Virtual Server Hosting? 71
Eric Anderson asks: "I am shopping around for virtual hosting providers using something like UserModeLinux to allow me to have at least a virtual box to admin for myself. The current two companies that I am looking at are TekTonic and Linode. The price is right for these two companies, but I would like to know of any other suggested companies to look at, and opinions from people that have used these services. I am mostly buying this 'just for fun', but would also be interested in opinions on using these services in a business environment as well."
JVDS (Score:4, Informative)
You should definitely take a look at webhostingtalk.com [webhostingtalk.com] and read what others are saying about various VPSes. It's how I found JVDS, and a lot of newer (read: potentially flakier) startups offer incredible early-signup bonuses to forum members.
Bytemark Hosting (Score:3, Informative)
Go with linode.com! (Score:5, Informative)
Liquid Web (Score:3, Informative)
All systems are based on Redhat 9 and include full root access. These systems are great for busier sites that need more cpu/memory than a shared hosting account.
johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux (Score:4, Informative)
johncompanies [kuro5hin.org]
Read about them here in the response to there ad on Kuro5hin
AD [kuro5hin.org]
Yes I know the first link redirects through kuro5hin that way they get any cash rev.
rimuhosting.com (Score:3, Informative)
Re:johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux (Score:4, Informative)
PDXcolo.net Virtual Colocation (Score:2, Informative)
We at PDXcolo.net [pdxcolo.net] use User-mode Linux to provide virtual colocated hosting. We offer a range of plans from 64MB of RAM through 512MB, with disk space starting at 4GB and bandwidth starting at 30GB/month. Plans start at $20/mo, with additional bandwidth at $1.50/GB and disk at $1/GB.
We unlike some other providers have a very open TOS/AUP allowing you to do anything you would like that is legal and that doesn't include SPAM
Re:rimuhosting.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bytemark Hosting (Score:3, Informative)
I'll second that. Bytemark [bytemark-hosting.co.uk] have been extremely helpful, reliable and competant. They are a tiny bit more expensive than some of the alternatives, but they offer secondary services such as domain-hosting nameservers and backup-MX hosting for free.
I also really like having my server sitting at GMT. It makes working out time differences really easy :)
Re:Go with linode.com! (Score:2, Informative)
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rimuhosting.com (Score:3, Informative)
The price is right ($19.95 for 64MB ram, 4GB disk space, 30GB transfer), and they have some nice features that cheap virtual servers often lack, such as the ability to 'power-cycle' your machine from their web control panel, in case you firewall yourself or similar.
They offer RedHat 9, as well as a minimal Debian install, which makes it easy to install just the packages you need. I've found them to be stable (143 days uptime), and the tech support is friendly and helpful.
freebsd VPS (Score:3, Informative)
BSDHosting.net (Score:4, Informative)
Re:johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux (Score:4, Informative)
It is a bit disconcerting, however, when every email you receive from them is signed 'John', no matter what time of day it is
Happy Linode customer (Score:4, Informative)
I have been using (Score:3, Informative)
Hosting Metro [hostingmetro.com] for a while now and am very very happy with it. To the point where one of my friends has now signed up with them and another is about to as soon as his existing hosting contract finishes. These guys are great.
You do effectively run inside a virtual machine on a shared server. You can reboot your vhost any time you like from the control panels, you have shell and SFTP/SCP via SSH (obviously) and you get to choose what you want to install. You can install the GNU compiler tools to add your own applications or you can just go with the basics.
For a bit over $6/mnth you get 500megs of storage, 20gig of traffic, unlimited pop mail boxes, secure SMTP or POP3 before SMTP, MySQL or PostgreSQL as you like, Real Server, (mod_)PHP, (mod_)Perl 5, Apache, full control over your domains and subdomains, including the ability to create and modify all your own DNS records. You can point multiple domains there if you like.
There are a lot of other features there as well. I liked it enough I signed up for 2 years up front.
Support is great. Every email question I've ever sent them has been answered quickly and coherently. They work with you until the issue is resolved and don't just say 'its not happening for us' as I've experienced with others in the past. The guys aren't just textbook admins, they definitely seem to know what they're doing from my observations.
There are a lot more features I cannot begin to cover off here. But definitely check out their options. I'm sure you'll find something there you'll like.
Re:rimuhosting.com (Score:3, Informative)
Just use keychain [gentoo.org]. Enter your passphrase once per boot. Then you don't have to worry about someone stealing your key. You do still have to worry about the box with keychain on it getting rooted, and leading them to the backup box, of course.
Re:Go with linode.com! (Score:4, Informative)
Having full root access (and therefore shell access) is very cool. This type of hosting beats all other types hands down, especially for the cost.
Re:johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Their terms and conditions are straight forward, no hidden legalese.
It's a good service.
Plus, because I'm an open source developer, they give me a hefty discount! I'm very happy with them.
If you do have a problem, their support is all geeks who have no problem answering any question I've thrown at them.
Re:Bytemark Hosting (Score:2, Informative)
And how many other ISPs or hosting providers will offer to help you configure qmail for virtual hosts, for no charge?
Don't forget to mention to them that if you are a 'free software developer', you can get a discount.
Things to whatch out for (Score:4, Informative)
2. Uptime. Providers that claim 99.999% or whatever uptime are simply lying. It's probably the uptime of their network connection, but not individual server - I've had 3 different VPS's over the past two years (Verio, JVDS and Spry), and every one of them has at least once experienced a server problem where it was down for several hours.
3. Proprietary things. Whatch out for provider trying to lock you into their way of doing things. This may be a complicated xinetd/qmail setup that works well with their GUI panel (which you may not care about). Once you get used to their way of doing things, it would be hard to move to another provider who will probably have a different setup.
4. Watch out for the price. The vast majority of the hosting companies out there operate as Ponzi schemes - their main source of revenue is the setup and pre-payment fees, but the monthly fee alone isn't enough to sustain their costs. This makes them very eager to keep signing up new customers and not to work hard on retaining them.
5. Few hosting providers will upgrade their servers, it's just too much trouble. So if you got a FreeBSD 4.3 or RedHat 7.2, it will probably stay this way despite of what the sales guy may tell you.
6. You don't know what hardware they are using. It is trivial to patch the kernel so that dmesg always reports it's a 2.4GHz Xeon whereas it's really a PII.
7. Most hosting companies don't like to reveal their inner workings. You can most of the time guess whether it is a FreeBSD jail, a Linux UML (those usually list memory limits as part of the price), a Linux VServer (not a lot of those yet, but it's the future most likely) or a proprietary solution like the ViaVerio crap. What this means is that you don't know what security and reliability measures they have in place, don't ever assume anything.
8. AUP. A more restrictive AUP is a good thing IMHO. Providers with liberal AUP's are usually winking that they like to host porn. You probably don't want to be on the same machine with a porn site because they will eat all your CPU. Some providers prefer porn customers because they are easy to deal with, always pay on time and don't like to draw attention. Then other providers don't host porn because they consider it immoral.
9. Make sure that the IP's you get have not been previously spoiled by a spammer. You will find out sooner or later when your e-mails sent from the VPS bounce.
Well that's about all I can think of right now...
Re:Bytemark Hosting (Score:3, Informative)
Plus they've got IPv6 support already, if you're looking to the future.
Re:JVDS (Score:2, Informative)
Yes they do. having worked IT security at the largest hosting providers in the world I can honestly say that yes IRC servers basicly paint a target saying "Hack and DDoS Me PLEASE!". alot of hosting providers will even go so far as to setup ACLs on routers to block ident and irc traffic.