Which VPS host do you recommend?

[hiigara]

From a previous post I saw linode. Is it still the best?
What about myhosting or inmotion?

[Harkins]

Awesome nick, I loved that game.

Linode is still the best, yes. http://www.lowendbox.com has a nice collection of small VPSs, as well as tips on doing a surprising amount with them.

[hiigara]

Thanks. lowendbox is a very good resource.

[dbest]

i used servint and would surely recommend them.

[tspike]

Hi hiigara,

Thought I'd chime in. I just signed up for Linode, so I can't speak to having a long-standing relationship with them, but my initial experiences were very positive.

- Activation was immediate: my server was provisioned in less than 5 minutes
- Good selection of recent and popular distros (I went with Ubuntu 10.10, but they also have Arch, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, and Slackware in various flavors)
- Everything seems to be pretty responsive
- The 10%/1 year, 15%/2 year discount is a nice option

All in all I'm pretty happy with my choice so far.

If you do end up signing up and feel like buying me a beer (beer makes me happy!), feel free to use my referral link http://www.linode.com/?r=5a484befc4dc20dc3b3302a1e922d335af6a0d19

Cheers,
Tres

[Nox]

What do you think about Amazon AWS? I think EC and flexible cost would be quite suitable and the fact there's quite a nice array of things for free (including the VPS*) for one year I'd assume more people would try it ... am I missing anything? Doidel afaik seems to be happy with it so far, still...

*) more precisely there's some amount of CPU hrs... I unable to guess if it would be enough in average

[edmazur]

I've been using Linode since January 2010 to host my game (usually around 50-100 players online) and it's been great.

For price, I've been on their lowest plan: $20/month for 512MB RAM, 20GB disk, 200GB monthly bandwidth. And I think this actually started out as 384MB RAM and 16GB disk, but every so often they upgrade the resources provided by each plan for no additional cost.

For server performance, it's held up fine for my game. For the past 30 days, I've averaged 15.66% CPU usage, 138.65 kb/s outgoing, 28.32 kb/s incoming, a 714.66 I/O rate, and it's performed fine during this time. The server uptime is currently at 324 days (and would be higher except that you have to restart your Linode to get the upgraded resources mentioned above), so downtime isn't really an issue.

For support, ticket response time has been very quick (under 10 minutes) for the few times I've needed it.

All in all, I've had a very good experience with Linode and give them my full recommendation.

[Delifisek]

Hetzner.de gives full blown pc for 49 euro per month. (149 euro for first setup). there whre cheaper solutions too...

[StudioFortress]

I'd like to upvote Linode. I'm on their basic plan, and it's simply excellent. I was also shown these benchmarks recently where Linode came out on top.

[andrewjbaker]

I use Linode too.

[Ecce]

I'm using prgmr.com and very happy with them. Incredibly bare bones, but awesome prices.

[coreyman]

I use yourdomaingoeshere.com I'm on the vps2 plan and it runs perfect for what little I do.

[Chris]

How about Linode support? Will they install all the boring linux stuff for me? Can I manage it via web based control panel alone?

[hiigara]

How about Linode support? Will they install all the boring linux stuff for me? Can I manage it via web based control panel alone?

I am so happy I choose Linode. Their library.linode.com is an amazing source of information.
I just followed the guides copying and pasting without thinking, and everything worked at the first attempt.
There is no control panel, you do everything on the command line.
I had some experience installing LAMP and postfix mail server from scratch, but I believe you don't need it.
I don't know if their support is good or not cause I didn't even need to use it!

[edmazur]

Linode is indeed mostly self-managed, so you're responsible for installing software, keeping it updated, and so on. This isn't really too bad and I definitely prefer the extra flexibility is gives you. It will help if you know your way around the command line, know how to ssh, etc. because the only things you really do from the web-based panel are tasks like starting/stopping your server.

And as hiigara mentioned, the Linode library is indeed a great source of information. It's kept up-to-date with guides on how to install various things and has basics too about linode, choosing/deploying a distro, linux sysadmin basics, setting up LAMP, and so on.

[133794m3r]

I've not used them yet, but their price what they offer is amazing. http://tildehost.com/ 5.95USD/mo it's about the same price as a hosting account except this way you get a lot lot more service for that price. It's completely unmanaged so I don't know if anyone would honestly take it unless they're into handling their own stuff but for that low of a price, I don't think you're going to find a better deal.

[ajacksified]

What do you think about Amazon AWS? I think EC and flexible cost would be quite suitable and the fact there's quite a nice array of things for free (including the VPS*) for one year I'd assume more people would try it ... am I missing anything? Doidel afaik seems to be happy with it so far, still...

*) more precisely there's some amount of CPU hrs... I unable to guess if it would be enough in average

I use EC2 for pretty much everything - really easy to set up, and good performance. You can run a micro instance for about $5 / month (if not free.) Neflaria, which sees about 200-250 active concurrent users, runs on 6 loadbalanced micro instances for the web side, and one high-cpu database server, and it runs us about $400 / month. (To be honest, we don't need that big of a database server... with 250 active users, during the most active time, we don't get past 7% CPU.) The 6 micros each run at about 20% cpu.

[Harkins]

(To be honest, we don't need that big of a database server... with 250 active users, during the most active time, we don't get past 7% CPU.) The 6 micros each run at about 20% cpu.

Wow. Why so many web app instances? Do you use a lot of ram/disk? I've heard a number of people say I/O is their real limiting factor on EC2, has that been the case for you?

[ajacksified]

(To be honest, we don't need that big of a database server... with 250 active users, during the most active time, we don't get past 7% CPU.) The 6 micros each run at about 20% cpu.

Wow. Why so many web app instances? Do you use a lot of ram/disk? I've heard a number of people say I/O is their real limiting factor on EC2, has that been the case for you?

I/O is a little bit of a limiting factor, sure, but with APC enabled for PHP it really isn't an issue for us. We have that many because they're only a few bucks a month to run; and because players occasionally try to DDoS us when we ban them. So we just flip on another instance 

That actually goes to show another strength of EC2 - I can take one of the extra webeservers down, clone and online a new webserver in less than five minutes if we come under unusually high load.