Top all-time · #5721
blog.bytemark.co.uk
Company blog · blog.bytemark.co.uksystemsbusinesscareer
blog.bytemark.co.uk is the company blog at blog.bytemark.co.uk, writing about systems, business and career. Since 2010, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 45 times, most often “Design and implementation of bigv.io - cloud hosting built on Free software”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bytemark's blog for its explanation of why it skipped Xen, a FOSDEM travel guide, its anonymous hiring process, and a donated server for Debian. Only one commenter judged a post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Design and implementation of bigv.io - cloud hosting built on Free software3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-12-11
- Hiring by anonymous interview3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-05-30
- What happened when Bytemark decided to anonymously hire new staff2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-23
- Why Bytemark Hosting didn't use Xen2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-28
- Why Bytemark didn't use Xen2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-01
What Hacker News says?
I wrote a similar article trying to segregate hosting stages (though beware I'm a hosting company promoting a product) - http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2011/11/03/the-cloud-is-your-inst... . tl;dr version is that I think the ultimate flexibility is in your application's install script. If you can deploy to one host, or several, and collapse or split out caching layers, databases etc. depending on resources available, yo…
Comment linking /2011/11/03/the-cloud-is-your-install-script
on “The Five Stages of Hosting”Submitted Using “git push” to deploy Ruby applications to your own server as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI disagree - Bytemark have been in business nearly 12 years, thousands of interesting clients, no difficult ones that I've not turned around to my way of thinking :-) We've just built our own data centre ( http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/06/04/bytemark-data-centre-w... ), have launched our own IaaS product ( http://bigv.io ) and we get a lot of recommendations though as we're based in the UK we're not as big on most…
Comment linking /2013/06/04/bytemark-data-centre-will-you-start-the-fans-please
on “GoDaddy, Media Temple, and the Horrible World of Web Hosting”Submitted The Bytemark Guide to Dodging Spies as a story · 36 points
HN discussionYork, United Kingdom - Bytemark Hosting are looking for two people: Sales Director ( http://www.bytemark.co.uk/sales_director - £60000) Head Of External Communications ( http://www.bytemark.co.uk/external_comms - £25000-40000) Both of whom will help us launch BigV ( http://bigv.io/ ) into the hosting marketplace as well as driving managed sales. We're a 10-year old UK nerd hosting company that's just built its own d…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2013)”Submitted "Host your own GitHub" using Gitlab and Dokku as a story · 23 points
HN discussionThe UK has a pretty fierce reputation for plaintiff-friendly libel laws, and hosting companies get loads of dodgy complaints. At Bytemark we got sick of them a few years back and spent _thousands_ taking advice from Carter-Ruck, the UK's go-to libel experts. I wrote an old rambling blog post here -> https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2010/02/07/adventures-in-libel-o... but in summary, hosting companies aren't as liable for…
Comment linking /2010/02/07/adventures-in-libel-or-why-i-wont-read-your-forum
on “NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites”Submitted We just got a web site takedown request. Not entirely sure how to proceed: as a story · 16 points
HN discussionAs a small competitor to Racksapce in 2010, designing a replacement for our (then) 8-year old VM structure, Bytemark bet against Openstack from the 1st announcement and spent years building something the-same-but-different. It wasn't _just_ that Openstack was unreleased and talking about foundations and making grand promises without any production-grade code. It was just that we could never work out which version Ra…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2012/12/DesignAndImplementationOfBigV.pdf
on “Intel Pulls Out of OpenStack Effort It Founded with Rackspace”Submitted Setting up a Raspberry Pi perfectly on the first boot as a story · 14 points
HN discussionThey were never a Xen shop, they trialled Xen with a few customers but never rolled it out. This blog post has more detailed info: http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2011/02/28/why-we-skipped-xen
Comment linking /2011/02/28/why-we-skipped-xen
on “Xen has been fully integrated into Linux kernel 3.0”Submitted Restricting encryption is restricting free speech as a story · 8 points
HN discussion"According to the report, reddit received 33 requests to remove content ... to do with alleged defamation. reddit stood by its users and refused to comply with any of these requests." Good on Reddit for not being swayed, but they'd better keep their servers out of the UK. Here in the "libel capital of the world" hosting providers are treated as co-publishers of allegedly libellous content once we've been notified of…
Comment linking /2010/02/07/adventures-in-libel-or-why-i-wont-read-your-forum
on “Things to Love About Reddit’s First Transparency Report”Submitted How we're executing an 80-mile data centre move as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI designed a similar system 10 years ago at Bytemark which worked for a few thousand VMs, ran for about 12 years. It called BigV [1]. It might still be running (any customers here still?). I think the new owners tried to shut it down but customers kept protesting when offered a less-featureful platform :-) The two architectural differences from fly: * the VM clusters were split into "head" and "tail" machines & link…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2012/04/DesignAndImplementationOfBigV.pdf
on “Making Machines Move”Submitted Why Bytemark didn't use Xen as a story · 7 points
HN discussionImagine the internal monitoring that a hosting company might need. They'd have to manage: * All the (virtual machine) host boxes. * All the routers, switchers, and firewalls. * Status-checks, on hosted sites, etc. In the end I designed and implemented a system which was capable of running all the tests in around 90 seconds, by virtue of being distributed. One host does all the parsing and such like, and N-other host…
Comment linking /2012/12/19/custodian-a-network-monitoring-program
on “Show HN: Self-hosted, open-source infrastructure monitoring and alerting”Submitted What if the web browser comes second? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionBytemark ( http://www.bytemark.co.uk/ ) offer "legacy" VPS and dedicated servers (been a customer for 10 years now) and they also have a new Cloud offering called BigV ( http://bigv.io ) which I've started using for stuff - great company, great service, they've recently donated a 16-blade, 57Tb server to the Debian project as well (including hosting) - http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/04/04/a-major-infrastructure...…
Comment linking /2013/04/04/a-major-infrastructure-donation-to-the-debian-project
on “Ask HN: European Linode / DigitalOcean alternatives”Submitted Why we're donating €1,000 to GnuPG as a story · 4 points
HN discussionNice. I just put York on the map :-) (cough - http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/02/05/bytemark-to-get-their-... ) Come on York.
Comment linking /2013/02/05/bytemark-to-get-their-first-wholly-owned-datacentre-online-by-may
on “Newcastle startup scene reaches 'critical mass' [video]”Submitted Switching to Mailpile – the search and privacy-focused webmail client as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere are two FOSDEM guides, I found interesting when researching my trip. https://petersouter.xyz/fosdem-survival-guide/ https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/09/07/my-guide-to-fosdem-eu... It will be the first time at FOSDEM for me, so I cannot confirm or deny much, but I've definitely heard from multiple sources that it is very crowded. If want to attend a certain talk you absolutely have to arrive early. I have not bo…
Comment linking /2015/09/07/my-guide-to-fosdem-europes-biggest-open-source-developer-conference
on “FOSDEM 2024 Schedule”Submitted What happened when Bytemark decided to anonymously hire new staff as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMy company has just launched an anonymous interview process for 3 open positions - https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/ . We only take a mobile# and an alias, and just talk to candidates over IM for 2/3 interviews. I blogged about the rationale - https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by... re: the post on gapjumpers, I'm not sure about asking someone to do (what appears to be) a 1-2 day programming ex…
Comment linking /2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-interview
on “Blind Auditions Could Give Employers a Better Hiring Sense”Submitted Hiring by anonymous interview as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBytemark in the UK have started hiring by initial anonymous interview https://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by...
Comment linking /2015/05/20/bytemark-is-hiring-by-anonymous-interview
on “Blind Auditions Could Give Employers a Better Hiring Sense”Submitted Design and implementation of bigv.io - cloud hosting built on Free software as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThat's not an uncommon experience: http://blog.bytemark.co.uk//2011/02/28/why-we-skipped-xen
Comment linking //2011/02/28/why-we-skipped-xen
on “User-mode Linux Kernel”Submitted Second UK zone for UK cloud host Bytemark as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
