11 Jan
2025
11 Jan
'25
9:43 p.m.
Hi,
We recently received a support ticket from an existing customer noting
that they had only just noticed that they had some swap space already
provided.
They suggested that the fact that 1GiB of swap space is included should
be mentioned in the bulleted list at the top of:
https://bitfolk.com/plans.html
(though not necessarily as a bullet point all on its own)
I am a bit unsure because my instinct is that no one really cares about
swap and it's too specific a detail to go into.
What do you think?
When you made an order what were your expectations around swap?
1. Expected some to be provided
2. Didn't expect any swap and intended to add your own swap file
3. Didn't think about it at all
4. Something else?
I will probably add a note to the "your service is ready" email about
there being some swap, just so people know (if they read it, which I
know many do not). Just not sure whether worth mentioning on that page.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
11 Jan
11 Jan
10:03 p.m.
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 09:43:54PM +0000, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote:
When you made an order what were your expectations
around swap?
I probably didn't think about it. My VM has been expanded many times
since first installed, so I can't remember, but is the swap space part
of the advertised 10GB in the base plan, or in addition to it? It would
be good to make that clear if you do mention that swap space is
provided.
--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01535 501017 Mob: 07976 263827
10:07 p.m.
Hi Anahata,
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 10:03:08PM +0000, Anahata via BitFolk Users wrote:
is the swap space part of the advertised 10GB in the
base plan, or in
addition to it? It would be good to make that clear if you do mention
that swap space is provided.
It's provided separately. But how important is this information, if
prior to now you did not think about it?
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
11:02 p.m.
Hi Andy
I would have assumed any swap was down to me to sort. If the swap space was
mission critical for my app I would have investigated, and asked if I was
unsure.
Strikes me as yet another aspect of the bitfolk offering that is just
"sorted".
Cheers
Bigel
On Sat, 11 Jan 2025, 22:07 Andy Smith via BitFolk Users, <
users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hi Anahata,
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 10:03:08PM +0000, Anahata via BitFolk Users wrote:
or send an email to
<users-leave(a)mailman.bitfolk.com>
is the swap space part of the advertised 10GB in
the base plan, or in
addition to it? It would be good to make that clear if you do mention
that swap space is provided.
It's provided separately. But how important is this information, if
prior to now you did not think about it?
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
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11:07 p.m.
Hi Nigel,
I take this as confirmation that it does need more documentation since
you weren't expecting any to be provided.
Was it something you were bothered about? i.e. did you go in and look
for swap once the service was provided with a view to setting up some of
your own or were you not going to look at that at all unless there were
problems?
Do you feel like it is something that should be mentioned on the plans
page?
Thanks,
Andy
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 11:02:52PM +0000, Nige Barker via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi Andy
I would have assumed any swap was down to me to sort. If the swap space was
mission critical for my app I would have investigated, and asked if I was
unsure.
Strikes me as yet another aspect of the bitfolk offering that is just
"sorted".
Cheers
Bigel
12 Jan
12 Jan
12:56 a.m.
Hi Andy
Sorry, my message was unclear.
Personally swap space never occurred to me, so delighted it is all sorted.
If I was intending to run a setup that was going to rely on swap space, I
would expect to have to investigate it myself.
However, from a marketing point of you by all means do mention it, yet
another feature that we get by default.
Nige
On Sat, 11 Jan 2025, 23:07 Andy Smith via BitFolk Users, <
users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hi Nigel,
I take this as confirmation that it does need more documentation since
you weren't expecting any to be provided.
Was it something you were bothered about? i.e. did you go in and look
for swap once the service was provided with a view to setting up some of
your own or were you not going to look at that at all unless there were
problems?
Do you feel like it is something that should be mentioned on the plans
page?
Thanks,
Andy
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 11:02:52PM +0000, Nige Barker via BitFolk Users
wrote:
or send an email to
<users-leave(a)mailman.bitfolk.com>
Hi Andy
I would have assumed any swap was down to me to sort. If the swap space
was
mission critical for my app I would have
investigated, and asked if I was
unsure.
Strikes me as yet another aspect of the bitfolk offering that is just
"sorted".
Cheers
Bigel
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11 Jan
11 Jan
11:07 p.m.
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 10:07:12PM +0000, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote:
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 10:03:08PM +0000, Anahata via
BitFolk Users wrote:
I guess not very important to me. I have another VPS with a different
provider (deliberately, for backup) and have just looked, because I
didn't even know whether it had a swap partition (it doesn't, but
there's a swap file that I don't remember creating)
Honestly, I can't see why your customer has grounds for any kind of
complaint if he has an extra 1GB of swap space that wasn't advertised.
Maybe worth a quibble it was taken out of the 10GB!
--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01535 501017 Mob: 07976 263827
is the swap space part of the advertised 10GB in
the base plan, or in
addition to it?
It's provided separately. But how important is this information, if
prior to now you did not think about it?
11:27 p.m.
Hi Anahata,
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 11:07:59PM +0000, Anahata via BitFolk Users wrote:
Honestly, I can't see why your customer has
grounds for any kind of
complaint if he has an extra 1GB of swap space that wasn't advertised.
Maybe worth a quibble it was taken out of the 10GB!
Oh, it wasn't a complaint! They were suggesting that we should make it
more known as it was a good thing that they were unaware of.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
11:39 p.m.
On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 11:27:18PM +0000, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote:
Oh, it wasn't a complaint! They were suggesting
that we should make it
more known as it was a good thing that they were unaware of.
Why not? It's a selling point, if you mention it, and if it matters to
some people!
--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01535 501017 Mob: 07976 263827
11:44 p.m.
On Sat, 11 Jan 2025, at 23:07, Anahata via BitFolk Users wrote:
Maybe worth a quibble it was taken out of the 10GB!
This is like quibbling over disk space used by macOS swap or Windows pagefile, or the 5%
of an ext4 filesystem that gets reserved by default for root only, or even the underlying
OS itself :) IYKYK.
-n
12 Jan
12 Jan
12:14 a.m.
Absolutely mention it. While it’s a small thing, it shows that Bitfolk is a thoughtful
provider that has sweated the little details! That makes a difference to many of us.
Matt
On 11 Jan 2025, at 23:46, William Anderson via BitFolk
Users <users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
On Sat, 11 Jan 2025, at 23:07, Anahata via
BitFolk Users wrote:
Maybe worth a quibble it was taken out of the 10GB!
This is like quibbling over disk space used by macOS swap or Windows pagefile, or the 5%
of an ext4 filesystem that gets reserved by default for root only, or even the underlying
OS itself :) IYKYK.
-n
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5:09 a.m.
sön 2025-01-12 klockan 00:14 +0000 skrev Matt Holgate via BitFolk
Users:
Absolutely mention it. While it’s a small thing, it
shows that
Bitfolk is a thoughtful provider that has sweated the little details!
If I visited the Bitfolk site for the first time, I'd probably have
more of the opposite reaction. Like, why the heck are they trying to
make this very minor detail a selling point?
// Andreas
1:50 p.m.
Hi Andreas,
On Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 06:09:55AM +0100, Andreas Olsson via BitFolk Users wrote:
If I visited the Bitfolk site for the first time,
I'd probably have
more of the opposite reaction. Like, why the heck are they trying to
make this very minor detail a selling point?
This is exactly my concern and unfortunately I have not done very well
with how I have started this email thread.
I should probably have simply asked, "was it something you cared about,
at the point that you ordered?" and not said anything else.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
10:35 a.m.
Yes, mention it. When I set my machines up, I didn't know it was there, and I
made swapfiles in the / directory as I definitely needed swap. On my machines
running Ubuntu, any pre-provided swap space wasn't in fstab, so I had no idea
that any space was available elsewhere.
Phil
On 12/01/2025 00:14, Matt Holgate via BitFolk Users wrote:
Absolutely mention it. While it’s a small thing, it
shows that Bitfolk is a thoughtful provider that has sweated the little details! That
makes a difference to many of us.
Matt
--
Phil Driscoll
On 11 Jan 2025, at 23:46, William Anderson via
BitFolk Users <users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
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On Sat, 11 Jan 2025, at 23:07, Anahata via
BitFolk Users wrote:
Maybe worth a quibble it was taken out of the 10GB!
This is like quibbling over disk space used by macOS swap or Windows pagefile, or the 5%
of an ext4 filesystem that gets reserved by default for root only, or even the underlying
OS itself :) IYKYK.
-n
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1:20 p.m.
On 2025-01-11 21:43+0000, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote:
What do you think?
I think an A/B test might be worthwhile, there's enough of a split that
perhaps it doesn't matter. However, mention it, see if that improves
checkouts.
Knowing there's space in addition is a benefit IMO, but that's me, most
other people are interested in more sensible things :)
Ed
1:56 p.m.
Hi Ed,
On Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 01:20:53PM +0000, Ed Neville via BitFolk Users wrote:
I think an A/B test might be worthwhile, there's
enough of a split that
perhaps it doesn't matter. However, mention it, see if that improves
checkouts.
Bearing in mind it has been almost 16 years since I worked on a large
platform, there we did not consider A/B testing to have any statistical
worth unless the flow that was being tested saw more than 1,000 users go
through it.
For some context, BitFolk has less than 1,000 customers in total.
Thanks,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
6:03 p.m.
On 2025-01-12 13:56+0000, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote:
For some context, BitFolk has less than 1,000
customers in total.
Yes, you need a large audience. But that said, the members of this list
have likely already progressed through the checkout, so a bit biased
already.
I don't have any other ideas than to just see if including the text
makes a difference.
You'll get varying opinion, some people like information, some people
don't, and others just want it if they're in the mood. You certainly
can't please all people all the time.
Is it valid to say those with different browsers are more likely to
prefer one way more than the other? Does using firefox show you're the
sort of person who likes to customise things, therefore more likely to
want the additional information?
If there's something that will change the spec of the machine, probably
best to include it.
Azure has a weirdness with swap, or at least they did, the sdb device
was temporary, so maybe to avoid confusion for those inbound from Azure,
state how the device is different? Or not! Azure is the weird one - but
a chunk of people will have seen it from $corp influence.
Ed
4:39 p.m.
On 11/01/2025 21:43, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users wrote:
I will probably add a note to the "your service is ready" email about
there being some swap, just so people know (if they read it, which I
know many do not). Just not sure whether worth mentioning on that page.
I think that sounds sensible, if only to prompt people to actually
evaluate if/how much swap is required for particular cases. Mentioning
that it's east to expand post-install would be good too.
FWIW I added 2GB of swapfile to the 1GB swap partition and the machine
is currently using 1.5GB of that 3GB total. It would probably run fine
without any, but having it there has let the kernel swap out lots of
very-seldom-touched pages and use the RAM for block-cache instead.
Cheers,
Simon.
14 Jan
14 Jan
2:16 p.m.
On 12/01/2025 16:39, Simon Kelley via BitFolk Users wrote:
I think that sounds sensible, if only to prompt people
to actually evaluate if/how much swap is
required for particular cases. Mentioning that it's east to expand post-install would
be good too.
I think it's worth mentioning - at least in "technical info" if not in the
"hosting plans".
But I would have been aware of it on first login - "free -h" being one of the
very first
things I will do on a new box!
FWIW I added 2GB of swapfile to the 1GB swap partition
and the machine is currently using 1.5GB of
that 3GB total. It would probably run fine without any, but having it there has let the
kernel swap
out lots of very-seldom-touched pages and use the RAM for block-cache instead.
This. I run a client's system with another provider and it has 8GB of RAM and 2GB of
swap.
Recently the load shot up (lots of customers?) and the swap filled up. So I requested
more. And got told that I should get more RAM as it's faster... this didn't go
down well
with me! I can remember when the rule of thumb was to have three times as much swap as
RAM.
So I added a 6GB swapfile. Currently unused (1.8GB of the partition in use) but it's
a safety net.
Obvs these days partition vs. file is not really an issue but it is still using partition
first. (This happened automagically, which was nice). cat /proc/swaps:
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/vdb partition 2097148 1884008 -2
/swapfile file 6291452 0 -3
13 Jan
13 Jan
10:15 a.m.
On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 at 21:44, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users <
users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
What do you think?
When you made an order what were your expectations around swap?
1. Expected some to be provided
yes - roughly equal to ram provided. (eg 1GB VM has 1GB swap, 10GB vm has
10GB
swap)
2. Didn't expect any swap and intended to add
your own swap file
no
3. Didn't think about it at all
mostly
4. Something else?
Shouldn't be mentioned on the sale page. Anyone who sells a 2GB VM (1GB RAM
and 1GB superfast SSD swap), will get laughed out of town.
Maybe in some post-signup handover, it could say "here's your username,
password, if you're interested, here's a bunch of other details like:
- IP(v6)
- filesystems attached
- other stuff
- more other stuff
- oh, and there's 1GB of swap mounted from /swap.file
Big respect,
-Tim
10:22 a.m.
This whole discussion reminds me of the difference between marketing and providing
information.
In my view, the detail shown in marketing info should be minimal, but once someone has
signed up, or even just asked for more detail, they should be sent a structured
(summarised with links to detail) description of everything.
That way the technical stuff won't confuse the sales pitch, but will aid the technical
application of the product.
On 13 Jan 2025 at 10:16, Tim Dobson via BitFolk Users <users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com>
wrote:
On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 at 21:44, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users
<users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
What do you think?
When you made an order what were your expectations around swap?
1. Expected some to be provided
yes - roughly equal to ram provided. (eg 1GB VM has 1GB swap, 10GB vm has 10GB swap)
2. Didn't expect any swap and
intended to add your own swap file
no
3. Didn't think about it at all
mostly
4. Something else?
Shouldn't be mentioned on the sale page. Anyone who sells a 2GB VM (1GB RAM and 1GB
superfast SSD swap), will get laughed out of town.
Maybe in some post-signup handover, it could say "here's your username,
password, if you're interested, here's a bunch of other details like:
- IP(v6)
- filesystems attached
- other stuff
- more other stuff
- oh, and there's 1GB of swap mounted from /swap.file
Big respect,
-Tim
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11:29 a.m.
On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 10:22:04AM +0000, iain via BitFolk Users wrote:
> In my view, the detail shown in marketing info should be minimal, but
> once someone has signed up, or even just asked for more detail, they
> should be sent a structured (summarised with links to detail)
> description of everything.
> That way the technical stuff won't
confuse the sales pitch, but will
> aid the technical application of the product.
That looks like a sensible choice.
Also you could add the swap partition details to the "Technical Info"
page of the web site, if you don't want to overburden the "Hosting
Plans" chart with too much detail.
--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01535 501017 Mob: 07976 263827
11:11 a.m.
Andy asked, probably not expecting so much of a discussion :)
When you made an order what were your expectations around swap?
I think it is worth mentioning that you get,
say, 10GB of disk space on a
particular plan PLUS a 1GB swap partition.
This has got me discovering that you can have more than one swap location
and the best way to manage that, so thank you...
You have too many supported distros to do it, but a page on how they are
set up here - swap set to the 1GB partition, a 'ubuntu' user on Ubuntu
systems (grrr) etc etc - would have covered this.
Ian
1. Expected some to be provided
2. Didn't expect any swap and intended to add your own swap file
3. Didn't think about it at all
4. Something else?
I am used to having to set it up myself, using the VPS's disk space, as one
of the first things to do on a new one.
Clearly I have forgotten not doing it here - the ones I have root access on
are still using their default swap.
9
days inactive
12
days old
22 comments
14 participants
participants (14)
-
Anahata -
Andreas Olsson -
Andy Smith -
Dom Latter -
Ed Neville -
ed-bitfolk＠s5h.net
-
iain -
Ian -
Matt Holgate -
Nige Barker -
Phil Driscoll -
Simon Kelley -
Tim Dobson -
William Anderson