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"BetterLinux"
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"BetterLinux"

edited July 2012 in General

Has anyone played around with this yet? http://www.betterlinux.com/

Comments

  • TazTaz Member

    Better CloudLinux!

  • Used to run CloudLinux on Shared and Reseller servers, it's great. Just stumbled upon BetterLinux though, and curious if anyone has tried it yet.

  • TazTaz Member

    I have a feeling that EIG is somehow behind this product. And if that is the case, No thank you.

  • o rly?

    Hmm... What gives you that impression? Are they based out of Utah?

  • TazTaz Member

    http://gyazo.com/d037f5cdd64ccbb36818fa8e655e8674

    Whois

    Registrar: FastDomain Inc.
    Provider Name....: BlueHost.Com
    Provider Whois...: whois.bluehost.com
    Provider Homepage: http://www.bluehost.com/

    Domain Name: BETTERLINUX.COM

    Created on..............: 2010-08-31 00:50:08 GMT
    Expires on..............: 2020-08-31 00:50:09 GMT
    Last modified on........: 2011-08-17 16:54:18 GMT

    Registrant Info: (FAST-18446881)

    Domain Privacy Service
    1958 South 950 East
    Provo, Utah -
    United States
    Phone: +1.8017659400
    Fax..:
    Email: @bluehost.com
    Last modified: 2012-06-11 20:32:02 GMT

    Administrative Info: (FAST-18446881)

    Domain Privacy Service
    1958 South 950 East
    Provo, Utah -
    United States
    Phone: +1.8017659400
    Fax..:
    Email: @bluehost.com
    Last modified: 2012-06-11 20:32:02 GMT

    Technical Info: (FAST-18446881)

    Domain Privacy Service
    1958 South 950 East
    Provo, Utah -
    United States
    Phone: +1.8017659400
    Fax..:
    Email: @bluehost.com
    Last modified: 2012-06-11 20:32:02 GMT

  • Free non-commercial use during and after 2013

    Cool.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited July 2012

    Interesting. Certainly everything they advertise on the front can be done elsewhere but if they've accomplished a clean environment already set to do these things, they will definitely have a market.

    @NinjaHawk Did you miss the EIG logo on the front page? ;)

  • RaymiiRaymii Member

    Is this just a kernel? Because of all the distro's it can be installed on?

  • innyainnya Member
    edited July 2012

    It is a user level Work Load "Managment" or "Manager" for linux environment.

  • It reminds me a bit of what Webfaction did to their servers with CentOs I remember reading something similar on their blog.

    Will search for the link later and post it here.

  • I would bet its more of a BlueHost product if anything. They were boasting some years ago most of the features CloudLinux does now they were able to do then.

    Bluehost finally likely decided they missed an opportunity and are releasing their stuff now.

  • Found it, the link to their post on the Webfaction Blog according to them they are using cgroups

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @thekreek Yeah that's what I figured. I've considered using it but truthfully nothing beats good old fashioned eyeballs monitoring the server.

  • ThorThor Member

    @NinjaHawk: EIG has nothing to do with BetterLinux. When EIG bought bluehost a year and a half ago, Matt Heaton (who started bluehost) left the business. Dan Handy took his place as CEO, and Matt--again on his own--started three new companies that have no ownership or management connection to either bluehost or EIG. One of those new companies is BetterLinux. The only connection of any kind is that bluehost and EIG are new customers of BetterLinux, in the exact same way anybody else is. Matt’s other two new companies are BetterServers and Ace Data Centers.

    @Jarland: You suggest everything BetterLinux advertises can be done elsewhere. A few things can be done elsewhere, but there are major additions that can’t be done any other way.

    Take I/O throttling, for example. There is NO alternative for what BetterLinux does for I/O. Nothing else can provide APPLICATION-INDEPENDENT control per block device I/O containment [Example: Rsync has an option at the application level to limit the max bw (--bwlimit), but this is only for rsync]. BetterLinux I/O throttling works at the kernel level, and it supports any block device seen by Linux (any real or virtual block devices, disks, network-attached devices, LVM volumes, RAID, and even memory disks). The mainline kernel’s I/O controller works effectively for READs, but it doesn’t support asynchronous WRITEs at all. BetterLinux does both. Also, BetterLinux’s custom I/O controller is cgroup-based, so you know it’s well integrated with the current kernel resource manager subsystems.

    Regarding MySQL, BetterLinux enables throttling of queries per INDIVIDUAL MySQL users instead of just the generic MySQL user. MySQL usernames are commonly different from the Linux usernames of those originating the queries, but BetterLinux gets past that difficulty. Throttling per Linux user of MySQL queries is an industry first.

    Similarly, when Apache serves up system files owned by particular Linux users, BetterLinux associates that resource consumption with those particular Linux users instead of with Apache’s generic “nobody” user—also an industry first.

    Now on to bandwidth throttling: Without BetterLinux, you could throttle every user’s bandwidth on a shared box, but that would require giving each user his own IP address, which is burdensome and expensive. BetterLinux does the same thing without a need for separate IP addresses. Nobody else does this. Also, you can monitor not only bandwidth use per user, but also per user’s application. Nobody does that either. Further, if you have a server with users sharing an IP address alongside other users with dedicated IP addresses, BetterLinux can make any dedicated user’s traffic originate from that user’s IP address on a shared box instead of from the shared IP. You COULD do this by properly configuring every single network-using application, but not only is that prohibitively time-consuming, but some applications don’t even support such configuration. Finally, Linux comes with tc control, but BetterLinux adds to tc’s queing disciplines and classes the ability to make a new kind of individual user class—extremely useful—but impossible with the vanilla kernel alone.

    Finally, the CPU portion of BetterLinux has other alternatives, but these lack some of BL’s best features. Any virtualization solution allows you to assign CPU limits to different VMs. BetterLinux, however, eliminates the need for multiple VMs (for throttling purposes) and adds far more customization options than before seen (for both group and individual throttling of users and processes). Perhaps most significant is that BetterLinux CPU limits can be either static OR dynamic. Chrooted methods (CloudLinux) are confined to fixed amounts of resources per user, which means built-in inefficiency. BetterLinux resources limits are scaled up and down according to real-time data. Unused dedicated resources are never wasted, since they are reallocated across the system. Nothing else can do this. It is also significant that BetterLinux CPU throttling is fully integrated with its other system controllers (I/O, MySQL, bandwidth).

    @Jarland, knowing all of that, maybe we can agree that BetterLinux actually does beat “good old-fashioned eyeballs monitoring the server.”

    @Raymii: BetterLinux is composed of distribution-neutral kernel modules.

    @Thekreek: Webfaction’s blog speaks of using only cgroups. BetterLinux uses cgroups among other things, but you can see from the above information that it offers much more than basic cgroups functionality.

    @Jayshinkle: BetterLinux is not a bluehost product. But Matt Heaton did have the initial ideas that eventually grew into BetterLinux while he still owned bluehost. Those ideas were implemented on bluehost’s platform with great success. After Matt sold bluehost, he added new modules, new functionality, and souped up those few portions that already existed. You are right that bluehost could do back then what CloudLinux does now. In fact, CloudLinux’s creator got his major ideas while reading Matt Heaton’s blog about the Linux kernel back when Matt was bluehost’s CEO. Matt Heaton didn’t create BetterLinux because he suddenly decided he had missed an opportunity. He just wanted to fulfill his full vision of what it could be before he released it.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited August 2012

    @Thor You make good points, I am not aware of a simple method for throttling I/O, but admittedly I do doubt that it couldn't be done. Off the top of my head I can't think of a way, but it also isn't a priority for me without a large client base, still easy and efficient to monitor everything myself. I've also never used CloudLinux so I don't know how comparable it is.

    I do have one question for you though. You said EIG has nothing to do with it, but their logo is on the front page? I'm confused. Edit: Nevermind I see, you said customers.

  • TazTaz Member
    edited August 2012

    Bluehost aka EIG is still hosting it, domain is registered under bluehost and since Matt is not a part of eig, I doubt if eig haven't bought this yet.

    Cloudlinux has everything (even I/o limit) besides bandwidth throttling which, tbh is not something difficult. Traffic shaping ain't that difficult it self and with the growth and rapid development of cloudlinux, these things should be available soon if not now.

    I wish Igor was a member here.

  • TazTaz Member

    @Thor and @jarland correct me if I was wrong.

  • @Thor just to clear up a bit, I was talking about webfaction not bluehost, I knew the story from Matt, I used to read his blog from time to time.

  • ThorThor Member

    @Jarland: Even if there were a simple and thorough method for throttling I/O outside of BetterLinux (and to a much lesser extent, CloudLinux), it probably wouldn’t be very effective. Obtaining a useful level of I/O control gets complex pretty quickly. And mastering I/O completely is exceptionally difficult. BetterLinux has dealt with these complexities admirably. It includes all the features you already know you want and then a whole slew of config options you’ll want after you discover them.

    A decision to monitor things yourself (because of a small client base) should depend largely on whether you want to prevent I/O problems or manage them after they arise. You can certainly fix things after they’re broken, but your customers still suffer in the meantime, and whatever the problem was is sure to happen again soon. A single user can hog any shared system resource. Even in a client base of only two users, one could take 100% of the resources leaving nothing for the other. BetterLinux prevents all the I/O problems you spend your time watching for and cleaning up. Even if you caught all I/O problems (unlikely), that doesn’t mean you can always fix them. When I/O overloads the system, for example, you can’t even log into the host as root. And when a user eats all the memory and the kernel begins randomly killing processes, you have no choice but to watch as it inevitably kills the wrong ones. These are only two typical problems with the wait-and-see approach. When some problems happen, it’s already too late.

    @NinjaHawk:
    I’m confused at what you are trying to say regarding EIG and bluehost. To clarify once again, Matt is not associated with EIG or bluehost in any way except that these two companies use BetterLinux, a product Matt developed after selling bluehost to EIG. BetterLinux is owned and operated by Matt, not by EIG or anyone else. EIG is Matt’s customer. That’s all. Why do you keep raising questions contrary to fact?

    You suggest cloudlinux has “everything.” That isn’t quite true. BetterLinux does more than CL can do in nearly every category. (I say “nearly” because I’m still experimenting) You specifically mention CL’s new I/O product. Besides having comparatively scarce configuration options, CL’s I/O product also consistently uses 30-50% more disk than BetterLinux does. When CL maxed out at 100% disk utilization for a light load, BetterLinux eased along at a mere 50% disk utilization. That’s a substantial difference. Also, CL’s I/O user limits don’t work like they should. If I set an I/O bandwidth limit at ‘x’ for a user, I want that user to have all the bandwidth right up until ‘x.’ Instead, CL cuts off the user’s bandwidth some 300Kb/s below the limit—very frustrating. BetterLinux, on the other hand, stays true to set limits. CL fell behind in other ways as well. It’s just not on par with BetterLinux. I wonder if CL markets more than it develops.

    Regarding bandwidth throttling, you say it “is not something difficult.” Perhaps at a very basic level, but BetterLinux goes well beyond the basic level. CL can’t associate Apache traffic with individual Linux users on the box, and neither can anything else. This enables a new level of throttling control. The ability to make an individual user’s traffic originate from his own dedicated IP address on a shared box instead of the shared IP is also something you’ve never seen—because it doesn’t exist. It’s also great to be able to throttle users on a box without distributing separate IPs. It’s about time.

    @thekreek: I knew what you were referring to. Np.

  • TazTaz Member

    @Thor thanks for the clarification.
    Couple of questions, will it have features similar to CageFS? Will it work with cpanel right out of the box? How does it takes care of user end security? Will better Linux have the same jail features as CLN? And last, but not least, any idea about pricing? And will it be something that varies by hardware specs such as CPU, ram etc? Sorry for asking so many questions, but I have a pretty huge amount of shared hosting clients. And can't really play.

    Besides those above mentioned factor, BL does looks nice and might have a nice future.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @Thor You make some fair points.

  • ThorThor Member

    @NinjaHawk: BetterLinux does have some functionality similar to CageFS, but right now it comes in the form of individual parameters within BetterCPU (one of the BetterLinux modules). I have heard BetterLinux may bring this feature closer to the front to make its availability more obvious as well as add some new security features besides. Even though these features are already present, it seems to me that BetterLinux has organizationally emphasized quality of service & performance over security thus far. But we’ll see if a new arrangement might add more discussion of security to the mix. On a different note, I have to wonder why CL bothered to make CageFS in the first place since other products already do essentially the same thing, like chroot, apparmor, selinux, etc., and these all work with any Linux kernel. My guess is they do it just because it’s easier to integrate with other CL tools (and maybe also for marketing reasons). But technically speaking, and from the user end, I don’t really see the value add.

    I heard we can expect cPanel/BetterLinux integration within 2 months.

    Regarding BL jailing comparisons with CL, I’d still need to look into that more. Initial views look positive, but I’d like to be more thorough. I’ll try to post after I try a few more things.

    I am told pricing won’t vary by hardware specs; it will be a flat fee per box. But as for how much, I don’t know. Matt’s other businesses have always been reasonably priced, especially for value, so I would expect no less here.

    @jarland: I try. It’s fun to think through things. Thanks for the conversation.

  • TazTaz Member

    Great info.

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