I'm not quite sure how you could run LAMP without also running Ubuntu server (assuming Ubuntu for the "L")?

Regardless of the question about smaller offerings (which I don't personally think is worth it), of course you can run a server in that space - unless you're talking about setting it up with a desktop of some sort, or an application server that is memory intensive. Certainly there should be room above the core system for a variety of purposes.

My Ubuntu 8.04 Linode used for an internal business application by multiple locations includes postfix, sshd, nginx, my Python-based application server, a PostgreSQL server and a few other non-standard daemons like openvpn and bacula, and only needs around 100MB of resident memory. It also runs a jetty-based servlet (in a minimally configured jvm) for JasperReport-based report generation that needs almost as much (!) by itself as everything else - about 80MB. And that's steady state operational size for a production system. So a 256MB Linode would still have room for ~75MB filesystem/buffer caching with the java servlet or ~150MB without. Certainly doable in 256MB if I needed to, though I'm certainly glad to have the additional space in a Linode 512 for additional buffering.

Then there's my corporate web server (also Ubuntu 8.04) - largely a static (ngnix) site with a few dynamic (apache, though not PHP) pages. Runs in about 50MB.

-- David

You're looking just at RAM. What about disc? If you cram all those services onto a 256 node, and there are twice more nodes on the host than with 512, what do you get? The services you listed, especially Postfix and Postgres are disk intensive. In fact, any service that touches the disk becomes disk intensive because you don't have sufficient RAM for both their application needs AND filesystem cache, so each read becomes a real disk hit.

Sure, Linode might reserve a host or two for 256 nodes only, and slap a sticker saying you get what you pay for (ie. crappy performance because of host context switches and everyone cramming apache, postfix and postgres onto a 256 node). Mathematically/financially it could work.

But their perceived quality and reputation would sink. Why? Because at that price point, and that low in RAM you're coming very close to the resource level of an overseller shared host service. And you can't compete with shared hosting at this price point because shared hosts do not virtualize individual user accounts. They have entire host resource pooled between whatever individual account is using, they don't compartmentalize like you do with (Xen) virtualization. They CAN promise 100GB of space because average shared host user never uses more than 100MB. Same with bandwidth. Same with CPU but you don't see CPU limits in their feature sheets. You only get kicked out once your Wordpress or Drupal blog starts hogging the CPU and taking too much RAM even for what the user might see as "moderate" site traffic.

New users will come, and by new I mean both newbies in sysadministration and new to Linode. They'll take a 256 node for their hobby site/forum/whatever (especially because they have the opportunity to run their own server for the price of their old shared hosting provider). They will experience bad performance. They will start complaining about low disk space because their old shared host had (or promised) 100GB+ of space and a TB+ of bandwidth. They'll go away badmouthing Linode for poor performance and whatever.

Plus, for each host with 256s, Linode has to double the support potential for same amount of money. Not gonna work.

newb. 256 used to be what linode offered at the $20 price point, not that long ago

You beat me to it

To all those saying it's too small to be worth it: it has already been offered in the past. The problem is that as we get more resources for less money, the price point for lower resource servers becomes lower than Linode's profit margin.

To all those saying that it won't happen so people should stop requesting/whining/begging/etc: Welcome to the internets. If you seriously expect to stop everyone from rehashing the same questions over and over, online forums may not be your cup of tea.

dmwilliams: Maybe your mom is just better at lightweight server config? Because 256, even poorly configured, can serve quite a bit.

itym 360 ;)

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Disclaimer: I am no longer employed by Linode; opinions are my own alone.

Was it not 256 before that or was 256 never a level it was at? I started at 360, but I think I've seen that linode started at 64.

http://blog.linode.com/2007/09/01/more- ... etup-fees/

jed is a newb too
http://blog.linode.com/2009/06/16/linod ... new-hires/

Nonsense. The Jed has always been, and will always be.

That said, what is now the Linode 512 was once the Linode 64. Here's the first time that memory was upgraded, when the 64 became the 80:

http://blog.linode.com/2005/09/28/25-ad ... -packages/

Weren't those back when Linode was using UML, and not Xen?

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Chris Bryant

Yes

I'm not actually sure how much worse I/O contention would be with double the guests - it takes very few simultaneous guests even now on a Linode 512 to dent the I/O bandwidth, so the odds are already pretty high.

Certainly, a database server can be disk intensive, but it's very server, schema and application-specific. In my case, even a 256MB Linode and twice the guests per host would have sufficient caching to manage the database load with a responsive application, at least for several more sites than I'm at now. And of course for the web server, everything would pretty quickly be completely cached in memory even on a 256MB Linode.

Not everything is a large Drupal or Wordpress (or equivalent "heavy" application server) site.

Still not trying to argue for the offering, but it's only fair to point out that there's a lot you can do in 256MB :-)

-- David

You may not be able to do a normal Ubuntu install in 256Mb of RAM, but you don't do that with linode. I'd be VERY surprised if it didn't run in 256Mb, though. I'm running CentOS with lighttpd, postfix, DNS, ssh, uucp, and a few other things and using...

% free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           512        435         76          0         36        339
-/+ buffers/cache:         59        452
Swap:          127          3        123

Huh, my usage must have gone up; it's now 59Mb. This used to comfortably live on a linode64

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Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

I have a Debian box o'er here that I set up a few weekends ago... it's got 128 MB of RAM and 10 GB of disk. It's not running Wordpress, but I haven't seen it swap.

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/* TODO: need to add signature to posts */

I run centos 64 bit with cherokee, mysql, postfix etc all 64 bit versions with sites that get like a 1000 hits per day and my memory usage ideals at around 70mb and goes up to around 220mb when it gets really busy.

Having said that, I'm happy with a 512 linode and wouldn't be interested in going any smaller. $20 is cheap enough.

I could run Ubuntu minimal with some light serving with 64MB of RAM. I mean, I've got an old Pentium 3 running it hosting http://otaku.concordia.ca (a full LLMP stack), it's using like 80MB total, and I could tweak that downwards without much impact in performance if I had to (less copies of PHP, lower memory profile for MySQL, etc).