Virtual Server Hosting?

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

I'm using JVDS [jvds.com] right now and am reasonably pleased. Occasional unexplained reboots (also explained security reboots) aside, their speeds and prices are good.

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.

JVDS.com

I just use their shared hosting setup, but tech support has been very responsive and the price is reasonable.

Bytemark Hosting

http://www.bytemark-hosting.co.uk/ [slashdot.org]

Go with linode.com!

I'm a linode.com customer as a matter of fact. One of the things that impressed me the most initially was the open TOS/AUP... Don't do something illegal and you're fine. The message boards on the site also showed a strong since of community much as many large open source projects have. There's even an irc channel on OFTC [oftc.net] that the owner hangs out in.

Re:Go with linode.com!

I also agree. I have a basic linod virtual machine with 3 gb of disk space, soon to be bumped up to 4.5 gb. I've received immediate support help over IRC and can't be more pleased. You can install any distro you want practically on the linode virtual machine. Right now I'm running Fedora Core, because I really don't like debian. The terms of service are very good for most people's needs. In addition, freeswan support is in the linode kernel, as in tuntap support, so I can actually use freeswan or vpnc to connect to a vpn concentrator in my network at work if I needed to for whatever reason.

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.

Liquid Web

I work for Liquid Web and we offer VDS and Dedicated systems. You can check out our plans at http://www.liquidweb.com.

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

Virtual servers (running on nice enterprise dells) with FreeBSD or some form of Linux (i'm biased I know)
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.

Re:johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux

O yah I have been lusting after them for a while and finally found an excuse. Wicked fast machines. Fash network, I got over one megabit when pulling some source. The email support seems quick and coherent.

Re:johncompanies FreeBSD or Linux

Another vote for JC here; I have one personal and one work server set up with them - the customer support is FANTASTIC, they give discounts to open source developers, and the virtual machines are blazingly fast.

It is a bit disconcerting, however, when every email you receive from them is signed 'John', no matter what time of day it is :D

rimuhosting.com

I'm hosting a few sites with them, on the cheapest plan, and it seems to be pretty good so far.

Well...

Since you provided links to both companies, watch their sites.. Which ever one is /.'ed first.. Go with the other one.

PDXcolo.net Virtual Colocation

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

Disk Space Scrooges

I'm in the market for a VPS or dedicated server, however, I need more disk space than what is usually offered. I'm not doing anything illegal. I just want to store my stuff offsite and have an offsite server available for (possibly) commercial use. The problem is that most of these VPS offerings only come with around 4GB of disk space, and $5.00/mo per additional gig. Disk space is cheap. Why so chincy on the disk space. Here's my ideal VPS deal:

60GB Disk space
athlon 2100 or P4 1.6
256M RAM
root SSH
1 IP address
40G/mo transfer
$49.00/mo

Anyone know of a similar offering?

Matthew

Re:Disk Space Scrooges

I am part owner in a hoster and we run UML for just about everything that we do. Even our in-house mail and web servers are running under UML.

Pricing UML servers is a strange "artform". In your case, wanting 60G of disk pushes you up into the land of dedicated servers at $79 to $125 per month. This is probably a lot more processing power than you need.

The best offer that we would have for you is:

• 15 Gig disk
• 256Meg RAM (128 Meg core and 128 Meg swap running out of tmpfs space)
• 40G/month of transfer
• $50/month pre-pay 1yr + $0 setup or
• $60/month billed quarterly + $100 setup

Our servers are available either located in Philadelphia with internet connectivity on Level-3, Verio, or AT&T (your choice), or in Los Angeles with internet connectivity BGP'd between Level-3, Yipes, and Williams. The underlying servers are AMD Athlon XP2200's with 1Gig of ram, Raid-1 80Gig drives, and 100Mbit switched connectivity that is not bandwidth limited. In general, bursting to a couple of megabits from individual connections is pretty easy.

Our servers are designed to not be overcommitted. We basically cut a server up into 20 increments. Each increment gets 32 Meg of ram and 32 Meg of swap. The swap is run out of a "tmpfs" mount on the underlying host, so it is usually ram as well. Running this way, the only users that have ever complained about performance were running applications that ran their virtuals out of RAM, not the underlying host.

The servers themselves have an SSH based console that lets you see processes, kill your virtual, restart your virtual, and "become" the virtuals console upon a reboot. This lets you fix filesystem errors and watch bootup, etc.

We have options for local and off-site backups, multi-patch connectivity for green-screen applications, additional IP addresses, including IP addresses on multiple backbones, local and remote replicated file systems, and a bunch of other stuff.

In about 2 weeks, we are reworking our website with new UML offerings that are more flexible, allowing users to buy RAM and disk seperately, configure server pairs as hot-backup systems, buy dedicated physical systems with UML pre-configured so you can sell your own UML "sub hosts", and more. Of particular interest to a lot of users will be user-manageable external firewalls, and managed security services so that you don't need to worry about patches, etc.

Our website is: http://mirroredsolutions.com [mirroredsolutions.com]

You can call our offices (yes there are real humans here) at [phone] or [phone]. Our AUP is pretty simple, don't spam and we are happy. Depending on which of our networks you want to be on, IRC servers are allowable, but check with us first so that we are sure they will work for you.

One last point for people considering getting into the UML hosting business. There is an unbelievable amount of fraud out there. We get >75% bogus orders. There are orders with real credit card numbers with real names and phone numbers presumably coming from Russian or Far East organized crime. We have setup our system to "require" 100% phone authorization before we turn a server on.

Doug Dumitru
EasyCo LLC
610 237-2000
[e-mail] (I get so much spam, a little more can't hurt)

rimuhosting.com

I've been extremely pleased with RimuHosting [rimuhosting.com].

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

you could just use freebsd's jail fraimwork, which doens't require any special usermode-fu crud to mess with. It is simply there in any FreeBSd system, and is chroot on steroids. I simply hate the use of the word "jail" on a linux system as linux doens't have a "jail" command, just a chroot, and a bunch of scripts that sit on top of that which trap() things to handlers. Furthermore, you could simply use the linux compatibility mode in freebsd, which as it turns out is faster than linux itself, and then jail that off. Each freebsd jail can have its' own IP address, its own filesystems, and whatever else any other system has.

BSDHosting.net

Check out BSDHosting.net [bsdhosting.net]. They use FreeBSD to provide jailed servers with full root access. I've been with them for more then a year now, and I've been blown away by the level of service. FAR superior to any other host that I've ever used. Their support is provided by serious geeks, and they will go out of their way to solve any problems you may have. Try calling them & asking them a few questions & you'll quickly see just how good these guys are.

Happy Linode customer

I've used Linode for about 3 months, and it has worked great for me. No more DSL worries for my servers...

JohnCompanies = fanatical support

In my experience as a customer, they live up to all the rave reviews about their support and premium bandwidth. It's easy to get spoiled when hardware, network and OS issues are virtually non-existent.

I have been using

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.

Media Temple, the temple of virtual web hosting

A good choice might be Media Temple http://www.mediatemple.net [mediatemple.net]. They offer plenty of goodies including MySQL, PHP, Flash, e-mail & aliasing, SSH login, and web-based control of all services, even page editing. Service has been reliable and quick with me. Check it out.

VPS, maybe not?

We were with Eryxma for a while, using their virtual-private-server solution. It was nice for a while, though we didn't particularly care for the redhat installation (we're more slackware-oriented.) The speed varied sometimes drastically on their end; we got blacklisted at least once because someone at some time had been a big-time spammer somewhere on our IP block; and eventually the service was discontinued and we were put out in the cold because they simply couldn't deal with the amount of abuse on their VPS servers: hackers would grab a machine for a month to use it to DDOS, etc. (cheap, trouble-free way to have another ssh-able machine for nefarious ... things.) We were rather disappointed.

Don't be fooled: a VPS server is still a shared resource, and you'll still feel like you're living with noisy roommates who want to party all night.

Your mileage will hopefully vary (on the positive side,) but we're now much happier having our little box on a shelf at our ISP. The guy's nice, and the cost of having shelf space is actually less than what we were paying for a slice of a server off in another state.

I can go kick the thing when I'm mad at it. Good feeling.

Another happy linode customer

I am hosting one of my business sites on Linode.com (platostn.com [platostn.com]).
It has been great to me. I love having a cheap web account that I can use emerge on (I am a Gentoo fan).
You get to pick your distro with Linode.
Also, I should say that I was using hub.org (freebsd setup). They had HORRIBLE reliability. There was too much "scheduled downtime" and way too much unscheduled downtime.
+1 linode [linode.com]
-Jackson

Linode all the way

Linode.com's hosting services are very good. All UML hosting sites seem to be working through some teething problems as UML matures but Linode.com has been exemplary in doing everything possible to make UML work well on their systems and provide a solid hosting service. And I have found their offerings to be very reliable.

I have had a server there for nearly 6 months and have had one unscheduled reboot (due to the data center accidentally pulling a power plug which I assume is a very rare occurrance) and one scheduled reboot, to patch the host system kernel to secure it against a local root exploit. Aside from that, it has been 100% rock solid.

Linode.com's web site and host management are top notch too. The quality of the experience there really gives me confidence that Linode.com is a serious company which is going to be around providing great service for a very long time. When I looked into other virtual hosting services and saw web sites that looked like someone's little sister designed and implemented them, well they didn't give me much confidence in the company behind the site.

But Linode.com's excellent site, terms of service, and absolutely fantastic support have all made me a very happy customer indeed.

Highly recommended.

How much RAM?

It's been a while since I've worked in an environment with so little RAM -- I don't know how/if things will run.

I see that the base plan for several of these includes 64 MB of RAM, but I see that at least RimuHosting states that Java servlets won't run with 64 MB of RAM, and more is recommended if using a MySQL database [rimuhosting.com], I don't see anything yet on Linode's site about practical requirements. Does anyone have any experiences with what's necessary/practical. It seems that on the base plan, doubling the RAM from 64 MB to 128 MB also doubles the entire monthly cost [linode.com]. I'm just interested in using it as a hobbyist, and it wouldn't be high volume.

Zorka.com

I suggest Zorka.com [zorka.com]

The tech support is really wonderful, the prices good, and it's run by a guy in a bank vault.

~Donald

Things to whatch out for

When they mention the amount of disk space available, that may or may not include the virtual server itself. For example, looking at the linode page, the free space is the space left after the distribution is installed.

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...

Linode and dedicated servers

I personally used linode.com for around 2 months and I was very impressed with their service. The ability to "reinstall" any OS instantly and play around was a really cool feature with endless possabilities. Best of all, their control software _just_worked_.

You might also want to look into getting a dedicated server. I just picked up a P3 800 with 256MB of ram for $40/month. Most VDS supplies are charging that much for a lot less horsepower. There are plenty of deals out there to be had. Check out www.webhostingtalk.com.

Bytemark

I use Bytemark Hosting [bytemark-hosting.co.uk], and I like them very much - prices start at 15/month for 64MB of RAM, 3Gb of Disk space and 1Gb of backup space - although given the current weakness of the dollar, I don't suppose it works out as well economically as the US ones do.

However, if you use them, be sure to put me as your referrer ('tim'), You can choose between either getting me 1.50 off my hosting fees per month, or they'll make a one-off donation of 7 for the Debian project - your choice.

I've always found service wit them to be fast and efficient - and they're a nice couple of guys.

VPSCenter.com

I've only had an account with them for a few weeks, but so far, VPSCenter.com has been great; $19.95 for 2GB and 25GB xfer. They use H-Sphere as their control panel software. (I didn't know about linode though.)

Pigs Can Fly Computing

Not to toot my own horn but :
Pigs Can Fly Computing offers low cost Virtual private servers based on UML with full root access starting at $5/month .