>From the information in the OP I would have said cloud too! no contest ;)
However... I have an 'ESXi white-box' to help me solve the kinds of problems you describe in your last post. Good news is your server is on the 'white-box' HCL: http://www.vm-help.com//esx40i/esx40_whitebox_HCL.php and the bonus is you can move your VMs to the cloud later if you change your mind/direction. I'm running v4.1 works fine... not sure about v5? YMMV. NB: If you need to run multiple web-server VMs and expose them to the outside world... just create another VM containing a reverse squid proxy and point your incoming traffic at that. works a treat. ;) Hope this helps! happy hacking! regards, Stonie. On 2 August 2012 14:37, Craig Read <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for all the responses everyone. :) > > I'm fairly familiar with Linux (been playing with it since it was on 7 > floppy discs), so the requirement to sort out sysadmin problems don't phase > me. > I was hoping to use CentOS virtualisation with other VMs on the Dell. > Unfortunately it turns out the Dell doesn't have the capacity for what I'd > really like to do. > The system currently only has 4 x 36GB SCSI drives, so I'd need to hunt > down a SATA back-plane and more drives to get the capacity I'd really like. > > I also didn't think CentOS would be such a pain for a rails install. > I've used several iterations of RedHat, but I definitely prefer apt and > yast to rpm. > > The app itself does have a very low user count. Typically less than 25 > simultaneous users. > Only 5 users have write privileges, and typically only 1 person would be > updating data at any point in time. > That's why I think ADSL might be "ok". But like I said, I would > definitely need to test it. > > The real issue is the volume of data being processed to populate the > system. The data comes from logs that are typically 70-80MB in size (with > some being over 700MB). > Too much to upload over my ADSL connection to the rails server, so I've > written a log parser that uses AR to upload the data model-by-model. > Even using caching while parsing each log, the process is slower than I > think it should be. Posting to a server on my own LAN would be much > quicker. > > But the data in the rails site is only a tiny fraction of what's in the > logs. > So far the largest table has less than 4000 rows in it with data going > back to May last year. > Even with that small amount of data, I will hit limits of what I can do > "free" (10,000 rows) on Heroku. > There is almost zero prospect of this becoming a "commercial" venture, so > I want to keep costs at an absolute minimum. > > There also is another requirement to get some additional data from the > logs using a 3rd party tool. > But the only way they've allowed to get that data is to push it through > ODBC to a database using their own database structure. :( > The ODBC requirement is a PITA that I was also hoping to resolve by having > a Windows VM installed on the Dell. > I'm considering having that data in a separate database and hacking some > models pull it into the rails site and present it graphically. > But I'll have to look at more disc space first. It generates > significantly more data than I have been. > > I'll still configure the Dell up to run this, but whether it ends up being > the "prod" server or not is still up in the air. > Call me crazy, but I still have fun hacking around with this stuff. :) > > Cheers, > > -- > Craig Read > > @Catharz > https://github.com/Catharz > http://stackoverflow.com/users/158893/catharz > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
