Curious to know, why should I choice Linode over a dedicated host?

For example

At Cari.net, I can get a dedicated server:

1 GB RAM
250 GB storage
1300 GB transfer
Only person on server
$85/mo

At Linode, I can get:
1 GB RAM
48GB storage (nearly 80% less)
600 DB transfer (more than 50% less)
15 other people on the server
$60/mo

Now yes, the dedicated is $25/mo more per month BUT,
- I eliminate all the other 14 people off the server
- I get more than 2x the transfer
- I get more than 5x storage

Just curious.

P.S.
Full disclosure, I'm a potential customer on Linode

I won't pretend to know anything about Dedicated servers, or the company you mentioned, but I will say this:

You don't get the Linode Platform Manager, allowing you to resize partitions, deploy multiple distributions, manage DNS VERY easily, and manage multiple users on the Manager itself (if you choose to).

Thats really all I have to add.

Edit: Linode is also working on their Backup Service (currently Beta) which will cost substantially less than you will get elsewhere.



Thanks,
Smark

Hello -

I'm not familiar with the company you are contemplating, but a few points to keep in mind:

• Is your transfer rate limited (will you ever be allowed to reach 1.3TB?)
• What kind of storage? Linode uses RAID10.
• Linode support rocks.
• What kind of processor(s)? We hear "My Linode runs circles around my old dedicated server" all the time. Linode gives you 4 CPUs. Compare apples to apples here and get a price for a quad-core Xeon.
• Will they nickel and dime you for tasks easily handled by the Linode Manager such as reboots, OS reloads, etc?
• I won't go into all the advantages of the Linode Manager, ease of upgrade/downgrade, etc.
• Are you sure you need 1GB of RAM?

-Tom

Another thought is rather than using a single Linode, you can use multiple smaller Linodes and scale horizontally depending on demand.

Yep, I seriously question the quoted price for the Dedicated Server. I would seriously look at what you're getting and the reliability.

_________________

Where "Thought Crime" is commited
http://www.rejecttheherd.net

I have made the same comparisons as you have and these comparisons lead me to leave Linode in 2006 for ServerPronto's dedicated hosting service.

However, other factors have lead me back to Linode from ServerPronto three years later.

It is true that some aspects of the Linode plans leave alot to be desired from a resources standpoint (allow me once again to lament publicly on the fact that in an age where hard disk space costs less than $100 per TERABYTE, Linode is still offering only 24 GB on their $30/month plan). However, some aspects - such as CPU burst - compare quite favorably even with dedicated hosts.

And then there's the fact that Linode's server management infrastructure is 100x better than what you are going to get with a bargain basement dedicated hosting service. With ServerPronto, you have to *CALL THEM ON THE PHONE* if you want to have your server manually rebooted. And you get almost no server management tools on their very crummy web account interface. With Linode, the Platform Manager gives you complete control over your server; there is nothing that you would want to or need to do to your server that the platform manager does not allow you to do quickly and easily.

To summarize, I'd say this:

Dedicated hosts give you more resources for a cheaper cost.

Linode gives you a much better server management infrastructure and much better end-user support.

You have to decide what is more important to you. I have done both and in the end, I'm coming back to Linode.

However, I *am* going to keep bitching about hard disk space on Linode at every opportunity I can get.

Did I mention that Linode needs to offer more disk space on their plans?

I'll continue to bitch that a 1U server has room for four physical disks, so there's only room for two disks worth of data with a RAID 1+0 configuration. A quick Google finds 500GB hot-swappable SATA drives for ~$350, giving the cost for 1TB of storage closer to about $700, not considering lifespan, power, or cooling. There's a huge difference between 1TB of disk and 1TB of storage, and that difference is seen when a disk fails.

Throw in the multi-year lifespan of a server, and 640GB (40x Linode 360 @ 16GB each) may well be as much as Linode can reliably sell across the entire network.

Looking at ServerPronto's main page, none of the dedicated plans below $170/mo appear to include plural "disks", so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Remember: don't just look at the raw numbers, look at what's underneath the numbers.

(But yeah, more space would be good. Something like S3, but faster and better and local to the Linodes...)

To expand on Tasaro's post, you need to consider the benefits of virtualization.

* "Physical" console access if something goes wrong: Lish
* Ease of rebooting
* Ease of rebuilding servers
* Fewer hardware headaches: if a piece of hardware starts going bad, let someone else worry about it and diagnose it
* Non-data service restoration: if hardware fails in the server, the hard drives can just be swapped to equivalent hardware
* Cloning virtual machines to create a cluster of servers with identical configuration on-the-fly
* The ability to add/remove resources and servers with no notice nor contract

Many of these features encourage trying things out. I have a dedicated server and a number of VPSes with Linode and elsewhere. I am very cautious when upgrading kernels or even rebooting my dedicated server. If it doesn't come up again, I'll have to call my host and likely pay an hourly rate for them to get it running again. On the other hand, I test stuff out on the virtuals all the time. I know that if I break one of the VPSes, I can probably fix it via Lish, overlay it with another, or at worst case rebuild it.

I'm not saying dedicated servers don't have their uses, but I think most people should avoid them. Application developers don't need to bother themselves with hardware.

The day Linode gets SAN storage at reasonable per-GB prices will be the last day I even glance at dedicated server providers. Not that I glance much that way anyway...

I don't know what world you live in but plenty of 1U, 8 disk harddrive with 16 DIMMs exists.

Here's an example of just one:

http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i6091/d ... server.php

You can fully load the server with 64 GB RAM, 8 TB disk for less than $5,000. (These are the servers powering Wikipedia)

Actually, local disk might be preferred by some due to lower latency.

Wouldn't all of the above be gain if you simply ran your dedicated server with VM on top of it?

That one there looks to be a 2U chassis, but I will concede that it is possible to stick 8x 2.5" drives in a 1U chassis:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/1U/?chs=113

http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i22978/ ... 500-1U.php

I don't believe an cost-effective set of speedy 8x 2.5" drives would offer substantially more storage than a cost-effective set of speedy 4x 3.5" drives, however.

Which works well and is preferred for the OS and a few other things, but how about mounting NFS from an internal Array for data eh?

_________________


Where "Thought Crime" is commited

http://www.rejecttheherd.net

You also need to know what are you going to use it for. If you only going to use it lightly, a VPS is fine. But if you do something that's intensive like doing lots of database queries or handling very heavy traffic, then you would need a dedicated server. If your using your server lightly and you have a dedicated server, you wasting your money where you can have the same thing at the lower cost. Plus there are features on a VPS that dedicated servers don't have, like a manager.