guideline for name-based web hosting justification

[Alec H. Peterson]

Mury wrote:
> 
> Yikes!
> 
> Have you ever tried to parse up to 1000 log files per system, with some of
> them around 500MB in size.  It's not nearly as easy as it sounds.

It is if you change how you write and parse your logs.

> 
> For some people it's feasable, but for most of us we *need* IP based
> accounting.
> 
> By the way, we are setup to do a large number of URL's pointed at a single
> IP for some hosting applications, but for the majority of our sites, it is
> not an option.

Can't say that I have tried it.  However at the same time I can think of
quite a few ways to make the task far easier and faster.  For example, don't
do all of the parsing at once at the end of the day; modify the server to
keep a running tally of a customer's usage and have it write that alone to a
file on the disk every time it changes.  Far more efficient.

That's just off the top of my head, and probably not a really efficient way
to do it.  My point is that the Internet is made up of a lot of smart people
who are more than capable of solving these issues if they feel like it. 
Whining about how today's methods of accounting won't work with tomorrow's
methods of virtual hosting is a lot like complaining about how yesterday's
chalk writes really poorly on today's white boards.  If you don't want to be
left behind you have to keep on evolving.

After all, where would we be today if dial-up providers decided that it was
too much work to use dynamically allocated IP addresses and kept on giving
each user their own IP address?

However, name-based virtual hosts aren't exactly a new thing.  Many large
web hosters have been using name-based virtual hosts for a while now, so
would any of those companies mind sharing a little wisdom on how this can be
done?

Thanks,

Alec

-- 
Alec H. Peterson - ahp at hilander.com
Staff Scientist
CenterGate Research Group - http://www.centergate.com
"Technology so advanced, even _we_ don't understand it!"