Performance is about more than just hardware

Your performance is only as good as your server setup

We discuss the need for performance with hosting provider PerfGrid. Since 2011 they offer solutions for SMBs, enterprises, and private companies. While there are many hosting companies out there, PerfGrid, like Worldstream, separates from the herd by caring deeply about quality, stability, and a great customer experience. Speaking with Lucas Rolff, the founder of PerfGrid, we learned how his years of experience and maintaining 2000+ servers helps him understand the full picture that the hosting industry demands.

How does PerfGrid look at performance, what makes the performance good? The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. “Obviously I think it's a bit of everything”, explains Lucas. Overall network and hardware performance is only as good as how your servers are setup. “You can have the latest generation hardware, but if your configuration or your IT stack is not really efficient, then you don't really gain anything. Network quality also plays an important role. European locations tend to be very well connected to other countries worldwide in general. It doesn't matter whether you host your website in Netherlands, in Denmark or in Germany.” This is mainly due to the prevalence of internet exchanges such as AMS-IX, DE-CIX, and LINX.

Making sure your configuration works is all about diving into details, which is something Lucas recommends all the time. He starts by looking at the final result. How can you speed up your websites loading time? “Ultimately, it is the whole cycle from hardware and network to software configuration, and even the code of the website itself. It might be that your website keeps calling Facebook every time you visit it.” The solution often lies in looking at every small detail, which is only possible if you look at the whole.

Being able to provide the best service stems from his own experience and preferences. “The main reason I do this, is because of my own curiosity. I really like performance optimization in general, so it interests me a lot and I think that's one of the main drivers for me to actually do it. It's pure interest. I love to see that you can make stuff faster.”

From network outages to Worldstream

Before PerfGrid found Worldstream in 2020, they encountered several hurdles within their IT infrastructure. “I started in 2011 with hosting, I was a customer of another provider that I eventually ended up becoming an employee of. After some time passed, I didn't really like the way that they treated smaller customers. For example, we could delay a response, simply because they were a ‘standard’ customer.”

Eventually Lucas got the idea to start for himself and started looking into buying his own equipment and then doing colocation for it. “Obviously I needed a colocation provider in Netherlands that was somewhat close to me. The thought being that if something happened, I could actually go there myself.” At one point PerfGrid had one server colocated in the Netherlands and they started to experience interesting network issues. “Their network would suddenly go down for like just one or two minutes.” Every few days there were issue like DDoS attacks and that would take down the whole network. “It's kind of annoying that you get alerted two minutes later with the message that everything is back up again.” As if nothing was wrong in the first place.

It didn’t end there, as Lucas ran into more security related issues. “I was in a shared rack, but I could just walk into a shared rack without anyone from the data center being present. if I wanted to, I could just plug in an USB to any other customer. I could even take their power if I wanted. You can imagine that it didn't feel very safe.” Finally the colocation racks only had a single feed, because they ran out of capacity for redundancy.

At that point Lucas started to look elsewhere. “I had a virtual machine through a Worldstream customer. I did not face any downtime in over a year.” PerfGrid started to seriously consider Worldstream, mainly due to the relaxed mentality towards doing business. “I could ask literally anything. Oh, can I buy the PDUs instead of using them? And you were like it is not standard, but sure we can do it for you.”

Lucas points out that even during his migration Worldstream’s service exceeded his expectations. “That process in itself often tends to be rather complex, because obviously some companies want to uphold you to the old contract or want you to pay for cross connects between the racks. To my surprise you were like: “If you need a cross connect, we'll do it for you. Just take the time you need to finish your migration. You will not pay for both racks, while you finish the migration.”

Currently, most of their infrastructure is housed at Worldstream. “All of my production infrastructure is at Worldstream. Like when you buy a hosting plan through me it's servers hosted at Worldstream. The exception is that my name servers for DNS are spread across four different networks, purely because I’ve seen a whole network die multiple times, so I tried to make that diverse. My backup systems are located in another country through a friend and colleague of mine and I’ve kept the website, support and billing system separate, so I can still communicate with my customers if all fails.”

Easy onboarding and direct communication

“The fact that you can send an e-mail to you guys and getting a reply within 5-6 minutes is very impressive. It is very refreshing, especially considering Worldstream prices are really fair for what you offer.” Not only do the Worldstream facilities offer multiple feeds and standard DDoS protection, Worldstream’s engineers are available 24/7 on-site to offer assistance. Electrical fencing and turnstiles with biometric scanning add another layer on top, to ensure a high level of physical security.

Direct communication with an account manager was not a main priority for PerfGrid, “but it made things a lot easier”. Particularly the onboarding process went smoother due to the direct contact with an account manager. “When I have questions about how to do something and I’m in the datacenter I can just message my account manager.” Lucas would only be on-site at the start of his journey with Worldstream in 2020. Afterwards, when the infrastructure was setup he only needed to perform a few hands-on tasks which would be handled by customer support. “If I have something that needs to be done, like plug in a cable or something, I just message support. They tend to be super happy to help even with no charge, which I always find impressive.”

Also the level of support was different from what he was used to. “Whenever I faced issues, that I could not figure out myself, you would help. Your sales representative put me in a chat with a network engineer and we could just have a chat to discuss. Keep in mind, it was 11:00 PM or something and it was fixed within 10 minutes.”

Building your own customer panel

According to Lucas, you should also help your customers by adding frequently asked for features. “What I ended up doing was trying to build my own panel. I try to offer a different set of features, in comparison to cPanel. For example, there is the possibility to offer full redundancy, or even geo redundancy. I hope that's one of the things that will differentiate me a bit. I'm trying to add features that center around making websites faster, sustainability, and green energy.”

You might wonder why PerfGrid has decided to develop their own custom panel, when you have standards such as cPanel? “The majority of my customers are in Denmark, where most of them run with custom panels. I think about 95% is located in Denmark.” Another advantage is that Worldstream has direct access to a lot of European locations, including Danish networks.

When looking at the future of PerfGrid, Lucas is already thinking about the next step. “Originally we started out with half a rack, and half a year later we moved to a full rack. Now, we would even like to expand with another rack. Hopefully we can make that happen when you open your third data center.”

PerfGrid recently upgraded its website to showcase their attention for detail and transparency. It does not only show the amount of hosted domains, but also how many HTTP requests are made and how many active support tickets are in their queue.