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Server Administration Is Hell

Who would think configuring and maintaining a web server could be so difficult? Since realizing that my server was getting slaughtered by the surprising popularity of the Chimp-O-Matic, I've been working hard on moving my site off of Win XP Media Center and getting everything up and running on Windows 2000 Server --a "real" server. So far the experience has been a complete disaster. I've tried everything I can think of, but for reasons beyond explanation IIS works great for several hours and then just stops working! Even more bizarre, despite not being able to get anything but "Server Not Found" in the browser, the machine doesn't log any errors and the IIS server logs show no disruption in service (that I know of). All other services on the machine work and even limiting the hell out of IIS (e.g. no sessions, only 50 users, etc.) doesn't fix the issue.

So... Until I find some cheap ASP.Net hosting (with SQL Server), I guess I'll keep supplying the 80,000+ hits per day for the Chimp-O-Matic with a lousy consumer OS that's limited to 10 simultaneous users. Go figure.

posted on Thursday, April 27, 2006 10:46 PM

Feedback

# re: IIS Blues
Brian
Posted @ 4/27/2006 11:41 PM
Sounds like a job for apache. ;-)
# re: IIS Blues
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 4/28/2006 12:53 AM
Yeah... I know Bill Gates owns me.

Do you think Mono would run my site with minimum tweaking? I haven't looked at it in a while. It would be nice to have an alternative, but I'd probably have the same problem: I suck at system admin.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Bud
Posted @ 5/1/2006 10:26 PM
I love Chimp-o-matic. I'm addicted to it. You ought to design a calendar with these quotes so I could have a bunch of them up all month.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/2/2006 8:38 AM

Hey Bud,

Thanks for visiting. I think I've seen some Bushisms desk calendars out there --there's certainly plenty of material for every day of the year. I'm thinking about making the collection into a screen saver soon. If you'd like the complete list for your personal collection, just tell me what format you want it in (e.g. Word, text, CSV).
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
chris
Posted @ 5/2/2006 10:09 PM
what format is the data in now? I assume it's text file or a small database and you just grab a random line and display it right? I could probably whip a php script that would do it, shouldn't take more than 20 lines of code including some error handling. you'd still need a real server OS to serv it, but you might get away with a vmware player or server and a small linux "appliance" that would run on XP. now sure if the 10 connection limit applies to bridged connections too. hm, I'll email you...
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/3/2006 12:22 AM
Hey Chris,

Yup, it's pretty simple. Actually, if you just do the minimum in VS.Net, it's only 8 lines of code. If only running MS web servers was as easy as using their IDE, eh? Now I've got W2K Server installed and everything tweaked, but I'm finding that IIS stops responding after a while for no reason --with no error. Hours of searching forums hasn't done me much good either.

Anyway... I've achieved an almost acceptable solution by setting up a script to restart IIS every hour. 24 short hiccups a day, but if I don't have to get hosting, I guess it's worth it.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
tonys@sterrett.net
Posted @ 5/10/2006 11:05 PM
Trying thinking out of the box. Try Open Source Software. Many people have had freeBSD boxes run for years. Yahoo uses freeBSD. I've heard people say M$ is easier but you are living proof ( a complete disaster)that's not true. You have a chance at finding out what's wrong with Open Source. With M$ its either in a pull down menu or your out of luck.

There are all kinds of tools on Linux or one of the BSDs that would tell you just were the problem is on a network. On Linux you could look at your process table to see what's running. You could listen to your network interfaces to see what being sent and received.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/11/2006 12:22 AM
Well... Really, the problem does lie with me. Between work, family, keeping up my skills, and a little political activism, I just don't have time to devote to administering a server. I'm just another MS poster boy that just wants the server to work so I can get back to what I enjoy --coding. And MS makes it really easy to do that (which is exactly why there aren't as many good MS admins as there are Linux admins). If less than perfect, but very productive, is your style, Microsoft is a great choice.

Actually, I installed a newbie-friendly flavor of Linux on a virtual machine recently. It's very nice and seems to have many of the same goodies. But I really wouldn't know where to begin as far as applying best-practices security, configuring Apache, and figuring out how to re-write all my web apps in something compatible. There's the real reason it's got to be Windoze: ASP.NET. All my stuff is written in MS-centric code and it just works. Unlike Windows, Microsoft's programming tools and the .NET framework are absolutely brilliant. And because of this, MS owns me.

As far as my issue with IIS, I may never know what the problem is. There are great diagnostic programs out there for Windoze, but I doubt I'll ever find time to figure out what to do with them. But I do know how to program workarounds. Guess when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
# 99.7% uptime
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/13/2006 12:46 PM
O.K. Just did a little checking in the logs... The latest stats for the Chimp-o-matic are over 100,000 hits per day from about 13,000 unique IP addresses, with a little more traffic during the middle of the week.

With my stupid hack to restart IIS every hour (which takes about 7 seconds), I've got about 99.7% availability of the website and Chimp-o-matic. Not perfect, but nobody has asked me for a refund, right?
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Keith
Posted @ 5/17/2006 2:12 PM
I reccomend www.ixwebhosting.com they are really cheap and really solid. ASP.net and SQL server are included in the baseline.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/17/2006 2:41 PM
Hey, thanks for the recommendation Keith!

Unfortunately, I finally got serious and bought hosting and a domain just yesterday. http://Chimpomatic.net is now mine! Went with DiscountASP.net for hosting because they have all the cutting-edge .NET features I was looking for. Hate to give up control of the server, but we'll see how it goes...

It was finally time to quit hammering the home machine --especially since I'm expanding the Chimp-o-matic to cell phones and other devices. The folks over at http://www.sms.ac asked me to turn it into a "pod" for their mobile services. Check 'em out.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Kumar
Posted @ 5/20/2006 6:45 AM
Ry, U must learn how to live with Apache, I dont hate Bill but I suggest Apache for its install and forget thing, why dont U get a *nix Box. any geek, except me, will do for free.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/20/2006 8:43 PM
Well... Like I've said, I'm not passionate about the platform, but I'm locked in because of .NET and other MS dev. goodness. Just like MS Office forever established Windows as the de facto OS for offices everywhere, Visual Studio and the .NET framework are so good I wouldn't even consider using Java, PHP, and the tools that come with them. If Apache ever gets a bulletproof implementation of ASP.NET, I'd leave in a heartbeat.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 5/21/2006 8:53 PM
Believe me when I say I'd love to divorce myself from Bill's server technologies. The latest wonderful development is that IIS/Win2K Server dies and reboots every 10-20 minutes when I try to serve the Bush head icon from my home machine (I passed my bandwidth quota on the fast server I was storing it on). Maybe the extra bandwidth was too much? Maybe something much stranger? (Maybe I shouldn't be serving over 15,000 hits per day from a crap PC never intended to be a server?) I don't know, but I spend a lot of time thinking about swallowing my distaste for PHP...
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Paolino
Posted @ 6/9/2006 2:49 PM
What about Linux??????????????
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 6/9/2006 3:10 PM
What about reading the thread before posting, Linux fanboys? It's like this: I just don't have the time to learn and maintain a Linux server. More importantly, all my junk is written in ASP and ASP.Net. I don't think there's any salvation for me --at least until my life slows down a little.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
rehabdr
Posted @ 6/10/2006 8:23 PM
Don't get mad, but seriously, I think you need a
Macintosh computer. Here's why: There OS X is based on the $400,000 acquisition of NextStep,
which spent years developing a better interface for using UNIX, the practically bulletproof 30 or 40 year old, well developed system that ran, and still runs most gigantic Universities systems. Since I've been using Mac OS X my personal computers (I've several) have experienced ONE CRASH, and only one, and that's over 3 or 4 computers, for a period of 4 years. This stuff is solid!!!!!
Nuff said, good luck!
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 6/10/2006 11:57 PM
Sigh... I appreciate the ideas guys --I try to be helpful myself to the technologically less fortunate, but you're not listening...

I can't change my OS because all my apps are written with ASP and .NET. This is just a stupid hobby site for me anyway, not a professional site. (The W2K/IIS performance I'm getting would be appallingly unacceptable otherwise. However, on my "daily-driver" PC I gotta say WinXP has been good to me. Except for running Half-Life2, I think I've had one crash in the last year.) Anyway... I really don't want to recode all my apps, so the next upgrade will probably be Win2003 Server. Tell me about other servers when they support the .Net framework. (Any surprise MS isn't in any hurry there?)
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Jack
Posted @ 6/16/2006 9:40 AM
You hate Bush but like Gates? That just don't make sense!

Get yourself a Linux server.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 6/16/2006 12:51 PM
Yeah... I'm weak. And I know it. But you see, it's like this... While I acknowledge that MS's tactics are evil, I love their stuff --it makes me more productive and that pays the bills (no pun intended). I guess you could say I hate the sinner, but love the sin!
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Igor
Posted @ 6/23/2006 3:04 PM
LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP - all the way; easy to setup, never crashes, best of all - completely open source. Try http://www.ubuntu.com/.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 6/24/2006 1:31 PM
Thanks Igor,

Although married to Microsoft, I am aware of the open source goodness out there. And I'm friendly towards the L and the A, but the M and the P are really second rate, in my opinion. SQL Server is now free for personal use as is .NET and the killer Visual Studio IDE.

Now back to the laboratory!
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 6/25/2006 12:15 PM
Quick update:
Although I'm a little annoyed at my IIS 5.0 stability, I suppose considering that I'm no sysadmin and the server is a low-end desktop (1.4 GHz), it's pretty impressive that the thing works at all under a load of over 20,000 users a day and over 180,000 hits.

I think I'll stick with the devil I know.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
vidalstat
Posted @ 7/3/2006 9:35 AM
ryan,

great website.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
David
Posted @ 7/9/2006 12:07 PM
If you're into Windows, please read this whole thing, don't get resentful because I mention something you're not used to!
That said, I'd recommend a Macintosh computer. Ever since Apple came out with their new Mac OS X operating system in 2000, they've had the best operating system in the world. It is based on UNIX, the default OS for pretty much every major University in the world for the last 40 years, with all the modern upgrades performed by the NEXT computer company over a 5 yr period before Apple bought them for $400,000,000.
They got their money's worth, as my computers (I own 7 currently, although one is too old to run OS X) HAVE NOT CRASHED but about 3 times SINCE 2000 or 2001 ! ! ! !
I have had individual programs "pass out", but extremely few total crashes requiring restarts! I have to restart my computer/computers more often due to brown-out, or failure of my backup power supply then due to the OS messing up.
They make a server version of Mac OSX, and now they even have the new Macintosh MacBooks which have Intel chips inside which can run Windows XP if you want to use that. In fact, Apple includes a software patch called "Boot Camp" which lets you run either Windows XP (Pro I think), or Mac OS X, your choice on startup.
They also provide a free copy of the latest Apache Server when you buy the Mac OS X Server, and they might even provide this in the extra discs that come with the regular OS X that you get if you don't ask for the Server version when buying a new Apple machine.
Anyway, good luck, and best wishes, keep up the good work with Chimp-o-matic!
David B (If you want, you can write me at: [edited out], but please don't post this address, I get too much spam already!) Thanks.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
Ryan [admin]
Posted @ 10/24/2006 11:41 AM
There are certainly some nice things going on there, but again, I've got too much invested personally and vocationally to make the switch. By analogy, it just doesn't make sense for me to buy lots of airports if my business is maintaining a fleet of submarines. For now I'll have to be content with occasional fun using Mac and Apple ][ emulators and looking at iLife with software envy.
# re: Server Administration Is Hell
simon cunningham
Posted @ 1/20/2007 3:02 AM
Listen to the man. The Mac will see you right. Come awy from the dark side.

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