Hi,

I'm interested in seting up a development server for our company with Linode.

We'll be using the usual SVN, Apache2, MySQL5, Php5 stuff.

I do have some questions:

Our current development server is a Ubuntu 6.0.6 LAMP Server and we're very happy with that. Do you offer the ability to install the Ubuntu Dapper ***LAMP*** Server? Or can we only install the Ubuntu Dapper Desktop verson?

I read in your forum that you provide no backup services. What 3rd party company do you recommend for this?

How is the performance of your nodes for a complex web applications? We'll be testing development releases of our products with this node. So there wont be any heavy loads like in a production environment. However, the application by itself is fairly resource intensive as it has some complex database queries. are you nodes up to tasks like this.. or are they really designed for very basic website hosting?

Do we have to manage a firewall on our own node? or do you manage a central firewall for all your servers? Security is critically important for us, so this is an important issue.

Looking forward to a quick response.

Thanks in advance.

Still waiting for an answer.... anybody home?

Wow.... is this the kind of response speed I can expect from Linode?

Starting to lose my patience...

I even tried calling Linode...received voicemail...

Too late...

I found another much better VPS provider that is much faster to respond to customer questions: vpslink.com

Questions were answered within a minute as I could actually get someone on the phone.

Price/Performance also seems much better than Linode...

activation was instant.

Linode.... I'm very disapointed.

If you weren't able to really figure it out. This is primarily a "do it yourself" shop.

Also, the information about being able to install custom stuff was available if you used the search tool at the top of the forums.

It really just seems you were looking for a solution to tell you everything without doing the work yourself. If that's the case, this is not the solution for you imo.

Does anyone have any real-world experience with vpslink? Price/Performance does look compelling, but I've been burned before with VPS providers that promise more than they deliver.

It does look impressive; that's a lot of memory and drive space. Does it make sense they can do that and make money, while charging so much less than Linode? Seems too good to be true.

Maybe Caker can shed some light?

I checked them out too and the prices are too good to be true: the memory amount is a hard limit and includes shared system swap space (no per-VPS-swap allowed): 128MB memory is all you get for $14.95 (VPSlink-2).

With a Linode100 we get 100MB RAM plus self-specified swap (e.g. 256MB) for $19.95/mth. With that we are able to run the occasional heavy process until the job finishes or the IO limiter applies the brakes.

Under similar circumstances at VPSlink, the folk will say "upgrade to a higher plan" -- even if, for example, you only need the extra memory for 60 seconds a week during a cron job or update. (Search for "memory" at their forum to see problems with the hard limit.)

Speaking for myself, although there are some comparative benefits to VPSlink's OpenVZ-based packages, Linode.com overall provides a more reliable product.

For me that's worth a few extra dollars each month


Cliff

(Linoder since Sep'04)

Disagree... and I'm actually a customer there so I've had true experience with their setup.

Yes, you are correct that VPSLink provides no swap space. And yes, you're correct that Linode allows you to specify a swap space, but beyond that, in my opinion, VPSLink is at least equivalent, or in most instances better on every point.

I'm on a $39.95 / month plan currently.

CPU is roughly the same.

VPSLink has over 3 times the hard disk space. VPSLink has 2.5 times the true (dedicated) RAM. VPSLink has 5 times the bandwidth. VPSLink actually has a full 24x7 staff. VPSLink actually responds to sales / tech support questions -- and they do so very promptly.

Before going to VPSLink, I attempted contact Linode with a couple of very basic questions. I did that three times. Never a single response, even though I was very interested in Linode -- but I simply can't stand to waste my time with a provider who can't bother to answer my questions. If they aren't going to respond, they shouldn't post a contact email address. I contacted VPSLink with the same questions and had a response in 20 minutes. And I didn't even need to waste my time in an IRC room trying to get it.

cubedthree,

You are right: the impressive thing about VPSlink's plans is the generous allocation of real RAM, diskspace and bandwidth.

While your $40/mth plan has a generous level of features, the absence of swap in the specs cripples what can be done with the two lesser plans (Link-1, Link-2). And it was the pricing of those two plans that caught my and others attention. So yes, IMO the pricing is "too good to be true" for the two lesser plans -- if you have to reserve a large chunk of that real RAM for running maintenance jobs (e.g. apt-get update) and a couple of daily/weekly crons.


Also true is what you wrote about the regrettable lack of response to questions by prospective customers to Linode. To iterate what it says all over the site: Linode is an *unmanaged* service. A potential customer must be able to rely upon their own skills and a search engine to find answers to questions. For example, in the post that opened this thread, most answers were already available at the time of the post:

Ubuntu 6.06:
http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2335

Backups HOWTO:
http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=403

Firewall:
http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1783 (among others)

In such cases where where prospective customers ask questions whose answers they could easily find for themselves, it really isn't that surprising to me that a prompt response -- or any response -- is not forthcoming. (Obviously, I can't say this explains what happened in your case.)


Finally, you imply that Linode.com has slow and poor tech support. In my experience the tech support here has always been best-of-class:

My Linode's host machine has been running non-stop for nearly 2 years (IIRC), so apart from 3 host reboots in the period Oct-Dec 2004 caused by buggy kernels (< 2.6.10), most downtime has been at my own choosing.

In all instances of me submitting a support ticket when the host machine went down -- the response was rapid (< 2 mins), even at 3 or 4am Nashville time, and the node was back up and running within 10-15 minutes.

The forum is a wealth of information, but you need to be willing to look for it.

Cliff

PS. I've not connected to the Linode IRC either.

No one denies the fact that the lower plans (Link 1 and 2) are low on memory. But they fill a very specific niche market ... people who are running limited services, and only require the limited resources that those packages provide. No one at VPSLink (employees or customer) claim that you can run a full-blown server in 64MB of RAM. Though if your needs are basic, few other providers will give you with a full VPS for $7.95 or $14.95 (respectively) or less per month.



That really is a silly example. VPSLink is also an *unmanaged* service, but they at least took the time to answer my very basic non-technical, policy-oriented questions. I did search for answer. The answers were not available. Unmanaged means that you have to manage your own VPS. Unmanaged does NOT mean that basic non-technical questions should go unanswered. I could NOT even get an answer as to WHEN nodes MIGHT be available! My emails went completely unanswered. THAT is extremely poor service at any provider, managed or not.



I never implied anything about their tech support. I was never a customer because I simply couldn't get answers to basic questions, so I chose to simply not waste my time at such a provider.

It's good that your experience with Linode has been positive. But I can tell you, from an external view (by someone looking at this board and the response time of the admin) the experience doesn't appear so great. Again, I was very much interested in becoming a Linode member, but the more time i spend looking at this board, I become increasingly more relieved that I didn't.

Hi,



True, but they don't draw attention to it either -- I recall it took a fair amount of digging for me to find the "no swap" policy in forum posts. (And that was the reason I wrote "too good to be true" in this thread in the first place: I assumed others, like me initially, would assume that VPSlink plans included some amount of swap -- which as we know, they don't.)


Perhaps. Though I think in some cases the assumption I make is a fair one.


That is bad and I understand why you're unhappy with Linode.com.


It read that way to me, where you wrote: ... VPSLink actually has a full 24x7 staff. VPSLink actually responds to sales / tech support questions -- and they do so very promptly.




It is true there have been quite a number of people who've recently used this forum to air their various grievances of Linode.com's sales support. These accounts are always disappointing to hear about, because they do wrongly reflect on the excellent Linode product.

I am sorry to hear of your disappointment with Linode, but glad that you're happy with your provider. (Not long ago finding good VPS providers was a very painful process!)

Regards,

Cliff