I want to buy domain(s) via Linode.com. I trust this company much more than russian registrars (I'm from russia).

This is off topic in this thread, open a new thread if you have further questions/issues.

But Linode is not a registrar, they are a VPS host. You can buy your domain from any registrar (I use namecheap.com) and then you buy a VPS from Linode that you can point your domain at.

I took it to mean he wants Linode to be a registrar.

I'm not sure it really makes sense for linode to get into a low margin business like registration. Theres plenty of good ones around already, and it's not exactly difficult to just set the nameservers to linode and be done with it.

Are you moderator to tell me what to do?

Linode.com could be reseller of registrars. I think it's not so hard to do, and will be much more convenient for customers.
In usual way I have to:
1) Choose domain registrar company, by reading hundreds of customers opinions.
2) Register new domain.
3) Write necessary records for domain (not for all users this step is trivial: example).
4) Set reverse DNS record in dashboard of Linode.com

If Linode.com will integrate this feature into dashboard, it will just 2 quick steps:
1) Register domain.
2) Write necessary records for domain.

Ok it's been days since we've had a suggestion in here.

I think it would be nice to have a checkbox somewhere that said "connect all of my private IPs to the same network" and linode did whatever magic they had to behind the scenes to make that happen, even across data centers.

Or, better, have an optional second private network that does the above, keeping the existing private network for single-data-center communications.

But... That's already what private IPs do, except for the "across data centers" part. If you had multiple linodes in the same DC, that checkbox wouldn't do anything...

It sounds like what you're asking for is free transfer between Linode datacenters.

I should have been more clear...I already use the private IPs within a single data center. What I'd like is seamless, secure, private communications between multiple data centers.

It doesn't have to be free - I would expect to pay for bandwidth (or have it come out of my pool), perhaps plus a setup charge or monthly charge or something for maintaining the connection.

Just offer support.

If we run into any trouble, or if we don't know to follow a documentation to install something, you could just, set it up for us.

for a cost, like per hour or per issue, just a suggestion

Now this is exactly what we need! If you can offer some managed service which can setup do all the initial configurations, install a server (Apache/nginx), secure the server and prepare it for the final deployment.... That will be really great! Actually, there are some people who don't need any continued server management... So, if you can give only the initial setup, then it will help us a lot!

I do worry and it's only a worry that came up after going from linode-for-fun customer to redoing my whole hosting gig & changing my model to use linode.

I didn't mind so much having to reboot to add a new IP for a new ecommerce customer who needs an SSL certificate. That was before my linode took half an hour or so to reboot.

The only support I can get on it is suggestions that may help but also involve far more down time than anyone would consider tolerable. I try to limit reboots to late at night... doesn't help. Still have people flip out on me.

The suggestions I got weren't promising, I find it hard to believe there isn't someone who knows linodes well enough to figure out what's really going on, I can't be risking my own sites & shared clients while I'm trying to establish a good reputation, on a hunch, for a problem that shouldn't be causable by anything I've done.

I'd like to have some kind of 'managed service' for stuff that's over my head or critical or could be made better sense of from the physical side or all of the above. I'd definitely pay to have an issue escalated to a "take it off my hands, make it right & don't screw my customers" level.

The need would/does arise very rarely. There isn't much budget for such a thing on a monthly basis. So an as needed system would probably be preferable.

I do like what you're saying and I can tell you I could really use some worry relief right now.

I'm not a customer yet, but considering it. I would like to add my 2 cents. I'm new at all this and have a small business and I would find a managed solution very useful. Linode looks pretty decent, but to use it I need to find a stable, reliable, cost-effective company that can manage my site/database for me on Linode.

Here are a few classics and my biggest headaches. I'll have to put up with them privately, but as a business I would rather see them in professional hands.

(1) managed database service. Clustered, per data center, connected through a private network and dedicated IF to your hosted customers signing up. Your service comes from creating and running the DB instances, managing space, monitoring performance, doing backups, providing optimization tips, etc. Offer MySQL and maybe Oracle.

(2) managed e-mail service. Run the mail servers (SMTP), provide IMAP mailboxes, storage quotas, implement virus and spam filters, do backups and offer web mail access (ad-free, of course). Find a way to provide good privacy.

(3) Secure file exchange platform, perhaps sharepoint-like, charged by storage, linkable to your hosting customers servers with iSCSI or similar. Privacy, same as above.

I think it would be great if there are managed services run the Linode way: extremly reliable, no-nonsense, with a stable cost that allows for longterm planning. You could leverage the trust you built with the rocksolid hosting service.

Greetings,
Frank

Here is a possible design.

Linode customer posts works to be done. example: "set up https://whatever.com using apache2 already installed on linode xyz and a low-assurance commode SSL certificate to be procured by linode for the customer"

Someone at Linode clarifies and prices these with a buy-it-now style offer and agrees on a automated "test" that will indicate that the work is complete. This person needs to be tasked for clearing roadblocks and rewarded for generating
a profitable volume of tasks keeping everyone busy and happy.

Roadblocks are things like "you have to do that yourself because SSL is about verifying the company's identity" or "it is easy to do just follow the instructions at the commode certificate website". The first is solvable by handing passwords or credentials back and forth and the second, while nice hand holding for a hobbyist, misses a potential sale for Linode and convenience for the customer.

If the customer accepts the price, then the work gets done. The customer never receives work that doesn't pass the automated test. Ideally the customer gets satisfaction, but in the event of a dispute the "test" can be employed.

If the customer doesn't like the price, he can enter a counteroffer, which might or might not get acted upon.

If the request doesn't become a deal within XX days, add an option for the work to go to a bulletin board of linode-member 3rd party providers. These could be star ranked for completed transactions or satisfaction or whatever. Yes this is similar to eLance or a dozen other sites, but I'd rather trust work to someone who uses linodes and is screened a little bit than some random provider on eLance.

I'm currently a VPS.net customer looking to migrate. One of the things that I like about VPS.net is its support infrastructure. Linode would do well to offer something similar.

At the low end, something like support tickets would be useful. VPS.net offers single issue support for $10 per ticket.

A more moderate managed offering would be node that is fully managed by Linode. At VPS.net you can have a node fully managed for $99 per month with a $45 setup fee. This includes:
[list=]Setup of your new VPS
Monthly security overhaul of the VPS
Domains Migration to VPS.NET DNS
Private DNS servers migration (if required)
ISPconfig, cPanel or Plesk setup
Setup / Migration of up to 20 hosted domains for non cPanel to cPanel migrations
Migration of your data from your old provider
Re-config of standard scripts to function within the new environment
Active monitoring of the VPS
24x7 Unlimited managed support
24x7 Livechat Support on Control Panel
100% SLA
[/list]

The next step would be a generic manged node for simple website services. This would be different from the previous "managed" offering in that this service would be preconfigured with Linode's choice of OS and apps and have preset configurations as a generic web server. This would be similar to VPS.net's "Cloud Hosting".

What I would be most interested in, however, is "Platform as a Service" offerings on Linode similar to dotCloud. IMHO, this is the ultimate in managed offerings. To be able to take different managed pieces, e.g. a python node and a postgresql node and patch them together to build, at a macro level, the infrastructure the developer needs to run their preferred site -- without having to worry about redundancy, scaling, backups, security, memory limits, storage space, etc. It just works. Beautiful. Or at least that's the idea.

I'm currently wavering between moving to dotCloud vs. moving to Linode. The downside to dotCloud is that it's based on Amazon AWS. What I would really like to see is dotCloud based on Linode. Then, the choice would be clear.