This is going to be a relativity large post, please take the time to read it, I want you to know what I have been through in the past and the future of Ultimate Edition.

I have now officially moved all the websites the forum being the last & I really did not want to move it, because I knew there would be alot of growing pains. The data base was too large to import so I did lose a few posts and as I learned today at least one user acct. The admin will help resolve issues or at least point them out to me so I can rectify the situation. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Well as promised a review of the previous hosting company v/s the new one.

We begin Sun Dec 17, 2006:

I only opened the website to help others as a Christmas present then called Ubuntu Christmas Edition & droped off-line due to traffic, thanks digg ;).

First, the previous hosting company does not deserve a link from me. I am less than happy with Godaddy. I have been paying them up to 8 times for hosting hoping to “spread the server load”. I should also point out I have been a customer with them since the begining. I have seen this site go down multiple times, seeing up to 40,000 pageviews in a day before such happened. The download servers they have seen suspended more then once (unlimited accts by the way, which is upsetting to me):

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has come to our attention that your hosting account for downloadubuntusoftware.info is causing an overload of the shared resources on this server. This, in turn, affects the usage of the server by other customers. To protect the overall health of the server, we have suspended your account.

Due to the constant strain on the Shared Hosting Server you will need to upgrade to a Dedicated Server. Once you have purchased the Dedicated Server please respond to be able to get access to the hosting account to begin moving files to the server. If you have questions about this matter, you may contact us by replying to this email or by calling 480-505-8871.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

Regards,

Daniel S.
Hosting Support

It just does not end:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Regarding your shared hosting accounts, downloadultimate.info and downloadubuntusoftware.info.

We have attempted to reach you by phone regarding this issue, however there was no answer at the phone number we have on file. Our administrators have alerted us to a high load issue regarding your two sites. It appears that both of the mentioned sites are serving downloads of a file called, “ultimate-edition-1.8-x86.iso.” These downloads are putting a strain on the server resources and are negatively effecting other customer’s sites. For this reason, we have had no choice but to disable the ultimate-edition-1.8-x86.iso files on both accounts. This is not an issue of bandwidth, but of server performance. If serving this file is crucial to the operation of your sites, you will have to upgrade to a full dedicated server. These files will not be allowed in our shared hosting environment any longer. Please refrain from re-enabling, re-uploading or renaming this file, as doing so will lead to account suspension. If you would like to discuss this situation, we can be reach at 480-505-8871

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you,
Moe F.
Hosting Support
Hosting Operations

Hmm this does not sound like unlimited to me. Just, because I have a file that is popular? Even before they offered unlimited pay this bill ~ $10,000 for the month:

This is to notify you that your hosting account has exceeded
its monthly bandwidth.

As of 10/1/2007, your hosting account has accumulated
9,359,351.65 MB of data transfer. This means that the allowed
250000 MB of monthly data transfer for downloadubuntusoftware.info
has been exceeded by 9,109,351.65 MB.

You will be charged monthly for any bandwidth you use that
is over your allotted amount.

If your bandwidth usage remains at its current level, you
should upgrade your hosting account as a permanent solution.

By the way, even unlimited with Godaddy less than 10 TB of traffic is the most I have seen in any given month. Enough of Godaddy! Don’t think I have not tried other hosting companies only to be shut down, that is until now. This is what really grabs me all 8 hosting accts are running off the same server, you can not imagine how much this has impressed me & is the #1 reason I will endorse them. When I moved this site there, both download servers & repository I expected to be shut down.

Enter the present:

It all turns now, thanks Hostgator.

First lets talk a bit about HostGator and what makes them so much better, they are top 10 in hosting companies & btw the most expensive of the top 10. I now understand why, you get what you pay for. Their motto “We eat up the competition”. HostGator uses a technology they have dubbed “The Planet” aka “Cloud computing” as Amazon calls it. You upload a file to your acct and nearly instantly is mirrored across 6 computers to serve your webpage / file. Ensuring maximum availability / bandwidth. We have had a mirror that mirrored Ultimate Edition in the past using an Amazon E2C server and costed him $14.00+ an hour, hmm 14 X 24 X 30? I told him to quit. He did not have to ask for my permission to quit.

Traffic broke down by TheeMahn:
Unlimited does not exist. Youtube pays greater then a million a month for bandwidth, I am sure Petabytes maybe Exobytes. There are many types of traffic “http” most people are familiar with web pages, a link from a web page to an ISO image is considered http traffic. FTP (file transfer protocol), wget is http, but enters a new category where statistics are generated on a server same with apt (apt-get for the nix types).

I have redirected the 8 servers based on what is expected to be seen for example http://repoubuntusoftware.info/ drops directly to http://downloadue.info/repo/, so the mass traffic you are about to see is based on repo traffic as well as downloading of ISO’s of Ultimate Edition. I like to call it "the gathering of great minds". I almost forgot to mention Ultamatix (also hosted same server) repository traffic draws from there also 😉

Petabytes?
1 Petabyte is 1000 Terabytes. 1000 Gigabytes is 1 Terabyte. No we are not in the Petabyte category yet, but a welcome admission to see anything over 10 Terabytes in a month, I just want people to understand what I am referring to bandwidth wise. Just the download server / repository / Ultamatix server (since stats are combined) has exceeded 1/3 of a Petabyte. This does not include any mirrors.

Don’t think that is combined stats of 8 servers.

Well then how about this very server?

Don’t think that is a month worth I moved it there on the 18th of August:

Remember when I brought up http traffic earlier? What you are seeing is the result of nothing on that server (this server none the less), but web pages. Well this puts a tremendous load on the servers CPU to send you and the next guys web pages simultaneously. Since I have seen as many as 50 on this site the same second. That load is also shared by “The planet”. So it’s not always about bandwidth. Don’t get me into concurrent connections. 😉

The Future?

Do not think I will not move them all again to a cloud, I have no other option. This is the only hosting company that can take the current load. My next step is Amazon, I need to get a job at Nasa to flip the tab for that one. Let me give you a little tip in case you want to try them out, enter "hgcouponblog" and knock $9.94 off your first month.

Thanks again Hostgator.

Nasa, do you need a nix programmer? 😉 Will work for bandwidth of my users… Do you see my potential?

TheeMahn