Linode VS. Dreamhost VPS

Dreamhost is selling "unlimited" disk space and bandwidth. Which means they are really overselling. You might want to take a look at what's not allowed in their "unlimited" policy: http://dreamhost.com/unlimited-policy/ It sounds very subjective and seems like they could decide that the gigs of audio files are not necessary "or your websites directly".

With Linode, the space you're paying for is yours. You can do pretty much what you want with it as long as it's not illegal.

From a financial perspective, would it be possible for you to host the client site on Linode but keep the files on Amazon S3 or similar?

Mr Nod,

The AS3 solution would be the most desirable. Do you know of any "How to's" in regards to connecting a Linode to AS3. Does your Linode see your AS3 account as a mounted drive? It would be interesting to hear from some folks who have a node that is currently configured this way.

I do something similar (a large amount of audio files + a Linode-hosted application). I'm using django-storages to handle it all, and it's pretty transparent. Most decent frameworks should have a way to do this.

I have been on DreamHost for a long time and also have a VPS.

There's a big difference between Linode and DreamHost VPS that I haven't seen anyone mention yet. Even with VPS, DreamHost does not give you root access to your virtual server. So like the shared hosts, you are still at their mercy as far as maintaining the OS and installed packages–and DreamHost is notoriously bad at keeping up with updates, even security updates.

I just signed on to Linode recently to try it out as an alternative to VPS for this very reason, even though I get a $10/month VPS discount from DreamHost (for helping them with some beta testing a while back).

@L2G:

I have been on DreamHost for a long time and also have a VPS.

There's a big difference between Linode and DreamHost VPS that I haven't seen anyone mention yet. Even with VPS, DreamHost does not give you root access to your virtual server.

That statement does not appear to be correct. From their VPS page:

> High Level of Control

Unlike Shared hosting, you have control over your VPS. You have full root access to your virtual server, and the ability to reboot remotely from our homegrown web panel. Utilize our API and write code to programmatically control your VPS.

I had to look a little more closely at my VPS control panel to see how to give myself root access… but you're right. I stand corrected.

Hi,

Do you have any idea about how much could cost a cloud hosting equal to dreamhost $200/month VPS ? (4000 MB)

Is it easy to move from Dreamhost to cloud hosting ? Any tutorial ?

Thanks.

@buythiscomputer:

Hi,

Do you have any idea about how much could cost a cloud hosting equal to dreamhost $200/month VPS ? (4000 MB)

Is it easy to move from Dreamhost to cloud hosting ? Any tutorial ?

Thanks.

You could just check the prices on Linode's website… The website you're currently on…

A linode with 4GB of RAM can vary in price between $136 to $160 per month depending on payment term, but the other aspects (like disk and bandwidth) are not comparable.

Dreamhost claims to offer unlimited disk and bandwidth, but of course that's silly, and it's not really unlimited. The problem is you never know when they're going to cut you off and say "You're using too much"

With Linode, you know exactly what you get. You get 160GB of high-speed storage (4x 15K RPM SAS in RAID-10), and 1600GB per month of transfer. And you can use up every byte of each every month without Linode ever complaining. Because that's what you paid for.

Thanks for reply.

Dreamhost is really unlimited, at least for most of us, even heavy users but they are too often down also, it's becoming more and more boring…

So the only problem with Linode is that I have to setup and manage everything myself ?

Is it difficult ?

Thanks.

@buythiscomputer:

Thanks for reply.

Dreamhost is really unlimited, at least for most of us, even heavy users but they are too often down also, it's becoming more and more boring…

So the only problem with Linode is that I have to setup and manage everything myself ?

Is it difficult ?

Thanks.

There's a lot of information in the Linode Library - however some knowledge of the CLI will help ;)

If you've never worked with it yourself and used managed hosting - I hear good things about VPSBuddy on these forums. I've never used their services myself, though.

I've been on Dreamhost for 6 years now. Up until now I was quite happy, but then my site was hacked and the one thing I asked them to help me with they ignored. Several support tickets were sent in for various reasons and nearly all were unread when the person responded as the answers never had anything to do with my questions.

So I decided I'd try out the VPS, so I could have more control over my server. Well that didn't help. Not only is my issue still not fixed (even though I fixed it on linode in mere seconds), but I found out that the costs are enormous.

When you say you want 512MB of RAM you don't actually get that much. You get 512MB of total memory, not RAM. My site, which can run on very minimal specifications, is using upwards of 2GB of "total" memory, even though the actual RAM usage reported has yet to go over 200MB.

So yeah, I came over here and once I move everything over I'm never looking back. I know that's not overly helpful but I wanted to warn you that Dreamhost VPS is not a very good solution at all. Whatever RAM they say you get is not RAM, it's "total memory".

That's probably more of an OpenVZ-vs-Xen issue. They do memory management very differently.

Hello,

Can I know how is Linode admin/menu ? Does it look like Dreamhost or someone needs to be more experienced to use it ?

Thanks.

The Linode Manager is very simple and data forward, showing the essential information up front. A new, open-source manager is currently being worked on at this time as well.

Owning an account is free, so if you'd like to see it you're free to sign up. If you're new to Linode and want to give it a try, use the code 'linode10' for some starting credit too.

@sohsoh5:

The Linode Manager is very simple and data forward, showing the essential information up front. A new, open-source manager is currently being worked on at this time as well.

Owning an account is free, so if you'd like to see it you're free to sign up. If you're new to Linode and want to give it a try, use the code 'linode10' for some starting credit too.

Thank you so much.

In case I would like to close a Dreamhost account, do you provide some help to migrate my websites from Dreamhost to Linode ?