After discussing this with the kind folk here on the LFS forums, I've decided to offer free LFS servers for a period of 14 days as part of a beta test program.

There is no obligations at all. I will ask for a full name and email address, however the email address will be kept completely private. I will send out one email with pricing information once pricing is confirmed after the 14 days.

You get a top notch LFS server that can host up to 20 cars for 14 days and I get the data that you produce by using it. You can run the server as public or private, using whatever name you wish.

There are three servers to choose from, Seattle, Houston and New York.

If you are interested please email me at [email protected] or post a reply here.

sent

Well I wasn't planning to bore them with that information, but if you do participate ejp-dmi and you really want to know about the server loading, I can send you some info, no problems at all

Hi.

I need some information, I was going to email you privatly, but I thought that others may be interested too.

Does the server come with a control panel?
Does the clients have access to an area where the configuration can be changed easily, restarts, and stopped?
Can Layouts be uploaded?
Can Unnofficial mods be added, LFS Lapper for instance?
What data is collected and where can it be accessed?

Thanks in advance.

I'd be in need of a Windows server which can handle LFS in GUI mode to serve LFSTV, any chance you can provide something like this? If a company is behind this offer, I can offer to provide advertising on LFSTV clients in exchange.

Thanks for your questions.

>Does the server come with a control panel?

During the Beta test there is no CP, but I will be able to supply a CP with paid usage (TCAdmin).

>Does the clients have access to an area where the configuration can be >changed easily, restarts, and stopped?

I believe that will be possible through TC Admin.

> Can Layouts be uploaded?

That is something I will have to investigate with the TC Admin setup. It should be possible, but I don't want to make a promise I can't keep.

> Can Unofficial mods be added, LFS Lapper for instance?

That is something that could also be beta tested, to determine any load / security issues, but yes, I would like to be able to offer the LFS lapper. I'll look at other mods on a case by case basis.

> What data is collected and where can it be accessed?

The data that is to be collected is related to the server loading. It is collected by me through various means (e.g performance graphs).

Just for the record I have attached the current loading of the East Coast server (the other 2 two servers are very much the same). There is of course much more to server usage than just CPU usage. e.g network usage, disk I/O, memory I/O times and usage, swap usage etc etc and I don't plan to make all of that info public, partly because other software such as voice servers may be running making the information for anyone other than myself on these systems, irrelevant. The data I'm collecting is designed to allow me, to detirmine the best pricing model and to make sure the servers are not going to run too hot. In todays market that is a fine balance and if it's stuffed up then your either too expensive or laggy, overloaded and unreliable. The last thing a server admin, or a client wants is an overloaded server.

Tube, I sent a PM regarding that request.

btw This beta test is available for U.K LFS users also. Our east coast server pings at 90ms from the U.K with only 11 hops (there arn't many gateways under the ocean !! ).

I have a pretty good response so far. I have just registered http://www.lfsservers.net (and .com) and I'll get started on a website soon.