Every now and then I want to spin up a testing machine for an hour or two. Right now I do that on Amazon because I've found it's actually easier than setting up a XEN or KVM VM on the workstation I'm right in front of.

A while ago Caker dropped a vague hint about hourly billing, that is one thing both Amazon and Digital Ocean are ahead on and something that would be pretty cool to see at Linode.

Linode staff - Any progress on this?

Try VirtualBox, it's easy to use. I for one don't ever, ever, ever want nickel and dime hourly billing.

If you're looking to test stuff, why not:

1. Set up a test domain for an existing server? Or:
2. Use jebblue's suggestions of using VBox? Once you know how, it's relatively easy to setup some VM's on a virtual network.

I'm with jebblue, I don't see much of a point of keeping a Linode for just a few hours when I already have a more permanent one setup.

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Kris the Piki Geeker

Being able to scale based on load on an hourly basis, or spin up linodes for quick tests for less than a full day, there is definitely value in that. I don't see myself personally using it, but I've heard enough people say they want to do this sort of stuff over the years...

I think extending the ability to create a "trial" linode for already current customers would be valuable.

I wasn't suggesting just doing hourly billing. I was suggesting adding it as an option and keeping the current monthly billing scheme for long lasting machines.

I know how to use Xen, KVM, VirtualBox, Qemu, Vmware, and so on. The point isn't that I don't know how to setup virtual machines, it's that buying them is quicker and easier. Just to prove the point I just setup a Ubuntu 13.04 instance on amazon in 5 mouse clicks with zero typing. It costs 2 US Cents an hour to do that or 0.6 Cents an hour if I add a few more mouse clicks and use a spot instance instead.

It's not just tiny machines I test on. Last week I needed a machine with 30+ Gig of memory to test something.

I can see the advantage of hourly billing for load scaling, though I still think VMs at home are better (and cheaper) than setting up a Linode for a few hours.



You make it sound like VirtualBox is really hard to use. If you know how to use it, you'll know you can have a VM up in 30 seconds or less with minimal effort.

2 cents an hour may sound cheap to you rich people, but the word "cheap" doesn't exist in the dictionary of us poor people

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Kris the Piki Geeker

Xen is dead easy too, and so is KVM. I can script both of them to kick off virtual machines on one keypress if I really wanted to. Somehow it's still easier and quicker to setup amazon instances and have a working machine of any type I like within about 25 seconds. I'm not saying that amazon web is the right solution to everything, just that it's very convenient and scales well. My home SATA disks get real slow when you have 4 OS's doing random reading and writing. VMware server was terrible on disk performance and the last I heard VirtualBox was the same. Xen, KVM, and ESX are far better but the disks are still a serious limit.

I'm really not one to waste money but I made a conscious decision a while back that if something costs less than the pocket change from my lunch I should not expend thought on that level of cost. If I was in debt my attitude would be different, plus I'd skip lunch.


Anyway just because I like hourly virtual machines doesn't mean you have to like them or use them. I'm not saying you should not use VirtualBox or whatever.

Not trying to put words in your mouth...

Anyways, if you want to spend money on something you can do for free, that's your choice. Just pointing out an easy and free alternative to what you're suggesting.

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Kris the Piki Geeker

VirtualBox isn't free if you don't have a machine with 40 GB of RAM and a 250 Mb/sec uplink sitting around, you know.

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Well I have a 32G Desktop, but why would I need 32G or 40G just to run a few 1 or 2 gig VM's?

Since I'm running both the Host OS and the Guest OS off a SSD, I'm pretty sure my "uplink" speed is quite a bit faster then if my VM was somewhere "out there".

And yes, since the equipment is all paid for, it's basically free to spin up any number of local VM's.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

That's entirely wrong. I can run Windows 7, Debian Linux, and FreeBSD in VirtualBox, all at the same time, without performance issues, with just 8GB RAM, and the VMs use a combined total of only 4GB RAM. That leaves 4GB free for my host OS.

VirtualBox can run fine on almost any machine with at least 4GB RAM, however it does work best with more RAM and virtualization built in to the hardware and kernel.

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Kris the Piki Geeker

Great but sometimes I want to test software that needs 30 to 60 GB of ram. I'd need to rebuild my computer almost from scratch to get 64GB of ram in it.

What software needs that much RAM? Personally, I'd be appalled if the software I use started using that much. I could see needing that much RAM for compiling/testing a bunch of differnt stuff, but not for a single program.

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Kris the Piki Geeker

I guess we all have very different needs at times - either temporary or ongoing - that require things that one particular vendor or service provider doesn't offer. Lots options and vendors are good problems to have.