Linode to learn and host using Linux

[Andy]

I came across www.linode.com and it looks like awesome hosting with great customer reviews, various locations for the servers, virtual private servers (VPS), root access and 14 flavours of Linux to try and switch between. Also, the cost is low: from $20 per month.

I may try them out, not just for the hosting but to become more proficient at setting up hosting, DNS, mailservers, linux admin etc. Using cPanel doesn't teach you much. I can think of it as a $20 per month hands-on training course. And, no I don't want to set up a Linux server at home (partly because my ISP seems to be blocking port 80).

[Menard]

*Bleep* those prices are pretty good for the offering. I just hope the availability of the plans holds up.

[Andy]

I just hope the availability of the plans holds up.

I think it will since they have been hosting for several years.

I think (therefore I think) the "availability" is the number of accounts left on the latest server. When this runs out they will activate another box. It's just a marketing tactic I think. Why would they turn away business?

So is anyone using Linode?

I am thinking of switching from Kiosk.ws to Linode, not because there is anything wrong with Kiosk (I joined them in the hope of building a residual income from recommending the hosting as an affiliate but I got no signups and it is beginner oriented hosting with a great control panel and video tutorials at $18 a month).

What sparked me off on this search was a friend asking for a recommended host for SVN ready hosting (for collaborative development online). One of his friends is recommending http://www.mediatemple.net/ So maybe people know about this host too?

[Menard]

What sparked me off on this search was a friend asking for a recommended host for SVN ready hosting (for collaborative development online). One of his friends is recommending http://www.mediatemple.net/ So maybe people know about this host too?

MediaTemple's Grid Hosting looks interesting. I'm not finding any information, yet, on resource usage limit except for something like GPU's, but I get a 404 error when I click on the link to find out what that is.

I've had clustered hosting before, and the uptime and speed can be good. The downside is if you have a site you update regularly, updates take a while to effect due to the clustered hosting.

Byethost offers an affordable clustered hosting. All of their plans (okay, both of them) are clustered hosting.

Downtime was rare. Usually only during maintenance, and that is often not a problem with clustered hosting as they can do maintenance while your site is still up on another server.

The only downside I had with Byethost is that they lost an entire website of mine. Don't know what happened, and was dropping the account anyway, but I found it to be annoying. That is the only problem I had with them other than to have them turn off the accelerators (their term) on my account to allow me to update in real time.

If anybody has any info on MediaTemple or Linode, I'd like to hear some more.

I have been looking around at VPS hosting and am comparing plans. Need to also find some online file hosting for media files or a shared plan that will allow that.


*Edit

Didn't know that Amazon.com provides web services. Anybody familiar enough with this to calculate what this means: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011

[Andy]

I don't like the idea of waiting for changes to a site to go live.

Regarding Amazon's hosting, I heard of S3 being useful to host videos.

After reading their blurb it seems like you would be billed for every hour that a server was running. For a website, that would be 24 hours a day so it looks like the basic cost for running a web server would be $2.40 per day plus bandwidth charges of around $0.17 per GB