[UFO Chicago] Linode, was "Comcast Cuts Off Bandwidth Hogs"

[Jordan Bettis]

On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 09:03:54AM -0500, Chris McAvoy wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 06:23:27PM -0500, sten wrote:
> >linode
> 
> On 4/5/07, Jordan Bettis <jordanb at hafd.org> wrote:
> >linode
> 
> What do you guys thing of Linode?  I currently have a handful of sites
> on dreamhost, and one slightly bigger site on textdrive.  I'd like to
> move the bigger site off of textdrive when my contract is up (not
> really a contract, I just paid for a year in advance, and they won't
> give me a refund if I move, I won't do that again).  I looked at
> Rimuhosting (which most people seem to like).  I hadn't heard of
> Linode before you two mentioned it.

I like linode very much. It is not a site hosting service though, 
it's a uml service. You get a uml instance in which you build your
own linux server, basically. The result is that you have root access
to run whatever service you please, with the downside being that you
have to administer your own computer

AFAIK linode was the first uml provider, and while they've always
been more on the expensive end of the scale in terms of cost 
compared to avaliable resources, they have excellent support and
generally try to be a buisness that makes their customers happy
(how quaint), a bit like how Speakeasy used to be. A good example
would be what Nate mentioned, they often upgrade their services 
and rather than doing what most companies try to do: use improved
service to attract more customers while refusing or grudginly give
it to existing customers, they make all upgrades retroactive for
all linodes, so it's common to login and realize that you suddenly
have more resources.

The disk access thing that Nate mentioned used to be a big deal
for me but I've not noticed it at all recently. I assume it's a
combination of them improving their kernels, tweaking the rate
limiter, and providing more memory (which was in very tight supply
on early linodes). Generally though you should only run as many
services as you have memory for and try to make swap access rare,
and if you're doing something that uses lots of database hits,
that might be problematic.

If you're looking for web hosting with nothing else, you could
probably save your money on linode and find much more attractive
offers elsewhere. If you want the flexibility of a UML though 
then I would recommend linode as a provider. 

-- 
Jordan Bettis -- Chicago Il.
  <http://neighborhoods.chicago.il.us>                  
    Photographs of Life in the Neighborhoods of Chicago