BitFolk Announcements May 2011

announce@mailman.bitfolk.com

1 participants
3 discussions

by Andy Smith

Hi, I was hoping to only mention this much closer to the time when it could actually happen, but a few people have been asking about this so I thought it was only fair to give an update. TL;DR version: We're planning to soon double the amount of RAM offered for the current price. You'll be contacted individually when this can happen; hopefully it just happens, but if you're unlucky then you might need to be migrated or keep the same amount of RAM for a lower price instead. Do not panic. You can stop reading now. :) Longer version: For a while now it has been clear to us that BitFolk has fallen behind its competitors in how much RAM we offer for a given price point, and I wanted to reassure you that I have been taking steps to remedy this. These have included: - 56GiB of RAM installed across several machines at the recent maintenance at the end of February. - Ongoing migration of all customers off of dunkel.bitfolk.com so that some non-urgent hardware maintenance and a RAM upgrade can be done. - New server with 48GiB RAM being prepared for colo now. We are hoping to double the RAM allocation for the same price, i.e. the smallest VPS will come with 480MiB RAM and additional RAM may be purchased 240MiB at a time. We could of course just offer this right now to new customers, but I really dislike it when existing customers are not offered the same deal as new, even if it does make some business sense to chase the new. So, I'm holding back from doing that until I know it will be possible to apply the upgrade to the majority of existing customers. I can't give any firm timescale for this right now; it's going to happen as soon as possible. For many customers this is all going to be very simple; you'll receive an email that says "congrats, shut down and boot again to enjoy twice as much RAM". That's it. Unfortunately for some of you it's not going to be possible to "just do it". Some of you will be on hosts that cannot be economically upgraded. 8GiB DDR2 DIMMs are stupidly expensive; it's cheaper to buy new machines with 8GiB DDR3. Here's how it's going to work: Customers with 240 or 360MiB RAM will be upgraded first. That's because 240 and 360MiB plans won't be available to new customers afterwards. If we can't upgrade you because the host is out of RAM then you will be offered migration[1] to a host that does have enough RAM. If there's no host available with enough RAM then you will remain with the same amount of RAM and your future renewals will be cheaper, however we will upgrade you to at least 480MiB RAM as soon as we can and you will have no choice in this.[2] Next, customers with 480MiB or more RAM will be upgraded. If we can't upgrade you then you'll stay with the RAM you have, at the lower cost.[3] As soon as we start upgrading people, the new plans will be available to new customers, although we may run out of capacity quickly due to upgrading existing customers. Once this happens, please don't try to cancel your monthly contract and sign up again to get the extra RAM quicker; I would hope to have upgraded everyone that I can within a couple of days of starting. :) As usual if anyone wants to downgrade then they will be free to do so from their next contract renewal. However, if: - you currently have 480MiB or more of RAM *and*; - you know you don't need twice as much as you have now *and*; - you're definitely going to ask to be downgraded back towards what you started with; then it would be helpful if you could email support(a)bitfolk.com with your VPS account name and the amount of RAM you'd like to end up with. We *may* be able to both downgrade you (and give you some service credit back) and use that RAM to give to someone else. No promises though; you may have to wait until your next renewal as normal. If you have any questions about all this then please just hit reply to direct them to the users list, or send an email to support(a)bitfolk.com if you'd rather discuss off-list. Cheers, Andy [1] Migrating your VPS between hosts will require us to shut it down and then boot it up again, with something like 5-10 minutes of downtime in between. If a migration is necessary then we'll contact you individually to co-ordinate the work. [2] While you may be satisfied that 240 or 360MiB RAM is adequate for you, I don't want to keep lots of custom plans going and I don't want to bill below £8.99/mo if possible. [3] e.g. If you're on 480MiB RAM, 10GiB disk, 100GB/mo data transfer then that currently costs £13.99/mo. If we couldn't upgrade you to 960MiB RAM then you will remain on 480MiB but the plan will only cost you £8.99/mo from your next renewal. -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

12 years, 9 months

Default view for Cacti has changed to "Preview"

by Andy Smith

Hi, It came to my attention yesterday that some customers were finding our install of Cacti [1] confusing. The main problem appeared to be that the default view upon logging in was the "Tree View", and it wasn't obvious how to get from there to the individual graphs that you're permitted to view. Experienced Cacti users will know that the three buttons in the top right corner switch between the three different graph views: "Tree", "List" and "Preview". The "Tree View" is what you were all seeing to begin with. "List View" is just a textual list of links to all graphs that you're permitted to view. "Preview View" is similar, but provides graph thumbnails to click on. Of these, it was suggested that "Preview View" was the most obvious, so I have now set everyone's default view to be this. It should take effect from your next login to Cacti. I didn't spot anyone who had deliberately set their default view to "Tree" or "List", but if you did, or if you just happen to prefer the other views, you can set them as your personal default from the "settings" tab. If you have any problems, do let me know. Cheers, Andy [1] https://tools.bitfolk.com/cacti/ -- <zts> well it turns out that there was a miscommunication: one team thought we were meant to be hanging ourselves; the other, that immolation was the way forward. And so we kinda accidentally burnt our rope.

12 years, 11 months

Debian wheezy (testing) and Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) now available for self-install

by Andy Smith

Hi, We've now tested and made available: - Debian wheezy (testing) - Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) for self-install: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Using_the_self-serve_net_installer If trying out Debian wheezy please do bear in mind that as the current testing distribution it is still under development and may thus be broken and/or uninstallable at any particular time. Whilst we will most likely be unable to help, we'd still like to hear of any problems you have using or installing wheezy. Those considering an upgrade from Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04.x LTS) to Maverick Meerkat (10.10) or Natty Narwhal (11.04) should remember that vendor security support for these latter two releases ends in April/October 2012 respectively. If you don't intend to upgrade your OS before then, you may wish to remain on the LTS release which is supported until April 2015. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

12 years, 11 months

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

BitFolk Announcements May 2011