Phishman – Tech

I decided to go with the Dreamhost‘s VPS server after being on shared for 6 years. I moved all of my domains to 300MB VPS which was crashing every 20-30 minutes, then I decided to give it a shot and upgrade to a 400MB VPS, that easily reduced the reboots and after that I had reboots just every 3-4 hours.

I had some troubles at the beginning because my websites were generating quite of traffic and I decided to do some calculations of what traffic load can the Dreamhost VPS handle. Here are the results:

VPS Setup:
RAM: 400MB
Total running domains: 12

1 month load/traffic results on the VPS:

Total Hits: 965922/mo
Total Unique Visitors (IPs): 34079/mo
Total Bandwidth Used: 56.3GB/mo
Server IOPS Used – Avg: 9403; Max: 18421; Min: 1157;

Fair enough! The following numbers are what can a Dreamhost VPS handle per 100MB of VPS RAM resource:

Total Hits (Approx): 250000 hits/mo
Total Unique Visitors (IPs): 8519/mo
Total Bandwidth: 14.07GB/mo

NOTE: This is the traffic that was utilizing the maximum of my VPS, no  resources were left unused! Sometimes the server was rebooting on spikes by itself in order to keep the host safe and stable.
At some point I had to disable all cron jobs on the VPS because it was barely handling the load and it was rebooting constantly. After awhile I decided to shut down some of my domains and sub-domains that
didn’t bring any money, but doing great traffic and I was able to lower the server load and resume all the cron jobs. After shutting down some of the websites, now my account does 8.5GB Bandwidth per month which is 7 times less than what I was utilizing before with all the domains.At some point after keeping an eye on my access.log I found no reason to keep traffic from Russia and China, because I was getting only brute force attacks and website scans! Dreamhost lacks ability to install iptables and I had to ban them at configuration level. Which reduced my bandwidth to 56GB/mo (saved few gigs and server load)!

Now I know when, how and why I should upgrade my VPS and I know how important is to protect it against Brute Force Attacks, DDoS attacks, Network Scans, Web Scrappers, Bots and Search Engine Robots.
I was surprised what this tiny server can handle! After all it’s a tiny beast!
Epic Story!

Thanks! To my friend Mr. Gulik guiding me thru the beginner path of  the young sysadmin!

Screenshot with the benchmarks:

I recently moved to my brand new DreamHost VPS just to find out how much better is than my shared hosting. I get a bit over 180000 hits for 24 hours, but it happened that my server was rebooting due to heavy load and excessive memory usage. Right now I’m using the VPS with 400MB of ram. It was rebooting like every 20-30 minutes, but it seemed that not all of the traffic was legit. Large amount was web page scrappers, regular search engine bots, hacker attacks (brute force, sql injections), etc and my server was benching against the heavy load. I tried installing iptables, but due to the ancient VM technology that dreamhost is using is not possible 🙁

So i had two options, to get my server back from the dead without paying tons of money for feeding all the automated traffic and dreamhost:

1. iptables alternative (e.g. shorewall)
2. htaccess ip blocking

For the faster and immediately efficient option I chose the second one, so I compiled a list with all the httpd.ip-filter.conf

In order to block China and Russia I’d recommend to create separate file that is included in your httpd.conf. Apache (if apache is used) is C language based program and once it loads the long IPs list in the memory will react super fast to any calls from IPs in the list. Unless you don’t have access to edit the httpd.conf I wouldn’t recommend adding this line in .htaccess file.

The list contains 8864 Russian networks and 5073 Chineese.

1. Download httpd.ip-filter.conf

2. Save the file in the folder where httpd.conf is and name it the way you want. I used httpd.ip-filter.conf

3. Open the httpd.conf and include the line ” include /path/to/the/httpd.ip-filter.conf ” (without the quotes).

4. Save the conf and restart the apache

If you don’t get any errors you should be all set!

After doing so, my server is now relieved! I get far less traffic and my VPS don’t die from excessive memory that is not used by legit traffic.

Finally I found some time to post my new custom build. I’m building my workstation for 3D rendering, graphic and video design, gaming and high resource intensive math and cryptography calculations and benchmarks. I’m excited to perform some of my planned OpenCL and ImageMagick tests…

Build Details: I was looking for motherboard with a many PCI-E slots, because I need to run 6 x Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X 3GB version. I found excellent deal for used P6T7 WS on eBay with set of memory, memory fan, CPU and CPU fan.

ORIGINAL CONFIG (with the parts from eBay)
Motherboard: P6T7 WS SuperComputer 7 x PCI-E x16 (4-way CrossFireX x16 or 7 x PCI-E x8).
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI)
Memory: CORSAIR DOMINATOR 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 + Memory fan
SSD: OCZ Vertex 120GB
CPU FAN: ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B 135mm Long life bearing CPU Cooler
GPU: 6 x SAPPHIRE Vapor-X VXSR Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB 384-bit GDDR5
PSU: 2 x ZALMAN 1250 Platinum 1250W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Modular Active

LATEST CONFIG
Motherboard: P6T7 WS SuperComputer 7 x PCI-E 2.0 x16 (4-way CrossFireX x16 or 7 x PCI-E x8).
CPU: Intel® Xeon® Processor X5690 12M Cache, 3.46 GHz, 6.40 GT/s Intel® QPI
Memory Kit 1: HyperX Savage – DDR3 – 32 GB: 4 x 8 GB – DIMM 240-pin – unbuffered
Memory Kit 2: HyperX Savage – DDR3 – 16 GB: 2 x 8 GB – DIMM 240-pin – unbuffered
Total Memory: 48GB
SSD: SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB SSD PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive
SSD PCI-E Adapter: Angelbird Wings PX1 PCIe x4 M.2 Adapter and 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD Kit
CPU FAN: ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B 135mm Long life bearing CPU Cooler
GPU: 2 x SAPPHIRE Vapor-X VXSR Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB 384-bit GDDR5
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 P2 1600 Watt 80 Plus Platinum ATX Fully Modular Power Supply

This is going to be no case build (no case for now) until I decide how much space I’ll need with all the 6 GPUs and dual PSU, and then I’m planning to build custom rack.
I’m very creative and I love to generate new ideas every single minute. So here we go, yeah I’m getting excited too! Let’s build some funny legs…
For now I’ve got some basic parts to build custom motherboard legs/stands to put some clearance between the motherboard and the table: 4 x Push-on F-connectors for coaxial cable (Ideal RG-6) for motherboard feet. Machine screws 6 x M3 25.4mm length metric (US standard #6-32 x 1″) Flat Head Phillips, 8 x Machine Screw Nuts M3 (US standard #6-32). Shepherd Vynil Bumpers 10mm (3/8″).

UPGRADES:

Stage 1: removed/upgraded hardware:
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI) – Upgrade to Intel Xeon W3690 (…which died later. I killed this basta’d – OC overheat!)
PSU: 2 x ZALMAN 1250 Platinum 1250W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Modular Active – Died, switched to EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 P2

Stage 2: removed/upgraded hardware
SSD: OCZ Vertex 120GB – Upgrade to Smasung EVO 860 256GB SATA 3
Memory: Added additional Corsair Dominator kit 2 x 4GB 1600 (total 6 x 2GB)
One of the old Dominator modules died. It was replaced!

Stage 3: removed/upgraded hardware:
Motherboard: Got a brand spanking new same (barely used) motherboard P6T7 WS (free)
Memory: CORSAIR DOMINATOR 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 + Memory fan – Upgrade to 48 GB HyperX Savage
SSD: Smasung EVO 860 256GB SATA 3 – upgraded to SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB SSD PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive
SSD PCI-E Adapter: Angelbird Wings PX1 PCIe x4 M.2 Adapter and 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD Kit
CPU: Intel Xeon W3690 – CPU died, switched to Intel Xeon X5690
PCI-E USB 3.1: StarTech.com USB 3.1 PCIE Card – 5 Port – 1x USB-C – 2x USB-A – 1x 2 Port IDC – Internal USB Header Expansion – USB C PCIe Card (PEXUSB312EIC)
Upgraded Case Fans: (old case fans started rattling)
4 x Cougar CFD14HBR 140mm CPU Fan Cooling (Red LED)
2 x Cougar CFD12HBR 120mm CPU Fan Cooling (Red LED)
HDD:
Drive #1 – HGST HDN724030ALE640 (2794 GB)
Drive #2 – WDC WD30EZRX-00D8PB0 (2794 GB)
Drive #3 – WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 (3726 GB)
Drive #4 – HP SAS EF0300FARMU (279 GB)
Case: CoolerMaster Storm Trooper Black

March 2020 PSU UPDATE: Two PSUs EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 P2 Platinums have died. Right now the system is running on Corsair RM850x Gold.

Stage 4:
P9X79 WS is arriving in few days (5/25/2020).
The plan is to replace the motherboard and the CPU!
Considering those two CPUs Intel Xeon E5-2690 V2 and Intel Xeon E5-2697 V2
To be continued…

Stage 1 Photos:
I had no full tower case that could fit this extended motherboard, so it was running on a table for a while.
I came up with stand-offs (legs) made of push-on f-connectors.

Stage 3:
Love the red colors!

Hope you guys remember the Nokia PureView teaser video, we published a few days ago. The 808 PureView is Nokia’s imaging flagship phone, a true successor to the N8. The 808 PureView runs Symbian Belle OS, powered by 1.3GHz single-core chip and 4-inches corner to corner display with a resolution of 360 x 640 (nHD). It also includes 512MB of RAM and 16GB of on-board storage expandable via microSD. A Pentaband modem increases the chances of getting a signal while globe-trotting, while data speeds will top out at plain HSPA 14.4Mbps. Lets go to the highlighted portion, the Carl Zeiss-lensed camera. The Nokia 808 PureView features a large, high-resolution 41 megapixel sensor with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology. At standard resolutions (2/3, 5 and 8 megapixels) this means the ability to zoom without loss of clarity and capture seven pixels of information, condensing into one pixel for the sharpest images imaginable. At high-resolution (38 megapixel maximum) it means the ability to capture an image, then zoom, reframe, crop and resize afterwards to expose previously unseen levels of details.

In addition to superior still imaging technology, the Nokia 808 PureView, also includes full HD 1080p video recording and playback with 4X lossless zoom and the world’s first use of Nokia Rich Recording. Rich Recording enables audio recording at CD-like levels of quality, previously only possible with external microphones. The Nokia 808 PureView also features exclusive Dolby Headphone technology, transforming stereo content into a personal surround sound experience over any headphones and Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1 channel surround sound playback.

Just to highlight some of the features of the best business phone ever:

• The Symbian Belle comes with MS Office Mobile 2012 Business edition for free
• Nokia Maps is free, turn-by-turn navigation for over 100 countries, and comes preloaded with Nokia 808 PureView. It works offline without a sim card unlike all android and iOS Phones.
• FM transmitter – Nokia the only company to include it so you can Listen to music through your car stereo without cables
• Nokia Rich Recording – the ability to record sound without distortion at around 140-145db. Most current smartphones record up to 110db. The Nokia 808 PureView records at volumes four times louder than conventional microphones. The lower bass sounds are also captured without distortion and by combining the upper and lower range together you’re left with the full range of sounds. The result is almost CD-like quality.
• Nokia is now comparing with the big guys in the photo industry and even beats some of them.

NOKIA 808 41Mpx Full Review

Nokia is sold on Amazon now  for $699

Google bought Picnik and since then millions of users were left without the opportunity to use their favorite photo editing tool. Seems all users complain about that the best photo editing tool has been sold to Google. Their not so popular and not very interesting (according to users) social network Google+ will be integrated with the new version of Picnik which is currently being developed and implemented there. I can tell that Picnik was rock solid, pretty, very very impressive, easy to use and intuitive, we can only hope that Google will continue the spirit of this one of a kind website.

Tons of users shared on the Picnik’s blog how frustrated, mad and disappointed they feel. Seems many of them get their money back for their premium accounts. I don’t think that this is the way to do business, but it’s Google’s ownership now. I thought that they might find compromised option to leave that pretty website like Youtube. I am glad they didn’t decide to integrate Youtube into one of their services, because I think every huge company when buys some website like the mentioned above they ruin the spirit and the passion of all users.
I feel the pain of all users that used Picnik and I understand their frustration. Hopefully the new “Google+ Picnik” will have the same features and spirit.

Currently we’re using TBG for tracking bugs for our projects. But the Bug Genie itself is full with bugs. The administration permissions are way too complicated and require high attention, else they mess up badly.
We’re currently looking forward to the new version of  The Bug Genie. So we’re willing to migrate as soon as TBG team release the new version in 2012.