I'm firmly sold on the value of the Linode 64 package, and thinking about upgrading to the 128 for more disk space, processor, and memory. (I don't need the bandwidth.) But I looked at rack providers before deciding on a Linode, and you can get your own box with decent specs for less than you'd pay for the Linode 256. Is there an advantage to going with a Linode at that price level?

_________________
John Schofield
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator
Office Mechanic Consulting
Mac, Unix, and PC Computer Support
www.officemechanic.com

John,

I'd be curious where you saw such deals, and dubious as to what the catch is. I've been a very happy linode user for about a month now, and here's what I see as its advantages over a "real" box:

• Great customer service -- Chris just can't be beat
• Wonderful control panel that easily allows you to control the disk partitioning, installing images of different distros, booting, shutdown, etc.
• Perfect uptime (unless you're unfortunate enough to end up on host4)
• Great pipe: high bandwidth, low latency

So before I took a serious look at a "real" box, I'd consider those three things. The first is, of course, important all around. The second one is obviously more important if you want your Linode to experiment with, and the latter two are more important if you're using it as a real server.

-"Zow"

For the price of the linode 256, you could get some small dedi box.

But even though the spec would probably be slightly more than the linode 256, the reason why the prices are so cheap it because, they are not that much use to people.

You have to remember that with linode you get the ability to use more than your alloated amount of CPU. You would not get this on a dedi box.

It depends on what you use your linode for remember that alot of dedi providers will only use support red hat, there are some that will support debian, but not a lot and not usually the low cost ones.

You then have to take in to account where the box is located and the availble bandwidth capacity and the quality of the bandwidth.

Adam

I have to say, I have been wondering also why the larger Linode packages are not discounted. All of the features (memory, hard drive space, bandwidth cap, etc) are exact multiples of the basic Linode 64 package, and the prices are exact multiples also (well actually the larger packages are more slightly more expensive since, for example, Linode 128 would be $39.90, instead of $39.95 per month, if it was exactly twice as expensive as Linode 64 - but the difference is negligeable).

It would seem to make the most sense to me to make a Linode 128 be slightly discounted per unit of resource when compared to a Linode 64. A Linode 128 is exactly twice as "big" as a Linode 64, and right now costs (almost) exactly twice as much. But why not charge, say, $5 less per month for a Linode 128, at $34.95/mo. A Linode 192 would be a further $5/mo discount, at $49.95, and a Linode 256 would be $64.95. Or some similar pricing structure which would make a larger Linode slightly more cost-effective when compared to a smaller Linode.

This would result in a lower profit per Linode for the larger Linodes, but it would presumably make it easier to get subscribers for those Linodes. Could be a worthwhile tradeoff, if it results in more "volume".

True, but on the downside, the lower bound for the CPU that you are guaranteed is pretty low - 64 Mhz for a Linode 64. I have seen dedicated servers with 1.2 Ghz Athlons and 512 MB of RAM listed for the same price as a Linode 256. I would personally take a guaranteed 1.2 Ghz and 512 MB of RAM, with dedicated access to the hard drive, over a range of virtual CPU speeds from 64 Mhz to dual 2.4 Ghz and 256 MB of RAM, and shared access to the hard drive, any day.

That being said, I think that there are alot of reasons that Linodes are more attractive than dedicated servers anyway ...

And, you won't find a dedicated system available for anything close to as cheap as a Linode 64 (or Linode 128), which is why those packages are so popular - Linode 64 and Linode 128 have been sold out/selling out for weeks, but the higher level packages don't seem to be selling nearly as fast. At least that's what it looks like on the "Linode Availability" page ...

Strickly my opinion, having both a linode for personal use, and a few dedicated servers for business and work use.

The linode 32 and 64 are both really good deals for what you get. (A real co-op type of environment -- that overcomes many if not all pitfalls of hosting in a typical shared environment.)

That being said --- with the prices of quality dedicated boxes at places like Rackshack and the spinoff from The Planet (name escapes me at the moment) -- hovering less than $100 a month for a pretty good box with lots of space (40-60 Gig), good CPU, and oodles of bandwidth (500-700 GB a month) it makes the more expensive linodes not appear to be as good of deal (dollar for dollar) as the lower end linodes.

The one major advantage to me would be the multiple OS types on a linode, along with the ability to have multiple OS's setups at the same time to switch between (totally cool features of UML).

Plus a lot of the dedicated servers you rent are more geared towards hosting 200 web sites with an embedded control panel rather than playing around with a true server anyway

Can you explain why switching between OS is important? It's cool but why would you want to switch the OS of a live server?

You probably wouldn't want to switch OS's on a live server, would you? Not everyone uses their Linode to just serve web pages. Can you think of any other reasons why this feature is important?

How about:

• Choice.
• Freedom to re-install at will.
• Ability to deploy multiple distros at the same time and boot between them -- which is good for testing and experimenting.

-Chris

The advantage of linode, is more the small things

At places like EV1 Servers (RackShack) you pay $30 - $70 for a system restore, which can take them a long time to get to you. At linode you can restore to an image yourself within minutes and not pay anything.

Places like EV1 and server matrix you are usually forced to use Red Hat, which is now casuing people a lot of problems with the end of life.

Places like server matrix will only allow you to run something like debian or gentoo on their more expensive servers, and yes they offer more bandwidth, HD and higher specs but you do not get the same level of service.

You can not upgrade to a higher spec within a few minutes and keep on running; you have to re-install and configure everything. You can not talk to the owner of server matrix and they will not go out of their way to do things for you.

Linode is still a small but growing company people like to experiment with things, on linode you can do that, without it takeing ages and costing money to go back to a fresh install. When linode grows and gets more servers in more DC and increase their bandwidth commitment then maybe there will be more bandwidth offered and at better prices.

Chris is always open to new ideas and in the end you do not know what will be coming next.

--- Possible Ideas -----

With the linode set-up it is probably possible for people to have their own fully dedicated machines, if there was the demand. Where else could you go from a VPS solution working up the spec chain until you need something more powerful and then move to a dedicated box, still with a UML base but you get all the resources, without having to reconfigure everything, change IP address etc.

The possibilites are endless....


Adam

You're correct, you wouldn't want to switch OS on a live server, unless, for instance, the OS vendor just decided to stop supporting and updating their free product (ie Redhat). The greatest advantage of this is not the ability to switch distros, but the ability to choose a distro when you start.

Also, Linodes are cheap enough that some people use them for experimenting or training, not for a live server. It can take a long time to install a new version of an OS on my 2nd partition in the office; at Linode I can have a new OS to play with in less than five minutes.

_________________
John Schofield

Apple Certified Technical Coordinator

Office Mechanic Consulting

Mac, Unix, and PC Computer Support

www.officemechanic.com

Not exactly, learning a little about building RPMS (pretty easy) ensures that you can support your distro for quite sometime after it has been EOL'ed.

Sunny Dubey