes
Event$20-25/mo1 vCPU (45% faster!)4 GB RAM65GB SSD500GbpsYes

I'm just not sure how popular the upper end options would be and what people consider reasonable prices. I don't want to invest time to offer features and services that won't be utilized.

edit: can also offer cheaper high ddos protection but from east-coast Canada. All of the above are from New York/New Jersey.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2017, 12:09:28 PM by Scout31 »

east coast canada should be fine for most people, maybe post ping tests from west coast servers?

i'm down to get one whenever i get around to hosting prison break.

Ping OriginPremium CAVultrLinodeEvent
New York1020.31.7
Miami39323231
Dallas50444437
San Francisco72877973
Seattle73666772
Toronto7241820
Frankfurt88888781
London78687569
Paris108798780

Linode is our current provider. Vultr provides optional 10Gbps DDoS protection. If we are to select Vultr, we would migrate away from Linode entirely, with economy and premium having the same network but different resources and features. The provider in Canada claims unlimited DDoS protection, whatever that means. I can offer the Canada location for $12/mo. Here's the update table:

Class  Monthly PriceCPUMemoryStorageProtectionPremium Features
Economy$7/mo1/2 vCPU1 GB RAM10GB SSDNoneNo
Premium CA$12/mo1 vCPU (29% faster!)2 GB RAM15GB HDDUnlimitedYes
Premium NY$15/mo1 vCPU2 GB RAM15GB SSD10GbpsYes
Event$20/mo1 vCPU (45% faster!)4 GB RAM65GB SSD500GbpsYes

Now, it gets complicated adding more and more providers. I don't believe we will end up having all of the options above. I am comfortable with two providers at max for automation, with a third being manually run (event servers). It boils down to whether to offer premium in NY or CA. Both have their benefits and their weaknesses. Canada offers better performance, protection, and price while New York delivers better latency and disk speed. I'm not sure what those who would want a premium server are more interested in, so please let me know and I'll input that in to my decision.

Crown's server is currently on Premium NY, but he is trying Premium CA after the next crash.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2017, 03:48:58 PM by Scout31 »

Is there any reason you need to pick a location? Vultr offers it's DDoS protection in most of their datacenters, there isn't much reason for people to need to permanently choose one place or the other.

The service doesn't have the overhead to have multiple locations. Right now at max there's one server that's half-filed. Introducing multiple locations allows for multiple servers to be net losing money and I don't have the income to fund that. DDoS protection is fixed cost despite the size of the server, so I can't chose smaller servers in other locations without jacking up the price per client. It's gotten to the point where I can afford that if we were offering a single tier, but if we're doing multi-tier then there's no spare income left to cover those.

This really is operating at bare-minimum income. If people want those various locations, I'm happy to set it up for them, but that's an increased cost.

Then what about maybe at least considering another location option? When I ran BlockNet I made the main server in Dallas, because that way both eastern and western users had similar pings and wouldn't complain about the server being further from them.

I'm also a little curious as to why the 500Gps protection is on the table. It kinda sounds like the 10Gps protection is more than enough so far.

The 10Gbps protection was taken down yesterday and resulted in Vultr null-routing the server until 4 hours after the attack ended. My reasoning for east coast as opposed to Texas is being inclusive to EU players, as we do have a good number of them. I'll look in to some though and see how viable it is.

unlimited ddos protection sounds interesting lets do it.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2018, 12:12:10 PM by Conan »

Hello; opened a ticket #143 in regard to an FTP issue.uch appreciated; thank you.

Glad this got bumped/unlocked.

I've been working on a sizable backend update for Glass Hosting. Shockingly more stable and sensible. A big change is that each server will now be on it's own NTFS virtual disk, which means that files will now load alphabetically and it seems to have a significantly faster boot time. This also "containerizes" each user's storage. Right now each user is allotted 10 GB, although there's not really a convenient way to manage this as is, so it's really just shared space for all with a slap on the wrist if you go over.

The change to NTFS is making the web console pretty choppy, so that might be getting some attention.

Stripe sent me a big wordy email about how they've made everything "better" and now they're phasing out their old API, so I'll be bringing Stripe up to speed. They dropped Bitcoin a while ago, so I'll need to take that out. I also want to bake in the ability to have "added time" better. Right now giving extensions for any inconveniences is a big pain on my end, so that'll be getting some work.

The Add-Ons page was never finished. It will be. Looking in to offering DLLs as part of the base service instead of something I have to specially select.

Working on adding a feature to back-up server files (saves the past few days) and allow you to download it all in a zip file at anytime, plus for up to a month after ending your subscription.


In all of this, I'm trying to increase the reliability of the platform. When it launched I was very eager to respond to support tickets and my schedule was much more open. I now have a lot more commitments and will be working full-time this summer, so I want to make Glass Hosting even more automated and self-sustaining.



Also, some upcoming downtime for more Spectre/Meltdown patches:

 * 2018-05-02 4:00:00 AM UTC - us5
 * 2018-05-02 4:00:00 AM UTC - us6
 * 2018-05-02 5:00:00 AM UTC - us1
 * 2018-05-02 6:00:00 AM UTC - us9
 * 2018-05-02 6:00:00 AM UTC - us2

 * 2018-05-03 1:00:00 AM UTC - us3
 * 2018-05-03 4:00:00 AM UTC - us13
 * 2018-05-03 4:00:00 AM UTC - test1
 * 2018-05-03 5:00:00 AM UTC - us7
 * 2018-05-03 5:00:00 AM UTC - us4

These times are out of my control, but I will try my best to be available for any issues that may arise.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2018, 11:27:36 PM by Scout31 »

I am glad that the addons will now load in alphabetical order, awesome...

I've implemented some of the above changes to the site.

  • The payment and server creation process has been redone and is now more reliable
  • The subscriptions page got a slight face-lift with some explanation of the two options available
  • The Bitcoin option has officially been removed (Stripe discontinued it a while ago, but it was still something you could select)
  • I get a text every time anything goes wrong
  • Little blurbs of text throughout the site to better explain things
  • Any new server created will be using the new file system and internal Glass Hosting software. I'm working on the transfer process so that existing servers can transfer over.

The server archiving functionality is in on my end (it's pretty wonderful) which allows you to download the contents of your server in a zip file (Note, it only gives you your Add-Ons, Saves, Config, and Modules folders). I'm working on a way to store these. Given that each backup could be on the order of 10 GB, and there's 23 servers... I need more space. Looking in to keeping backups on AWS S3, which is also where we keep Mod Manager files.

Things to come:

  • Allowing others to access your server's control panel. This has been requested a bunch.
  • Nicknaming your servers. No more "us2-bl1" on your dashboard
  • Server info on your dashboard
  • Payment/Transaction history
  • Revamped add-ons panel
  • Automatic restart on crash
  • Server event history. Important part of giving others access to your server is knowing what they're doing.

The caveat is that I have finals starting in 12 days, then going out of the country for a week or so, then I'm starting a full time job. I got all the hard parts done in the past 4 days, so it's doable.

Server Migrations

I'm starting to queue up server migrations over to the new system. I spent the weekend developing and testing this system and it seems pretty reliable, but your files are preserved until I manually delete them in case there are any hiccups in the process. New nodes should have names with the ny prefix, as opposed to the old us.

You can migrate your server by just opening the control panel. All migrations must be complete by May 2nd or else it'll be done for you, resulting in your server going offline.

They should all be queued up within the hour.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2018, 05:32:46 PM by Scout31 »

4gb ram for a 32 bit game?