Linode Nextgen: The Network(blog.linode.com)
blog.linode.com
Linode Nextgen: The Network
http://blog.linode.com/2013/03/07/linode-nextgen-the-network/
192 comments
>Edit: wow, thats a lot of hostility... didn't realize linode reached fandom status. I guess I should keep my opinions to myself then?
Sometimes, yes. In this particular case you were comparing apples to oranges.
Take for example your opening line: "I never quite understood the love for premium vps like linode".
The statement is absurd -- even if one includes the part about low cost VPS being faster.
The idea behind "premium VPS" (or premium whatever) has to do with support, reliability, them being around a while, etc.
Some cheaper VPS offering "more bandwidth" or "faster cpus" is not the same thing at all.
Now, if you had said "there are cheaper VPS just as reliable and with good support as Linode, and on top of it, faster also, so why _pay_ a premium", that would make sense. If you could also support it.
But a statement like: "I don't understand premium X" in general?
Sometimes, yes. In this particular case you were comparing apples to oranges.
Take for example your opening line: "I never quite understood the love for premium vps like linode".
The statement is absurd -- even if one includes the part about low cost VPS being faster.
The idea behind "premium VPS" (or premium whatever) has to do with support, reliability, them being around a while, etc.
Some cheaper VPS offering "more bandwidth" or "faster cpus" is not the same thing at all.
Now, if you had said "there are cheaper VPS just as reliable and with good support as Linode, and on top of it, faster also, so why _pay_ a premium", that would make sense. If you could also support it.
But a statement like: "I don't understand premium X" in general?
The thing with low end boxes are that you never know how long they're going to stay in business for, or whether your data is going to be safe
With Linode I can at least sleep in peace, even if it costs a bit more
With Linode I can at least sleep in peace, even if it costs a bit more
Support matters. When your neighbor is being DDOSed and you're offline as collateral damage, active support is the difference between happy customers and angry customer losses.
For hobby boxes, yeah, sure, use whatever is the most cost-efficient.
For hobby boxes, yeah, sure, use whatever is the most cost-efficient.
Most medium sized vps will provide DDOS measures to a certain limit (no one will provide full-proof DDOS support). Fast and good customer support from server providers are not as rare as they used to be, they are pretty much given.
Take a look at this, a new anti-DDoS proxy service provided by Litespeed. this type of service seems to be the future of how handling DDoS attacks.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5339500
Linode is great during stable periods but when there is an outage or DDOS they are completely absent. I was sick to death of waiting whilst my Fremont instances were down due to power issues and receiving no response from support tickets.
And based on their security incidents Linode is absolutely in the hobby box category as well. At least Amazon is PCI DSS compliant.
And based on their security incidents Linode is absolutely in the hobby box category as well. At least Amazon is PCI DSS compliant.
I don't know if this is still true, but when I started using Linode some years ago, Fremont was easily their worst datacenter. I've been in Newark without issue for some time now and I heard most of the other datacenters are pretty solid also.
Regarding their support, I've submitted tickets at sometimes very odd hours and gotten responses back within minutes.
What I really find amusing though is that you follow up your complaint of "completely absent during outage" with a reference to Amazon.
Regarding their support, I've submitted tickets at sometimes very odd hours and gotten responses back within minutes.
What I really find amusing though is that you follow up your complaint of "completely absent during outage" with a reference to Amazon.
> I was sick to death of waiting whilst my Fremont instances were down due to power issues and receiving no response from support tickets.
Do you want their engineers bringing up the datacenter or answering up a bunch of e-mails with "we're working on bringing up the datacenter"?
Do you want their engineers bringing up the datacenter or answering up a bunch of e-mails with "we're working on bringing up the datacenter"?
For a company providing critical computing resources, during an incident there should be one person responsible for managing incident response. It actually shouldn't be an engineer; the person's job should be to bug engineers as little as possible but provide periodic updates in a central location (a site of the form https://status.example.com) which is available to all customers.
That's a false dichotomy.
Communication and coordination are important parts of incident response. Key engineers shouldn't be doing either. If an org doesn't have dedicated people to communicate with their customers and triage support during an outage -- especially one where a facility loses power -- they're doing something wrong.
When I was in a support role, I stayed up all night with the engineers during planned maintenance to answer questions, respond to tweets, &c. And if things went pear shaped, I'd already be up to speed.
Communication and coordination are important parts of incident response. Key engineers shouldn't be doing either. If an org doesn't have dedicated people to communicate with their customers and triage support during an outage -- especially one where a facility loses power -- they're doing something wrong.
When I was in a support role, I stayed up all night with the engineers during planned maintenance to answer questions, respond to tweets, &c. And if things went pear shaped, I'd already be up to speed.
> And based on their security incidents Linode is absolutely in the hobby box category as well.
Was that plural a typo or have there been more since the admin console phish that I missed?
Was that plural a typo or have there been more since the admin console phish that I missed?
Things dont come cheap, they might be beaten at the price..but the comparison ends at that..
Enterprise Hardware at 20 Dollars does not come cheap, and with their support unlike AWS or anyone else.. they are every bit worth-full
Enterprise Hardware at 20 Dollars does not come cheap, and with their support unlike AWS or anyone else.. they are every bit worth-full
AWS support gets a lot better once you're an enterprise level user.
Define "lots better". Qualify with examples. My experiences with AWS have consistently been absolutely awful.
Things akin to "We're sorry your instance has gone away for no apparent reason. Thank you for writing."
This does not ever happen on Linode.
Things akin to "We're sorry your instance has gone away for no apparent reason. Thank you for writing."
This does not ever happen on Linode.
Your tone, demanding for examples is a bit off putting...
Direct contacts, very fast responses, phone support that picks up almost instantly and works with you for as long as it takes to resolve a problem.
I've been very pleased, and most of the time the issues have been our fault, yet they've always helped us resolve the issue.
I've used Linode too, no complaints at all, but you get a lot more power with the AWS tools, so there's really no choice for us.
Direct contacts, very fast responses, phone support that picks up almost instantly and works with you for as long as it takes to resolve a problem.
I've been very pleased, and most of the time the issues have been our fault, yet they've always helped us resolve the issue.
I've used Linode too, no complaints at all, but you get a lot more power with the AWS tools, so there's really no choice for us.
AWS has always been better in terms of features, and I've never found fault in Amazon's relentless work to improve even further. They really seem fearless in this regard.
However, their customer support has always been, at least in my experience, indifferent at best. It's often better to have a sherpa like EngineYard to help you through trouble spots.
However, their customer support has always been, at least in my experience, indifferent at best. It's often better to have a sherpa like EngineYard to help you through trouble spots.
No with Linode its:
"Your instance may have been rooted. But we won't tell you what happened, whether it is fixed or whether it will happen again."
"Your instance may have been rooted. But we won't tell you what happened, whether it is fixed or whether it will happen again."
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$20 a month is really nothing for supported hosting. I've been testing some of these PAaS offerings and I don't see how so many people can use them. The amount of downtime you see on things like heroku or pretty much anything that use AWS is awful. With my dedicated server I pretty much have no downtime. I see AWS issues all the time.
+1, I thought about moving to PaaS and I started by trying appfog. I tried installing WordPress on a fresh instance around 6 times before giving up. Here is what I found out
1. There is no easy way to contact support. Seriously, this is a PaaS. What if I had down time or something urgent?
2. In a support forum, many people complained about my same issue (a year ago). The support stuff suggested that they try a few hours later (not sure if he was kidding)
1. There is no easy way to contact support. Seriously, this is a PaaS. What if I had down time or something urgent?
2. In a support forum, many people complained about my same issue (a year ago). The support stuff suggested that they try a few hours later (not sure if he was kidding)
> If you check out lowendbox vps, their top-rated providers almost always beats linode (and alike) in almost all category you can think of.
And then you go and try those services, and realize how poor performance and stability is. Having been through several providers, I have personally found nothing that compares.
And then you go and try those services, and realize how poor performance and stability is. Having been through several providers, I have personally found nothing that compares.
Err. Linode has pretty average performance compared to the SSD providers.
And during my time as a customer Linode was the worst out of all the VPS I had ever tried up until that point. Constant outages at Fremont and heard about the same at London DC as well.
And during my time as a customer Linode was the worst out of all the VPS I had ever tried up until that point. Constant outages at Fremont and heard about the same at London DC as well.
You mean the SSD providers who cost many times more than Linode? I've tried a few SSD-based instances. Storm is pretty good, but considerably more expensive. Cleverkite and Digital Ocean are both far worse. I wouldn't trust any valuable infrastructure to a provider who offers fast I/O on a crippled network, or who only lets you do fast I/O for a couple of seconds before your instance gets throttled into oblivion, even if they were free.
I see that you're a DO fan, but if you've actually used them and aren't just promoting them out of undisclosed self-interest then I'll bet you even know which of those two descriptions fits them. Being buzzword-compliant doesn't make them a good provider.
I see that you're a DO fan, but if you've actually used them and aren't just promoting them out of undisclosed self-interest then I'll bet you even know which of those two descriptions fits them. Being buzzword-compliant doesn't make them a good provider.
I switched from Linode to Digital Ocean due to price, but I'm not familiar with which of those two descriptions fits them. Could you elaborate? I haven't experienced anything yet that would lead me to believe they are "far worse;" their network doesn't seem crippled, and my IO-heavy site (imageboard) isn't throttled.
Wonder how sustainable Digital Ocean's pricing is in the longer term.
I'm running a VPS with RAMnode and it's been nothing but roses.
Here's a benchmark on my VPS http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2012/11/20/UMLXH3qNTNOyfbGF
And here's a bunch of SSD VPS plans sorted by IOPS http://serverbear.com/compare?Sort=IOPS+Seek+Benchmark&O...
Here's a benchmark on my VPS http://serverbear.com/benchmark/2012/11/20/UMLXH3qNTNOyfbGF
And here's a bunch of SSD VPS plans sorted by IOPS http://serverbear.com/compare?Sort=IOPS+Seek+Benchmark&O...
Thanks for this link. Thats a very helpful site.
I am choosing between RAMnode and Digital Ocean. Both look pretty much affordable and recommended.
Any tips?
I am choosing between RAMnode and Digital Ocean. Both look pretty much affordable and recommended.
Any tips?
That's a really handy list. Thanks!
I did give RamNode a try today after seeing them mentioned here, and they do indeed seem to do a good job of delivering on the SSD promise. I'll probably stick with Linode in NJ instead of RamNode in Atlanta (because the way I use my machine means that network latency to places near my home matters a lot more than disk performance) but it's nice to know that at least one vendor finally seems to be getting it right.
I did give RamNode a try today after seeing them mentioned here, and they do indeed seem to do a good job of delivering on the SSD promise. I'll probably stick with Linode in NJ instead of RamNode in Atlanta (because the way I use my machine means that network latency to places near my home matters a lot more than disk performance) but it's nice to know that at least one vendor finally seems to be getting it right.
Just logged in to one of my servers in the London DC. 952 days of uptime, so in my case it has been pretty stable over the past couple years.
Same here, I've never had any outage issues with the London datacenter.
Though I had one issue where I couldn't install 64bit image to the server. I sent an support ticket about it and in less than ten minutes the whole thing was sorted out.
Though I had one issue where I couldn't install 64bit image to the server. I sent an support ticket about it and in less than ten minutes the whole thing was sorted out.
That doesn't take network outages into account, which they may or may not had.
I had around 600 on one of my machines in Newark until I forgot to update my credit card info and they shut them off.
You prompted me to check mine. 994 days of uptime.
No downtime at all since I got started with them in late 2007, except for a few reboots to activate free loyalty upgrades and one paid upgrade. I've never lodged a support ticket that was left unanswered for more than a minute or two. Very predictable performance and reliable support are huge.
People don't mind paying a premium if they trust the company. I know that linode won't disappear tomorrow but I'm not so sure about an unknown VPS company.
Are you kidding? I often evaluate offerings from lowendbox and it still surprises me that for many of them images for some of the distros don't even work (solusvm seems to be crappy too). Linode is probably the only company outside of Rackspace (slicehost) to get Arch Linux images right to the point where it works great for production use. The support is always under 5 minutes.
I never used Linode for Arch, what do differently that makes it better than others?
It is very stable. I believe it is from having the custom kernel (it seems that whoever puts together image knows how to keep the arch guest and whatever host happy). What you will see with most vps providers with arch is that you purchase a plan, run pacman -Syu then something no longer works (usually the network interface). I don't know exactly what causes the problem, but my understanding is that it is due to incompatibilities with the guest kernel and the host or the technology the host is using. On linode you don't have to install the linux package they usually provide close to the latest (currently 3.7.x).
Ah, I see. I use Arch on Digital Ocean, and I've had a pretty good experience, aside from their initial image being a bit old (I had to change its settings to use netcfg and systemd).
I believe they are in the process of updating the Arch image (started sometime this week) as it is no longer listed on the list of images.
If you check out lowendbox vps, their top-rated providers almost always beats linode (and alike) in almost all category you can think of.
There are more things in heaven and earth, pavs, than are dreamt of in your vps comparison tables.
People choose slightly more expensive hosting because it is often less oversold, not maxed out (you're sharing resources with everyone else on your server after all), they have libraries, example stacks, backups and extra services, and the support is better. If you pay $5 a month, you'll get $5 a month of support (or the provider will go out of business). How much of your time would $5 a month pay for?
I've used both slicehost and Linode, and a few other hosting companies who promised the moon and failed to deliver. Currently a happy Linode customer and have more important things to worry about than saving insignificant sums of money per month on what is a critical service for a web company.
There are more things in heaven and earth, pavs, than are dreamt of in your vps comparison tables.
People choose slightly more expensive hosting because it is often less oversold, not maxed out (you're sharing resources with everyone else on your server after all), they have libraries, example stacks, backups and extra services, and the support is better. If you pay $5 a month, you'll get $5 a month of support (or the provider will go out of business). How much of your time would $5 a month pay for?
I've used both slicehost and Linode, and a few other hosting companies who promised the moon and failed to deliver. Currently a happy Linode customer and have more important things to worry about than saving insignificant sums of money per month on what is a critical service for a web company.
Honestly, I just trust Linode more than what I might find off of lowendbox.com. I'm happy to support them. For most of us running startups, are we all trying to compete with our competitors purely on who can race the bottom pricing?
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If you're actually running a business off of a VPS, where the cost of downtime far outstrips the monthly bill, it's absolutely worth paying more.
I have a VPS I found on lowend box. $5/month for a 512MB OpenVZ. It's a pretty good deal, and it does what I need it to do; I have full control over it, I can give other people access to it, I can run any kind of website on it as long as I don't care too much about performance or uptime.
But there's no way I would run any service that was bringing in money on it. It basically has downtime every single month. Usually only for a few minutes at a time, and they tend to scrape by just barely exceeding 99.90%, but still. There also was one time when they emailed me saying there had been a power loss or some other reason that the rack my server was on went down, and I actually ended up having to go into the console to start my server back up and get everything working.
I've also found their support ... not particularly supportive.
Sure, Linode is 4x as expensive for the "same thing" (though to get Xen from my provider is only about 3x cheaper than Linode), but the amount of total money is negligible. $15/month. Maybe if I needed more resources it would be a difference of $100/month, but if I need a 4GB VPS for a service that's meant to make me money, that should still hopefully be trivial. For a service provider with much better uptime and support, that's a no-brainer.
I have a VPS I found on lowend box. $5/month for a 512MB OpenVZ. It's a pretty good deal, and it does what I need it to do; I have full control over it, I can give other people access to it, I can run any kind of website on it as long as I don't care too much about performance or uptime.
But there's no way I would run any service that was bringing in money on it. It basically has downtime every single month. Usually only for a few minutes at a time, and they tend to scrape by just barely exceeding 99.90%, but still. There also was one time when they emailed me saying there had been a power loss or some other reason that the rack my server was on went down, and I actually ended up having to go into the console to start my server back up and get everything working.
I've also found their support ... not particularly supportive.
Sure, Linode is 4x as expensive for the "same thing" (though to get Xen from my provider is only about 3x cheaper than Linode), but the amount of total money is negligible. $15/month. Maybe if I needed more resources it would be a difference of $100/month, but if I need a 4GB VPS for a service that's meant to make me money, that should still hopefully be trivial. For a service provider with much better uptime and support, that's a no-brainer.
If you're actually running a business, then redundancy is the way to go, not spending more on real hardware. With a VPS, you're able to achieve redundancy fairly easily, provided you have multiple datacenters available (Linode does). Without some sort of failover, a dead server means downtime whether you're dedicated or VPS.
Also, Linode's SLA may be 99.9%, but I've experienced with two businesses, using Linode over the course of four years, about 45 minutes total of downtime (on any given server, not our entire infrastructure). I'd much sooner take years of past experience showing incredibly good uptime over a piece of paper meant to limit liability.
I believe Linode is an excellent choice for small-medium sized online companies.
Also, Linode's SLA may be 99.9%, but I've experienced with two businesses, using Linode over the course of four years, about 45 minutes total of downtime (on any given server, not our entire infrastructure). I'd much sooner take years of past experience showing incredibly good uptime over a piece of paper meant to limit liability.
I believe Linode is an excellent choice for small-medium sized online companies.
It depends on the stage of the business. For a small business that might be running off of one or two VPS's, you're probably much better off paying a few hundred dollars a month for a machine that is up 99.99% of the time instead of 99.9% of the time than to spend significant engineering time trying to setup database replication and failover (and either relaxing consistency or adding significant latency to your site) in the hopes of getting an 99.999%.
This is especially true given that more often than not, within the first 5 times you use it, you'll experience some bug in your HA setup that leads to some complicated, slow-to-diagnose-and-fix failure.
This is especially true given that more often than not, within the first 5 times you use it, you'll experience some bug in your HA setup that leads to some complicated, slow-to-diagnose-and-fix failure.
"... and they tend to scrape by just barely exceeding 99.90% [uptime]"
Wow. That sentence makes 99.9% uptime sound really shitty.
Wow. That sentence makes 99.9% uptime sound really shitty.
It is shitty for infrastructure. 99.9% server uptime means your site might be down for about 44 minutes per month, through no fault of your own--i.e. that does not even take into account scheduled downtime, application problems, DDOS attacks, etc.
really, you don't count scheduled downtime and DDOS attacks in your uptime?
Might as well stop counting sysadmin screwups and hardware failures, at that point. 100% uptime! except when we're down.
Might as well stop counting sysadmin screwups and hardware failures, at that point. 100% uptime! except when we're down.
I do count scheduled downtime and DDOS attacks in my uptime, which is why I wouldn't tolerate 44 additional minutes of downtime from my infrastructure provider.
yeah, my argument is that scheduled downtime (scheduled by the infrastructure provider) and ddos attacks (against the infrastructure provider or other customers of the infrastructure provider) should count against the infrastructure provider's uptime.
The current balance of power is tipped, right now, so hard in favor of the attackers that if anyone wants to take /you/ out, well, it's pretty difficult (read: expensive) to stop them, and if you are some $20/month customer, your upstream is probably going to just finish the job and cut you off... but if the guy next to you gets attacked and you are collateral damage? You should count that against your service provider. There are usually things we can do (as service providers) to limit collateral damage, even in the cases where we are unable to protect the target. If nothing else, providers who tend to tolerate sites that get attacked often, well, they suffer collateral damage from attacks, generally speaking, more often than sites that are less tolerant. It's sad, really 'cause sometimes the targets are not doing anything really wrong, but you've gotta protect your network.
There is some advantage of scale here, too... The DoS that is hardest to fight is the pipe-filling attack. If the attacker can fill your upstream port(s), then there isn't really much you can do, besides blocking the target at your upstream, (I mean, assuming the source is random, as it often is.) The larger your upstreams are, the more you can absorb before you have a choice between cutting off the target customer and having all your customers cut off.
The current balance of power is tipped, right now, so hard in favor of the attackers that if anyone wants to take /you/ out, well, it's pretty difficult (read: expensive) to stop them, and if you are some $20/month customer, your upstream is probably going to just finish the job and cut you off... but if the guy next to you gets attacked and you are collateral damage? You should count that against your service provider. There are usually things we can do (as service providers) to limit collateral damage, even in the cases where we are unable to protect the target. If nothing else, providers who tend to tolerate sites that get attacked often, well, they suffer collateral damage from attacks, generally speaking, more often than sites that are less tolerant. It's sad, really 'cause sometimes the targets are not doing anything really wrong, but you've gotta protect your network.
There is some advantage of scale here, too... The DoS that is hardest to fight is the pipe-filling attack. If the attacker can fill your upstream port(s), then there isn't really much you can do, besides blocking the target at your upstream, (I mean, assuming the source is random, as it often is.) The larger your upstreams are, the more you can absorb before you have a choice between cutting off the target customer and having all your customers cut off.
Do you consider a 45-minute outage once a month to be acceptable? Maybe for the price, it is.
Well, if we are being pragmatic it sounds totally acceptable for any kind of business.
Except maybe if those outages hit them at the worst possible moments of the month (just before a major announcement or something).
Now, managers would froth at the mouth hearing 45 mins/month is acceptable. But those managers are idiots.
I haven't seen any major site that didn't have those (and worse) outages.
5-6 hours a year? Heck tons of sites had those. AWS had them (and thus Heroku had them), GAE had them, Twitter had them, Tumblr (well they had one-two orders of magnitude more), etc.
45 mins a month represent lots of lost revenue to you? Really? If you're not Google or something, then what exactly do you do?
Shouldn't that be like 0.1% of your revenue? And that IF you sell online and IF we assume customers aren't gonna come back. Heck, you lose more because of random fluctuations in buyer preferences than that.
Except maybe if those outages hit them at the worst possible moments of the month (just before a major announcement or something).
Now, managers would froth at the mouth hearing 45 mins/month is acceptable. But those managers are idiots.
I haven't seen any major site that didn't have those (and worse) outages.
5-6 hours a year? Heck tons of sites had those. AWS had them (and thus Heroku had them), GAE had them, Twitter had them, Tumblr (well they had one-two orders of magnitude more), etc.
45 mins a month represent lots of lost revenue to you? Really? If you're not Google or something, then what exactly do you do?
Shouldn't that be like 0.1% of your revenue? And that IF you sell online and IF we assume customers aren't gonna come back. Heck, you lose more because of random fluctuations in buyer preferences than that.
Depends how you look at it. A minute and a half a day? Doesn't sound too bad when you say it that way. A 3-hour outage every 4 months? My cable company can barely do that.
The problem is outages tend to be for prolonged periods and not spread evenly across the month. A minute may not seem like a huge deal, but 3 consecutive hours is really going to piss some people off. If you run a business, it's completely irresponsible to provide such a low level of service to your customers.
0.1% downtime is about 45 minutes per month. Depending on how it's distributed, that can be extremely annoying.
Well, these days it is. You want five nines (99.999%) on mission-critical applications.
Five nines will cost you a lot of money.
it's usually achieved through luck, not engineering.
Could you buy two cheap VPSs from different suppliers? That way you'd have redundancy and save money?
I've been looking at cheap VPSes over the last few months, as I don't really want to spent $20/mo on Linode anymore for a static site and VPN. I've tried a number of different providers, and they've all had issues.
Things I've experienced:
- being rebooted without notice
- poor performance (IO and / or CPU)
- provider being DDOSed
- provider moving to a new DC and telling people not to give out IPs (???) due to being DDOSed
- hosts running old virtualisation software which doesn't support recent versions of Linux, so I'm can't use an OS newer than Ubuntu 10.04
- provider being banned by PayPal then suspending my account being I couldn't pay then
- provider going out of business
I liken it to poor quality manufactured goods. Take the Android tablets you can get for less than $100. If you can afford it, you would never buy one just to save money, because it is much less hassle to spent another $100 and get something that works well.
It just isn't worth it, especially not for a business. I would love to see someone who can make a proper fault tolerant system that works on these type of machines though :)
Things I've experienced:
- being rebooted without notice
- poor performance (IO and / or CPU)
- provider being DDOSed
- provider moving to a new DC and telling people not to give out IPs (???) due to being DDOSed
- hosts running old virtualisation software which doesn't support recent versions of Linux, so I'm can't use an OS newer than Ubuntu 10.04
- provider being banned by PayPal then suspending my account being I couldn't pay then
- provider going out of business
I liken it to poor quality manufactured goods. Take the Android tablets you can get for less than $100. If you can afford it, you would never buy one just to save money, because it is much less hassle to spent another $100 and get something that works well.
It just isn't worth it, especially not for a business. I would love to see someone who can make a proper fault tolerant system that works on these type of machines though :)
Depends on your site, and how trivial it is to balance it between two locations, keep it in sync, add in a way to switch over, etc.
I think it is probably worth the extra cost. I use another "premium" VPS vendor (RimuHosting) to host all of my Clojure web apps and the extra quality of service is worth it.
I think you do make a good point if you are saying that for some projects the cheapest possible hosting makes sense.
I think you do make a good point if you are saying that for some projects the cheapest possible hosting makes sense.
I have a multitude of VPSs from various hosts (I've used vpslink, slicehost, linode, EC2, azure, prgmr, and about 4 or 5 others I can't remember off the top of my head right now). I usually do all of my web development over ssh, so I generally get a good feel for the latency of a box (as any delay will be immediately noticeable while hacking away in vim). While there are plenty of other solutions out there that offer better raw specs than linode, I've found linode to be the most consistent by far when it comes to performance. Is it a minor detail? Yea, one user with an additional 1 second on their page load out of a hundred isn't a huge deal usually, but when a consistent latency is important I've found linode to be my go-to provider.
You advise basing the most critical part of your business on the cheapest offering possible?
So I should be registering my domain with Network Solutions for $34.99/year, right?
So I should be registering my domain with Network Solutions for $34.99/year, right?
Can you explain this to me? I'm not sure I understand. If it's domain management you're after, MarkMonitor's the usual choice IIRC.
Can you explain this to me? I'm not sure I understand. If it's domain management you're after, MarkMonitor's the usual choice IIRC.
I just looked up an example of domain registration that was obviously more than the usual $7 ~ $10 per domain per year. I mean the domain is a pretty important piece of your business (i.e. you wouldn't want to lose it), so only an 'idiot' would go with GoDaddy/Gandi/NameCheap/etc right?
I mean the domain is a pretty important piece of your business (i.e. you wouldn't want to lose it), so only an 'idiot' would go with GoDaddy/Gandi/NameCheap/etc right?
You're aware that there's a difference between "go with the cheapest" and "go with the most expensive," right?
You're aware that there's a difference between "go with the cheapest" and "go with the most expensive," right?
that is one way to twist it...
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As someone who has tried more than 20 deals from lowendbox, the downtime and performance is completely unsuitable for anything requiring uptime. They are fine if you are using it for DNS, VPN, backup, or a blog you don't care much about.
Many of the hosts are run by kids trying to strike it rich with barely a few months worth of experience.
Here's some of the things to watch out for.
- IOwait so high that it takes several seconds for ls to run.
- Complete data loss
- Random packet loss because of all the people sharing a link or getting ddosed.
- Hosts going bankrupt when they realize that no one is going to buy them out just because they have a bunch of customers obtained with their loss leading deals.
If you have a good experience with them you probably:
- Didn't stay on the node long enough for it to get overloaded
- Are extremely lucky
- Barely use the VPS
Linode is overpriced, but the deals on lowendbox aren't a great alternative.
Many of the hosts are run by kids trying to strike it rich with barely a few months worth of experience.
Here's some of the things to watch out for.
- IOwait so high that it takes several seconds for ls to run.
- Complete data loss
- Random packet loss because of all the people sharing a link or getting ddosed.
- Hosts going bankrupt when they realize that no one is going to buy them out just because they have a bunch of customers obtained with their loss leading deals.
If you have a good experience with them you probably:
- Didn't stay on the node long enough for it to get overloaded
- Are extremely lucky
- Barely use the VPS
Linode is overpriced, but the deals on lowendbox aren't a great alternative.
I have had a mixed bag with LEB deals. Forced me to figure out how to run my apps Ina distributed fashion, which was fun. Currently with ThrustVPS where I pay $8/month. They have been solid for about two years now. BuyVM also seems to have great reputation on LEB.
Done both ThrustVPS and BuyVM.
ThrustVPS: bought it, selected Debian 6. VPS stopped booting. Then they tell me that it doesn't work so I get them to install Ubuntu instead. 1 week later it goes down due to "network issues". (probably for several hours, can't be bothered to login to look at the ticket again).
BuyVM: bought it to see how it was, VPS went down in the first couple of days. Never bothered to try it again. They are always out of stock. http://buyvmstatus.com/info/recent
ThrustVPS: bought it, selected Debian 6. VPS stopped booting. Then they tell me that it doesn't work so I get them to install Ubuntu instead. 1 week later it goes down due to "network issues". (probably for several hours, can't be bothered to login to look at the ticket again).
BuyVM: bought it to see how it was, VPS went down in the first couple of days. Never bothered to try it again. They are always out of stock. http://buyvmstatus.com/info/recent
buyvmstatus isn't run by us.
They are entirely ping based so if someone gets a flood, ICMP will go to the garbage while a nullroute kicks in a second or two later.
We have an internal nodeping that monitors other services on the nodes that we're likely going to make public since more than a few people seem to get that idea about buyvmstatus.
We actually provided the buyvmstatus developer a read-only HTTP page he was able to pull off each node to get the current uptime of the node but he's yet to actually work it into the system.
Stock wise check back never week and we'll be reloaded on every plan in our Vegas location :)
Thanks for the interest and kind words,
Francisco
They are entirely ping based so if someone gets a flood, ICMP will go to the garbage while a nullroute kicks in a second or two later.
We have an internal nodeping that monitors other services on the nodes that we're likely going to make public since more than a few people seem to get that idea about buyvmstatus.
We actually provided the buyvmstatus developer a read-only HTTP page he was able to pull off each node to get the current uptime of the node but he's yet to actually work it into the system.
Stock wise check back never week and we'll be reloaded on every plan in our Vegas location :)
Thanks for the interest and kind words,
Francisco
> Edit: wow, thats a lot of hostility... didn't realize linode reached fandom status. I guess I should keep my opinions to myself then?
These kinds of comments have no place here, head back to Reddit.
You've been given a boat load of evidence and personal experiences that reinforce lowendbox is garbage, and yet you try to rationalize it away as 'fandom status'.
These kinds of comments have no place here, head back to Reddit.
You've been given a boat load of evidence and personal experiences that reinforce lowendbox is garbage, and yet you try to rationalize it away as 'fandom status'.
Linode is pretty darn good. I have several sites with them and I have NEVER had any down time!
I also have a few sites on RamNode and BuyVM which were voted as the better low end providers. They're anything but low end. I am getting better performance SSDs, better CPUs), more resources for 1/2 the cost of a comparable Linode VPS. No problems yet, going on three months. Their control panels leave a lot to be desired compared to Linode.
I also have a few sites on RamNode and BuyVM which were voted as the better low end providers. They're anything but low end. I am getting better performance SSDs, better CPUs), more resources for 1/2 the cost of a comparable Linode VPS. No problems yet, going on three months. Their control panels leave a lot to be desired compared to Linode.
I don't think it's about fandom and nobody should be hostile but I think it is a fair point that it is a little sketchy to run a business off some of the offers from lowendbox.com. I think Linode is a very reasonable company to work with and host a Web app; they have a good offering with good I/O performance compared to other providers.
>I never quite understood the love for premium vps like linode
This is true now (Linode is a premium vps provider) but it was not always true. Linode started out cheap, like almost everyone in our industry does. Linode was one of the first in the market; they've been selling VPSs longer even than I have.
>Its nice that they are now increasing the bandwidth cap, but it was on the low side to begin with. My takeaway from this is that "linode finally joins everyone else in network speed and bandwidth."
Eh, the way the industry works is that price pressure is applied by new entrants. Linode used to be that 'incredibly cheap provider' - but generally speaking? as you develop a reputation, you increase your resource allocations more slowly than moore's law would allow, and Linode has a pretty good reputation, so they get to charge substantially more than new entrants to the market.
So yeah, if the new entrants aren't a way better deal in terms of resources? something is terribly wrong (and that new entrant probably won't gain the traction they need to survive long enough to be able to let their prices rise to a higher margin level)
I mean, personally, I would think I have been letting my own prices rise (comparatively, I mean, by not increasing resource allocation) more than my reputation would allow me to... but I'm still gaining customers (though not at an awesome rate) - Linode announcing a network upgrade is putting /incredible/ pressure on me to upgrade my network. I can be okay with a new entrant flying below me, but Linode has a better reputation than I do; I have to provide more resources per dollar than they do.
Now, the big counterexample here is slicehost. Slicehost started out fairly expensive (compared to the industry standard at the time) and they went from zero to twenty thousand customers in like two years. It was incredible. I don't know exactly what they did, but they had a reputation for providing managed hosting level service for (premium) unmanaged hosting prices.
Now, how much of that reputation was marketing, and how much of that reputation was that their support really was that good, I don't know, but I do know that was their reputation.
This is true now (Linode is a premium vps provider) but it was not always true. Linode started out cheap, like almost everyone in our industry does. Linode was one of the first in the market; they've been selling VPSs longer even than I have.
>Its nice that they are now increasing the bandwidth cap, but it was on the low side to begin with. My takeaway from this is that "linode finally joins everyone else in network speed and bandwidth."
Eh, the way the industry works is that price pressure is applied by new entrants. Linode used to be that 'incredibly cheap provider' - but generally speaking? as you develop a reputation, you increase your resource allocations more slowly than moore's law would allow, and Linode has a pretty good reputation, so they get to charge substantially more than new entrants to the market.
So yeah, if the new entrants aren't a way better deal in terms of resources? something is terribly wrong (and that new entrant probably won't gain the traction they need to survive long enough to be able to let their prices rise to a higher margin level)
I mean, personally, I would think I have been letting my own prices rise (comparatively, I mean, by not increasing resource allocation) more than my reputation would allow me to... but I'm still gaining customers (though not at an awesome rate) - Linode announcing a network upgrade is putting /incredible/ pressure on me to upgrade my network. I can be okay with a new entrant flying below me, but Linode has a better reputation than I do; I have to provide more resources per dollar than they do.
Now, the big counterexample here is slicehost. Slicehost started out fairly expensive (compared to the industry standard at the time) and they went from zero to twenty thousand customers in like two years. It was incredible. I don't know exactly what they did, but they had a reputation for providing managed hosting level service for (premium) unmanaged hosting prices.
Now, how much of that reputation was marketing, and how much of that reputation was that their support really was that good, I don't know, but I do know that was their reputation.
Is linode announcing their own netblocks under their own ASN, though? My impression has been that you have more diversity of immediate upstreams than linode...
No idea. I'm on he.net and cogent right now; I'm working on getting more routes, but it's pretty irritating. I have been having some trouble reaching folks on comcast in the midwest, so I contacted comcast and asked about paid peering (they think they are hot shit, so there is no way they would settlement-free peer with me)
They want three grand for a 1g peering link. And they aren't on any of the silicon valley peering exchanges (meaning I'd need to pay for a connection direct to them, on top of the three grand.) that is /per month/ He.net charges around $750-1000 per month for a gigabit of transit to the whole internet.
It's pretty irritating. I mean, I'd pay a couple hundred bucks a month for reliable connectivity to comcast only, even though, traditionally, peering is free, and it would improve both my network and theirs. I mean, it was their customer who complained to my customer who complained to me.
They want three grand for a 1g peering link. And they aren't on any of the silicon valley peering exchanges (meaning I'd need to pay for a connection direct to them, on top of the three grand.) that is /per month/ He.net charges around $750-1000 per month for a gigabit of transit to the whole internet.
It's pretty irritating. I mean, I'd pay a couple hundred bucks a month for reliable connectivity to comcast only, even though, traditionally, peering is free, and it would improve both my network and theirs. I mean, it was their customer who complained to my customer who complained to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering has a list of historic peering disputes, but doesn't really seem to have a good pointer to the details of the Exodus dispute.
Typically, national backbones use hot potato routing when peering in lots of different cities. If you, in Northern California, on Hurricane Electric, have a video chat with someone in New York City, let's say on Verizon, and it turns out to really be peer to peer, what typically happens is that the computer in New York City will send the packets through Verizon in New York City, to Hurricane Electric in New York City, and then Hurrican Electric carries the packets to you in California. In the reverse direction, Verizon gets to carry the packets across the country.
A key point here is that the two providers are equally responsible for the hassle of carrying packets across the country. This is why providers sometimes care about balanced traffic ratios.
Exodus was mostly pushing traffic out, not recieving very much traffic, and so with hot potato routing, they were doing a lot less than what many would argue was their fair share in covering costs of hauling packets across the country, which seems to have been the basis for that dispute.
When traffic ratios are balanced, hot potato routing has the advantage that one network doesn't need to know the details of where another network's individual IP blocks are geographically, thus reducing the amount of information big networks have to exchange and keep track of.
If Comcast were to peer with you near your location, they'd have to eat the costs of hauling the traffic across the country.
http://he.net/peering.html is Hurricane Electric's peering policy, and basically, anyone who's comfortable with settlement free peering is likely already going to have a good connection to Hurricane Electric, and my impression has been that Hurricane Electric's backbone is pretty sufficient for whatever long haul traffic it has to carry.
(And for all that Hurricane Electric claims ``Hurricane Electric expects you to peer at all exchange fabrics we have in common if we peer with you via public exchanges or all facilities we have in common if we peer via private interconnect with you. In other words, if you are peering in the US, Asia and Europe at the same locations as Hurricane you must peer with Hurricane at all those locations. This is prevent problems for your and our US and European customers so that customer traffic does not cross the Pacific or Atlantic twice to return back to the same continent.'', if a lot of their customers are data centers full of web servers, it's possible that hot potato routing might get them out of a certain amount of ``their fair share'' of long haul transit.)
Have you concluded that both Hurricane Electric and Cogent have trouble reaching those Comcast customers, and have you discussed the issue with Hurricane Electric and Cogent? It seems like they'd have better economies of scale in upgrading connectivity to Comcast than you would have going directly.
Typically, national backbones use hot potato routing when peering in lots of different cities. If you, in Northern California, on Hurricane Electric, have a video chat with someone in New York City, let's say on Verizon, and it turns out to really be peer to peer, what typically happens is that the computer in New York City will send the packets through Verizon in New York City, to Hurricane Electric in New York City, and then Hurrican Electric carries the packets to you in California. In the reverse direction, Verizon gets to carry the packets across the country.
A key point here is that the two providers are equally responsible for the hassle of carrying packets across the country. This is why providers sometimes care about balanced traffic ratios.
Exodus was mostly pushing traffic out, not recieving very much traffic, and so with hot potato routing, they were doing a lot less than what many would argue was their fair share in covering costs of hauling packets across the country, which seems to have been the basis for that dispute.
When traffic ratios are balanced, hot potato routing has the advantage that one network doesn't need to know the details of where another network's individual IP blocks are geographically, thus reducing the amount of information big networks have to exchange and keep track of.
If Comcast were to peer with you near your location, they'd have to eat the costs of hauling the traffic across the country.
http://he.net/peering.html is Hurricane Electric's peering policy, and basically, anyone who's comfortable with settlement free peering is likely already going to have a good connection to Hurricane Electric, and my impression has been that Hurricane Electric's backbone is pretty sufficient for whatever long haul traffic it has to carry.
(And for all that Hurricane Electric claims ``Hurricane Electric expects you to peer at all exchange fabrics we have in common if we peer with you via public exchanges or all facilities we have in common if we peer via private interconnect with you. In other words, if you are peering in the US, Asia and Europe at the same locations as Hurricane you must peer with Hurricane at all those locations. This is prevent problems for your and our US and European customers so that customer traffic does not cross the Pacific or Atlantic twice to return back to the same continent.'', if a lot of their customers are data centers full of web servers, it's possible that hot potato routing might get them out of a certain amount of ``their fair share'' of long haul transit.)
Have you concluded that both Hurricane Electric and Cogent have trouble reaching those Comcast customers, and have you discussed the issue with Hurricane Electric and Cogent? It seems like they'd have better economies of scale in upgrading connectivity to Comcast than you would have going directly.
Perhaps it is because peering is not an entitled right. If it was, who would pay for all the costs of network growth?
AFA HE.net pricing, the reality is HE.net does not sell "their" network... they sell other ISPs network via their peering. Their costs are far lower as they don't carry the traffic more than 1-2 router hops.
HE.net does this so much that their peers are feeling that the relationship is no longer "fair" and are not interested in upgrading capacity to enable this business relationship. If HE.net had to pay as much as their peers for the network costs, the prices would be similar.
You get what you pay for....
AFA HE.net pricing, the reality is HE.net does not sell "their" network... they sell other ISPs network via their peering. Their costs are far lower as they don't carry the traffic more than 1-2 router hops.
HE.net does this so much that their peers are feeling that the relationship is no longer "fair" and are not interested in upgrading capacity to enable this business relationship. If HE.net had to pay as much as their peers for the network costs, the prices would be similar.
You get what you pay for....
>Perhaps it is because peering is not an entitled right. If it was, who would pay for all the costs of network growth?
My complaint here is that comcast charges as much for peering as for transport (with full routes) - I mean, if that's the case, why advertise paid peering services? Every time I've bought full routes I've had the option of asking the provider to only send me customer routes, or to filter on my end for customer routes. Hell, most people will give me a feed with customer routes, and another with full routes, so I could use them as a de-prioritized transport provider of last resort as well as gaining all the benefits of being a peer if I bought transport from them, so yeah, advertising paid peering at transport prices is just silly.
My second complaint is that they aren't on any peering exchanges. Peering exchanges are important because individual interconnects in a datacenter are expensive; the data center charges you a hefty monthly fee for every connection you have to other people at the same datacenter (like half what you'd pay for a shitty but local room in a shared house) /and/ then if you use direct interconnects both parties need to maintain a switch port.
With a peering exchange? you maintain one switchport for all your traffic that goes over the exchange. There are even route servers you can subscribe to if you want to automatically peer with everyone else on the route server at that exchange, making peering a nearly zero work, zero cost thing.
(Of course, if you are sending a /lot/ of traffic, then a individual link probably makes more sense, sure, but I'm not sending a lot of traffic.)
>If HE.net had to pay as much as their peers for the network costs, the prices would be similar.
But they are similar. after negotiation, he.net is more expensive than Cogent. to the tune that commits on he cost the same as overages on Cogent.
HE.net, for me, is actually pretty competitive with Cogent, who I think is their closest competitor, quality-wise. After negotiation, Cogent was slightly cheaper. (The interesting thing about he.net was that they started with a number that was fairly reasonable and stuck with it. It was clear that I didn't have to spend three months dicking around to get the real price, which I appreciate.) Cogent started off asking about as much as I'd expect to pay for L3 after negotiating well, but came down hard.
>You get what you pay for....
If you believe that... well, I've got some Premium VPS here for you. just $100/month per gigabyte ram. They are "premium" - way better than the regular stuff. I'll even wear a suit while I provision you.
People are always willing to charge you more for a shitty product. Always. Professionals spend huge amounts of effort getting you to pay more for the shitty product. (More for the good product, too.)
Hell, in the bandwidth world? It's completely normal to end up paying 1/5th the asking price after negotiation. Yeah, 20% of what the salesperson initially quoted is about what I normally end up paying for transit.
Do you think service is different for people who pay the asking price vs. people who negotiate down to the real price?
I mean, sure, buying transport from L3 is going to get you better connectivity than buying you transport from Cogent, and L3 is generally going to cost you more than Cogent. How much more? with my negotiation skills, about 10x more, but I only got L3 down half from their asking price, and I got Cogent down to 1/5th their asking price; I spent considerably more time on Cogent because I thought that was, well, more realistic, and at the time, Linode, the people I see as my competitors to beat, were mostly he.net, which, quality-wise, is on par with Cogent (I think he.net may be a bit better, and there is some argument if cogent or he.net is slightly better, but I think most people would agree that they are both near the bottom of the pile.)
So yeah. uh, I guess there is some relationship between "real price" and quality... but it is not nearly as close a relationship as people say.
My complaint here is that comcast charges as much for peering as for transport (with full routes) - I mean, if that's the case, why advertise paid peering services? Every time I've bought full routes I've had the option of asking the provider to only send me customer routes, or to filter on my end for customer routes. Hell, most people will give me a feed with customer routes, and another with full routes, so I could use them as a de-prioritized transport provider of last resort as well as gaining all the benefits of being a peer if I bought transport from them, so yeah, advertising paid peering at transport prices is just silly.
My second complaint is that they aren't on any peering exchanges. Peering exchanges are important because individual interconnects in a datacenter are expensive; the data center charges you a hefty monthly fee for every connection you have to other people at the same datacenter (like half what you'd pay for a shitty but local room in a shared house) /and/ then if you use direct interconnects both parties need to maintain a switch port.
With a peering exchange? you maintain one switchport for all your traffic that goes over the exchange. There are even route servers you can subscribe to if you want to automatically peer with everyone else on the route server at that exchange, making peering a nearly zero work, zero cost thing.
(Of course, if you are sending a /lot/ of traffic, then a individual link probably makes more sense, sure, but I'm not sending a lot of traffic.)
>If HE.net had to pay as much as their peers for the network costs, the prices would be similar.
But they are similar. after negotiation, he.net is more expensive than Cogent. to the tune that commits on he cost the same as overages on Cogent.
HE.net, for me, is actually pretty competitive with Cogent, who I think is their closest competitor, quality-wise. After negotiation, Cogent was slightly cheaper. (The interesting thing about he.net was that they started with a number that was fairly reasonable and stuck with it. It was clear that I didn't have to spend three months dicking around to get the real price, which I appreciate.) Cogent started off asking about as much as I'd expect to pay for L3 after negotiating well, but came down hard.
>You get what you pay for....
If you believe that... well, I've got some Premium VPS here for you. just $100/month per gigabyte ram. They are "premium" - way better than the regular stuff. I'll even wear a suit while I provision you.
People are always willing to charge you more for a shitty product. Always. Professionals spend huge amounts of effort getting you to pay more for the shitty product. (More for the good product, too.)
Hell, in the bandwidth world? It's completely normal to end up paying 1/5th the asking price after negotiation. Yeah, 20% of what the salesperson initially quoted is about what I normally end up paying for transit.
Do you think service is different for people who pay the asking price vs. people who negotiate down to the real price?
I mean, sure, buying transport from L3 is going to get you better connectivity than buying you transport from Cogent, and L3 is generally going to cost you more than Cogent. How much more? with my negotiation skills, about 10x more, but I only got L3 down half from their asking price, and I got Cogent down to 1/5th their asking price; I spent considerably more time on Cogent because I thought that was, well, more realistic, and at the time, Linode, the people I see as my competitors to beat, were mostly he.net, which, quality-wise, is on par with Cogent (I think he.net may be a bit better, and there is some argument if cogent or he.net is slightly better, but I think most people would agree that they are both near the bottom of the pile.)
So yeah. uh, I guess there is some relationship between "real price" and quality... but it is not nearly as close a relationship as people say.
Hurricane Electric seems to have built their network by installing a router at every major peering point in the world, connecting each router to the local public peering point switch, and then interconnecting those routers. If you want reasonably direct connections to all the world's tier 2 ISPs, Hurricane Electric seems to be an excellent way to get that, and as long as they're not charging too much, they may make actually showing up at the major peering switches yourself not worth the trouble when you can just be their customer and get connections to more peering points than you'd probably directly connect to yourself.
Cogent has a fairly substantial network directly into random office buildings (though if you have an office in a random office building, it's almost certainly not one of the ones they've lit), and it's not clear to me that they do as good a job at peering with other networks as Hurricane Electric does.
Cogent has a fairly substantial network directly into random office buildings (though if you have an office in a random office building, it's almost certainly not one of the ones they've lit), and it's not clear to me that they do as good a job at peering with other networks as Hurricane Electric does.
If Comcast is not directly a customer of he.net or cogent, then it is likely that each has multiple routes available that they could use to send traffic to Comcast. Have you explored whether getting them to pick a different one would improve things?
Or is the problem in the direction of Comcast to you, which is harder for you to control?
Or is the problem in the direction of Comcast to you, which is harder for you to control?
Sounds like you would be better picking up a decent transit locally to you with a good blend of upstreams.
that's what they say... but the first rule of business is that you will get fucked if it's hard for you to switch providers. I'm already in that position with datacentere space. I've been in that position with bandwidth, too, and it's super painful.
Also, nobody is going to give a shit about your three customers way out in the middle of "nobody cares" that can't reach your stuff 'cause cogent and at&t refuse to upgrade a peering link that is also in the middle of "nobody cares" - If I'm controlling it, I at least have a chance of doing something about it.
Also, the cost is 3x to 10x what you get direct from the super-low end big guys. Everyone fucks it up, and with two up-streams? It's my fault when it fucks up (and I can do something about it.) I guess having that preference is kinda stupid, but it is what it is; I am the network Engineer I've got... not the network Engineer I wish I had.
(that, and in my experience? competency of tech support does not scale with price paid. Neither does quality of routes.)
Also, nobody is going to give a shit about your three customers way out in the middle of "nobody cares" that can't reach your stuff 'cause cogent and at&t refuse to upgrade a peering link that is also in the middle of "nobody cares" - If I'm controlling it, I at least have a chance of doing something about it.
Also, the cost is 3x to 10x what you get direct from the super-low end big guys. Everyone fucks it up, and with two up-streams? It's my fault when it fucks up (and I can do something about it.) I guess having that preference is kinda stupid, but it is what it is; I am the network Engineer I've got... not the network Engineer I wish I had.
(that, and in my experience? competency of tech support does not scale with price paid. Neither does quality of routes.)
If the problem turns out to be that AT&T and Cogent's peering links are overloaded, and the links between AT&T and Hurricane Electric don't have similar problems, then your border routers should be setting localpref to something low for any route with AT&T's ASN learned on the Cogent BGP session, which should send your outbound traffic to AT&T via Hurricane Electric except when your he.net link is down.
The opposite direction looks more problematic. Some ISPs will let you tag your routes with BGP communities that say ``when advertising to AT&T, prepend some extra copies of some ASN so that AT&T will be unlikely to send me traffic via this path.'' http://www.onesc.net/communities/as174/ does not list any communities which would affect how Cogent advertises routes to AT&T without affecting how Cogent advertises to all of their other peers. On the other hand, while 174:3001 is an extremely coarse tool, your traffic ratios may be sufficiently outbound only that sending most of your inbound traffic via Hurricane Electric might turn out OK, even with Hurricane Electric being only 1G and Cogent 10G (although this change might make your network less robust in the face of a DDOS attack, and you might want to drop 174:3001 when dealing with such an attack).
If the overloaded links are only overloaded in one direction, then you may only need to do one of these things, not both.
The opposite direction looks more problematic. Some ISPs will let you tag your routes with BGP communities that say ``when advertising to AT&T, prepend some extra copies of some ASN so that AT&T will be unlikely to send me traffic via this path.'' http://www.onesc.net/communities/as174/ does not list any communities which would affect how Cogent advertises routes to AT&T without affecting how Cogent advertises to all of their other peers. On the other hand, while 174:3001 is an extremely coarse tool, your traffic ratios may be sufficiently outbound only that sending most of your inbound traffic via Hurricane Electric might turn out OK, even with Hurricane Electric being only 1G and Cogent 10G (although this change might make your network less robust in the face of a DDOS attack, and you might want to drop 174:3001 when dealing with such an attack).
If the overloaded links are only overloaded in one direction, then you may only need to do one of these things, not both.
I tried switching my outbound traffic to the customers in question over to he.net (with a static route, which I know is the dumb way to do it.) with no improvement.
Hm. I need to learn more about bgp, specifically tags and communities, can you recommend me a book?
Hm. I need to learn more about bgp, specifically tags and communities, can you recommend me a book?
I ended up learning most of what I know about BGP not via a book, which makes that hard.
But basically, back in the days of 16 bit ASNs, communities were just 32 bit values that were attached to routes being advertised by BGP, usually expressed as the two 16 bit halves separated by a colon, generally with the ASN that defines the meaning of the community being on the left of the colon, and that ASN defining arbitrary values on the right side of the colon for flags that they want to recognize.
Then, there are route maps or whatever the router vendor wants to call them that use the data from the communities.
Typically when the router is deciding what route to use, it looks for the route with the highest localpref, and if there's a tie, then it looks at how many ASNs are listed in the path, and if there's still a tie, then the router may use MED. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note... explains how this works in the Cisco BGP implementation with all of the additional factors that are considered; Linux and Juniper BGP implementations may consider a slightly different set of factors.
IIRC, Level 3 generally sets localpref to 86 on routes heard on non-customer peer sessions, and 100 on routes heard on customer BGP sessions, but if customers want localpref to be 90 or 80 or 70 instead, they can send community 3356:90 or 3356:80 or 3356:70. If you had two links to Level 3 and wanted to use one as backup only, you could send community 3356:90 on your routes on your backup link, and potentially no communities on your primary link. If you had a really slow link to Level 3 that was backup only and some other ASN was your primary, then you'd want to send Level 3 3356:80 or 3356:70. I doubt you have any desire to set your upstream's localpref values in your configuration, but this may shed some light on why they offer it to their other customers. Also, if you ever have customers speaking BGP who want to use you as backup only, you need to offer some way for routes they advertise to you to have localpref less than what you set on routes you learn from your upstreams; typically this seems to be done by letting your customers send you a community so the customer controls this, but you could just have a special route-map for customers who are backup only that would just set all of their routes to low localpref regardless of the BGP communities, and just apply the right route-map to those BGP sessions.
http://www.onesc.net/communities/as3356/ mentions that Level 3 supports 65004:[ASN] for four prepends when advertising to ASN. If you were a Level 3 customer, and traffic coming to you via one of their peering links was overloaded, sending a community of that form would be a good way to discourage traffic from taking that link by making the path have a large number of ASNs and thus look undesirable. I say this mostly to illustrate the sort of thing that it looks like you might find useful for Cogent to support, though it appears that Cogent doesn't support that.
It's likely that Hurricane Electric and Cogent will recognize some communities that you could send them that will influence their routing, but as far as I know, their peers won't necessarily end up accepting any communities from you, so the key is to either find documentation on the web of what communties Hurricane Electric and Cogent recognize, or ask them for it.
You can also sometimes get geographic data about which major city is closest to a network block by recieving community data from an upstrem, but it's not obvious to me why you'd want that. It may sometimes be used when hot potato routing is not desired, or when a CDN is trying to identify which geographically close server to use.
But basically, back in the days of 16 bit ASNs, communities were just 32 bit values that were attached to routes being advertised by BGP, usually expressed as the two 16 bit halves separated by a colon, generally with the ASN that defines the meaning of the community being on the left of the colon, and that ASN defining arbitrary values on the right side of the colon for flags that they want to recognize.
Then, there are route maps or whatever the router vendor wants to call them that use the data from the communities.
Typically when the router is deciding what route to use, it looks for the route with the highest localpref, and if there's a tie, then it looks at how many ASNs are listed in the path, and if there's still a tie, then the router may use MED. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note... explains how this works in the Cisco BGP implementation with all of the additional factors that are considered; Linux and Juniper BGP implementations may consider a slightly different set of factors.
IIRC, Level 3 generally sets localpref to 86 on routes heard on non-customer peer sessions, and 100 on routes heard on customer BGP sessions, but if customers want localpref to be 90 or 80 or 70 instead, they can send community 3356:90 or 3356:80 or 3356:70. If you had two links to Level 3 and wanted to use one as backup only, you could send community 3356:90 on your routes on your backup link, and potentially no communities on your primary link. If you had a really slow link to Level 3 that was backup only and some other ASN was your primary, then you'd want to send Level 3 3356:80 or 3356:70. I doubt you have any desire to set your upstream's localpref values in your configuration, but this may shed some light on why they offer it to their other customers. Also, if you ever have customers speaking BGP who want to use you as backup only, you need to offer some way for routes they advertise to you to have localpref less than what you set on routes you learn from your upstreams; typically this seems to be done by letting your customers send you a community so the customer controls this, but you could just have a special route-map for customers who are backup only that would just set all of their routes to low localpref regardless of the BGP communities, and just apply the right route-map to those BGP sessions.
http://www.onesc.net/communities/as3356/ mentions that Level 3 supports 65004:[ASN] for four prepends when advertising to ASN. If you were a Level 3 customer, and traffic coming to you via one of their peering links was overloaded, sending a community of that form would be a good way to discourage traffic from taking that link by making the path have a large number of ASNs and thus look undesirable. I say this mostly to illustrate the sort of thing that it looks like you might find useful for Cogent to support, though it appears that Cogent doesn't support that.
It's likely that Hurricane Electric and Cogent will recognize some communities that you could send them that will influence their routing, but as far as I know, their peers won't necessarily end up accepting any communities from you, so the key is to either find documentation on the web of what communties Hurricane Electric and Cogent recognize, or ask them for it.
You can also sometimes get geographic data about which major city is closest to a network block by recieving community data from an upstrem, but it's not obvious to me why you'd want that. It may sometimes be used when hot potato routing is not desired, or when a CDN is trying to identify which geographically close server to use.
Also, you probably want to pick some community to affix to all routes you learn from your customers / originate yourself, and to make sure isn't affixed to routes you learn from your upstreams, so that you can then have a route map check for the presence or absence of that community when deciding which routes get passed along to your upstreams. (BGP doesn't directly solve the problem that an AS doesn't carry traffic unless the source and/or destination is ultimately a customer of that AS, it just provides mechanisms that can be used to make that happen.)
You may want to define communities to let your customers selectively decide to suppress announcements to each of your upstreams, and you may want to pass through the communties recognized by your upstreams in their official documentation if your customers send those communities to you, if you want to let your customers control their advertisements in that fashion. (The only reason I can think of you wouldn't want to let your customers do this is if it would let them move traffic from a link that's cheap for you to a link that's expensive for you.)
You may want to define communities to let your customers selectively decide to suppress announcements to each of your upstreams, and you may want to pass through the communties recognized by your upstreams in their official documentation if your customers send those communities to you, if you want to let your customers control their advertisements in that fashion. (The only reason I can think of you wouldn't want to let your customers do this is if it would let them move traffic from a link that's cheap for you to a link that's expensive for you.)
Also, playing with looking glasses can be helpful in understanding what's going on with BGP from the perspective of other networks. http://www.bgp4.net/wiki/doku.php?id=tools:ipv4_looking_glas... has a list, which doesn't seem to include AT&T. Going to http://www.nordu.net/connectivity/looking-glass/lg.cgi and selecting bgp and entering prgmr.com's IPv4 address isn't very exciting, in that it only lists one ASN in the path (it seems they have direct peering with Hurricane Electric, who is announcing the block that includes that IP address under their ASN). Putting in an IP address advertised under your ASN at the looking glass of a network that peers with both Hurricane Electric and Cogent might be more interesting if you manage to see routes via both.
Also, do a Google search for
bgp localpref
and at least skim some of the articles that come up there and some of the things linked to from those articles.
bgp localpref
and at least skim some of the articles that come up there and some of the things linked to from those articles.
No. Linode use IP space provided by the upstream they use at each location.
That was true in the past, but more recently they've been using their own IP space allocations, but having their upstream announce it as part of their (the upstream's) AS.
See: http://bgp.he.net/search?search[search]=Linode&commit=Se...
See: http://bgp.he.net/search?search[search]=Linode&commit=Se...
It's entirely possible to get IP space from one upstream provider and then announce it to multiple upstreams under your own ASN.
The way I see it, if your business cannot take 512MB of RAM and a bunch of storage space, and fails to convert it into 20$ a month, or any amount where $20 a month is actually a factor, you have a shitty business.
I'm actually most unimpressed with the vendor selection. So now Linode has Cisco overhead in their premium tier of hardware. Not good from a costing perspective. The Cisco Nexus line is hardly next generation when it comes to R&S product.
Linode is in a position to seriously consider SDN and they shoot themselves in the foot with one of the most stagnant companies as it applies to new and innovative product for pushing packets. I'd have been far more impressed with Juniper in the hot seat here. At least they're more cost competitive. You can get a full non-blocking 10Gb L3 switch (480Gb backplane) for less than $20k fully loaded up with 10Gb SRs out of their EX line if you're looking to play it safe in 'standard' networking.
The good part about software is there's far less vendor bias. This just smells of a Cisco blowhard touting the wonders of a fully vendor locked network. And software people seem to be less informed of the reality that is how the current norm of the networking realm works.
Good luck to them. I've put in plenty of ASR and Nexus gear in the past few years. They'll need it.
Linode is in a position to seriously consider SDN and they shoot themselves in the foot with one of the most stagnant companies as it applies to new and innovative product for pushing packets. I'd have been far more impressed with Juniper in the hot seat here. At least they're more cost competitive. You can get a full non-blocking 10Gb L3 switch (480Gb backplane) for less than $20k fully loaded up with 10Gb SRs out of their EX line if you're looking to play it safe in 'standard' networking.
The good part about software is there's far less vendor bias. This just smells of a Cisco blowhard touting the wonders of a fully vendor locked network. And software people seem to be less informed of the reality that is how the current norm of the networking realm works.
Good luck to them. I've put in plenty of ASR and Nexus gear in the past few years. They'll need it.
I wish I could find cheaper Juniper gear on ebay to help study. What hardware is currently there is 10x more expensive than what Cisco has. :(
Were they wrong when they said the Cisco product was the only one that could handle their routing requirements?
I can see how you read it that way, but that's not what they said. They said that the Cisco Nexus 7000 is the only Cisco device that could handle their routing requirements.
My mistake :)
Yes. There are plenty of large data centers that are non-Cisco and I'm not aware of any performance requirement that can only be met by Cisco.
you're assuming they weren't already a cisco network before the announcement, which would disassemble your entire comment
I have a hard time trusting Linode after the major March 2012 security incident where an attacker compromised an internal system that let him gain access to any Linode Manager accounts: http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.h... and basically had access to all customers servers!
I have a hard time trusting them because they specifically gave very little information. I would have expected a followup with a better response, like Google or Facebook do when they get compromised: "the attacker used exploit X on this developer's workstation, therefore we are doing Y to prevent this from happening again".
They can work on increasing performance all they want, but if I do not have basic trust in the security of their infrastructure, this does not matter. I expect top-notch security especially from a "premium" VPS provider!
I have a hard time trusting them because they specifically gave very little information. I would have expected a followup with a better response, like Google or Facebook do when they get compromised: "the attacker used exploit X on this developer's workstation, therefore we are doing Y to prevent this from happening again".
They can work on increasing performance all they want, but if I do not have basic trust in the security of their infrastructure, this does not matter. I expect top-notch security especially from a "premium" VPS provider!
This type of thing is my primary complaint about linode. Their transparency on things that make them look even slightly bad is basically non existent.
This is one of the reasons why I am happy to support Linode with my business: they seem to care about doing things the right way and keeping people happy. I've got a simple 512 Linode server that I use infrequently (I like having a Linux box available in the "cloud" to SSH to from home/work) and yet I've always been treated as a "real" customer. I know it's sad that I'm impressed by it, but grandfathering in customers like this just by default, and always having great support turnaround times (within a couple hours at basically any time of the day) makes me like the Linode guys a ton. This sort of stuff is the reason why I don't really care if there's a cheaper alternative; I know what I'm paying for and I'm very happy with what I'm getting.
We run our company using Linode as one of our primary providers. We're very, very happy with their uptimes, control panel, and particularly their support. It's a testament to their professionalism that they've been going about these pretty major changes without experiencing any downtime. I'd highly recommend them.
Great to hear that, I switched from heroku to linode a couple of days ago and couldn't be happier. I haven't had to contact the support yet because the documentation is so excellent.
Linode is definitely one of the best VPS providers. They don't market it as 'fanatical', but their support is simply incredible. I like AWS too, but the lack of support (unless you pay loads) keeps me with Linode.
Nextgen sounds cool. Extra bandwidth is great. I also hope they add more RAM and provide some kind of a storage pool to store images/snapshots/virtual-disks between different linodes (similar to cloudfiles or EBS).
Nextgen sounds cool. Extra bandwidth is great. I also hope they add more RAM and provide some kind of a storage pool to store images/snapshots/virtual-disks between different linodes (similar to cloudfiles or EBS).
Their support is quick, but they only solve the problem if it's easy.
My linode IP ended up on an email block list because of someone else on the subnet. I was on vacation so I wanted a quick solution and I asked for an extra IP for a week. They wouldn't do for any amount of money. I had to set up an extra server and redirect connections instead.
My linode IP ended up on an email block list because of someone else on the subnet. I was on vacation so I wanted a quick solution and I asked for an extra IP for a week. They wouldn't do for any amount of money. I had to set up an extra server and redirect connections instead.
I can't comment on your particular case, but it sounds odd that they didn't help out. Certainly not my experience with their support so far (and I've been with Linode for probably 4 or 5 years now and used their support on many occasions)
However, it's so easy to fire-up another linode, shut down the host, move the disk image to the new linode, assign it and turn it on. You get a new IP, and can get rid of the old one. And all this via their web interface and with no need for support...
However, it's so easy to fire-up another linode, shut down the host, move the disk image to the new linode, assign it and turn it on. You get a new IP, and can get rid of the old one. And all this via their web interface and with no need for support...
I needed to keep the old IP during changeover so that DNS had time to update.
Not bashing linode, because I think they do a fine job - I have two servers with a year and a half of uptime. But I don't think the support is a valid reason for them charging more than their competitors.
Not bashing linode, because I think they do a fine job - I have two servers with a year and a half of uptime. But I don't think the support is a valid reason for them charging more than their competitors.
this is because when an IP is blacklisted it's generally done in a contiguous block (subnet) that are probably shared by hosts on the same virtual lan (vlan). this is to prevent mailers from jumping to another ip on the same subnet.
trunking an additional vlan into their virtual pool just for you would have constituted a major production change in probably 2 or 3 core switch layers.
the operational risk and expenditure for this kind of change easily goes into the thousands of dollars, possibly tens of thousands if they screw something up.
what exactly is "any amount of money" to you? because to them and other service providers, it means tens of thousands of dollars, not another 50 bucks.
trunking an additional vlan into their virtual pool just for you would have constituted a major production change in probably 2 or 3 core switch layers.
the operational risk and expenditure for this kind of change easily goes into the thousands of dollars, possibly tens of thousands if they screw something up.
what exactly is "any amount of money" to you? because to them and other service providers, it means tens of thousands of dollars, not another 50 bucks.
Interesting to know. I know nothing about the admin side of datacenters.
It was a whole subnet that was blacklisted. That said, they offered me a new IP from a couple different subnets as replacement, so I don't think it was too hard for them to do it. They would let me have an extra IP, but wouldn't let me run the two IPs concurrently for more than 24 hours.
This was especially frustrating since the subnet was blacklisted due to linode using generic PTR records by default. I needed a solution that didn't eat into my vacation time, so I ended up setting up a second server in the same datacenter and making it forward connections. That effectively got me a new IP for $20.
Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about it. I think they handled it fine. But I wouldn't hold them as some bastion of support perfection.
It was a whole subnet that was blacklisted. That said, they offered me a new IP from a couple different subnets as replacement, so I don't think it was too hard for them to do it. They would let me have an extra IP, but wouldn't let me run the two IPs concurrently for more than 24 hours.
This was especially frustrating since the subnet was blacklisted due to linode using generic PTR records by default. I needed a solution that didn't eat into my vacation time, so I ended up setting up a second server in the same datacenter and making it forward connections. That effectively got me a new IP for $20.
Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about it. I think they handled it fine. But I wouldn't hold them as some bastion of support perfection.
those other vlans/subnets were probably already on the switches and may have been used for extra capacity, security separation, or even something like internal backup use
you got lucky though, most of the time the entire network of shared hosting providers is blacklisted from sending mail. they may have just rolled out a brand new subnet or something
you got lucky though, most of the time the entire network of shared hosting providers is blacklisted from sending mail. they may have just rolled out a brand new subnet or something
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Find this interesting? OVH is already upgrading routers to 100gbps and 500gbps versions.
http://www.infinera.com/j7/servlet/NewsItem?newsItemID=336
http://www.infinera.com/j7/servlet/NewsItem?newsItemID=336
OVH is super impressive. I really hope they manage to get better brand recognition in these parts.
+1 for OVH. Beastly machines at great prices, data centers in Canada / Europe (for people who can't store stuff in the US cloud), pretty good support.
Their servers seem extremely cheap. Are you basically getting what you pay for with their service or do they have solid uptime and solid support?
The cheap 'servers' aren't servers -- they're desktop parts in a rack. Desktop hardware fails more often, and non-ECC RAM will experience multiple bit flips per year on average. That's fine for a dev/staging server, but not a good thing on a production server with paying customers.
Their real servers are quiet cheap and beefy.
Drooling @ http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/eg_64g_ssd.xml
Drooling @ http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/eg_64g_ssd.xml
Does anyone know if Linode has investors? I've never been able to find mention of any, and the fact that they've been in this for the long haul (since 2003) and are now expanding after seeing massive growth in the last two years[1] makes me think they're bootstrapped. If that's true it would be seriously awesome. They were started by a single founder too!
[1] http://blog.linode.com/2012/08/28/linode-makes-2012-inc-500-...
[1] http://blog.linode.com/2012/08/28/linode-makes-2012-inc-500-...
Wow, this is quite a jump. Great to see Linode continue to lower costs and improve quality.
It's also important to note that if the billing system stays the same, each instance you purchase increments your account-wide bandwidth pool. For example, if a Linode 512 has 2 TB worth of data and you have two of them, you end up with 4 TB for all Linodes on your account. It's not bound to the individual Linodes.
It's also important to note that if the billing system stays the same, each instance you purchase increments your account-wide bandwidth pool. For example, if a Linode 512 has 2 TB worth of data and you have two of them, you end up with 4 TB for all Linodes on your account. It's not bound to the individual Linodes.
Instead of getting a $20 VPS, why doesn't anyone consider a full dedicated for $12?
http://www.ovh.ie/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml
I realise that people have mixed feelings about OVH, but I've yet to have a problem and 100% uptime. Plus I can max out 100 mbps on the server pretty easily.
Another 2 providers that probably have a better reputation than Linode are BuyVM and RamNode: http://buyvm.net/ http://ramnode.com/
A 512mb is less than half price there and they use SSD's.
But the main thing I'm seeing now for commercial sites, is why don't you use Jekyll and host your site on a CDN like Cloud Files or CloudFront? I'm suprised how cheap it is now to use a full on CDN to host your site. While it's not for everyone, most business sites are just a landing page and a wordpress blog, which would be much more resource efficient if it was hosted on a CDN, plus your pretty much guaranteed 100% uptime.
So for under $20 you can get a SSD VPS and your site hosted on Akamai's CDN or just a $20 box from Linode :/
http://www.ovh.ie/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml
I realise that people have mixed feelings about OVH, but I've yet to have a problem and 100% uptime. Plus I can max out 100 mbps on the server pretty easily.
Another 2 providers that probably have a better reputation than Linode are BuyVM and RamNode: http://buyvm.net/ http://ramnode.com/
A 512mb is less than half price there and they use SSD's.
But the main thing I'm seeing now for commercial sites, is why don't you use Jekyll and host your site on a CDN like Cloud Files or CloudFront? I'm suprised how cheap it is now to use a full on CDN to host your site. While it's not for everyone, most business sites are just a landing page and a wordpress blog, which would be much more resource efficient if it was hosted on a CDN, plus your pretty much guaranteed 100% uptime.
So for under $20 you can get a SSD VPS and your site hosted on Akamai's CDN or just a $20 box from Linode :/
Neat. But it's really the hardware size that's the restricting feature of linode. In particular: Memory.
Yea. I'm hoping as part of this nextgen upgrade they announce more RAM. SSDs would of course be nice too, but more RAM is what I want the most
For less than the price of a 4GB linode get a 32GB SSD server from OVH http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/sp_32g_ssd.xml or a multitude of others http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/8302/99-e3-32-gb-list-o... .
How is the performance of OVH's network by the way? Anyone had any issues with it? I'm paying ~80/mo right now for VPSs, and this offers way more horsepower than what I have now. Any downsides to going this route? Also is there anything comparable that's located on the west coast?
I'm absolutely stoked about their low-end dedicated servers. I have 13€/mo and 18€/mo instances (located in France) and I'm in Finland. No issues whatsoever, connectivity or uptime, and I use them to run both my personal and company mail, and some web stuff. If you go over traffic quota (5TB / mo) they will limit your speed to 10Mbit/s, not cut you off or bill extra (but you can purchase extra quota). But I have no idea how good their support is because I never needed it.
After initial setup you may want to change the grsec kernel to something else (according to preferences, it's not bad), and by default they have root ssh access to your box (key-based auth), which you may want to revoke.
Ovh has one data center in Canada, but that's in Quebec, not west coast.
After initial setup you may want to change the grsec kernel to something else (according to preferences, it's not bad), and by default they have root ssh access to your box (key-based auth), which you may want to revoke.
Ovh has one data center in Canada, but that's in Quebec, not west coast.
Yep. They're not just a small Johnny-come-lately shop either, they've been top tier in Europe for a long time.
From the blog post, this is just part 1 out of 3 new features they're touting. So it's quite possible memory might get an upgrade. I personally wouldn't bet on it though, the host machines are likely maxed out on total RAM and upgrading would mean more hardware than just sticks.
Edit: The post title has been changed, but tldr is that Linode is increasing the monthly transfer limit quota 10x because they're upgrading their network infrastructure.
--
It's great that Linode is passing these improvements to their customers free of charge. A while back they increased RAM allocated to all users without increasing prices, which was a great surprise. Things like this make me happy to host my multiple projects with them.
--
It's great that Linode is passing these improvements to their customers free of charge. A while back they increased RAM allocated to all users without increasing prices, which was a great surprise. Things like this make me happy to host my multiple projects with them.
I have recently been thinking about moving to digitalocean, because they look like excellent value. I haven't made the move yet because of inertia, and Linode's customer service which is just mind-blowingly good. I suspect that in a couple of days I won't be able to spot a single patch of greener grass on the other side of the proverbial fence.
I really wish DigitalOcean provided more then one core on their plans with < 2gb of memory. Despite that, I am probably going to move to the 512mb plan in the next year or so (once I get around to it). The backup feature is enough incentive alone.
Meh DigitalOcean is oversold. Each box has 128gb ram, so you are probably going to be on a server with 100+ other VPS's.
Lots of people have been complaining about network speeds recently:
http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/8339/very-bad-performan...
Lots of people have been complaining about network speeds recently:
http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/8339/very-bad-performan...
I wish Digital Ocean supported IPv6.
That's great. If it was another provider doing this 10 fold increase, I'd suspect they would fuck up and wouldn't be able to deliver. Linode earned my trust and I can't recommend them enough.
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Please. Major upgrades happen every single day among the various VPS providers. And whilst it is notable it isn't particularly useful to most Linode customers. In fact 99% won't see any difference at all.
Had they actually decided to offer SSD based instances to compete with the likes of DigitalOcean then we would have something interesting.
Also this is a terrible way for a company to earn trust. It should be earned based on their behaviour during the bad times. And we know how appalling Linode handles those.
Had they actually decided to offer SSD based instances to compete with the likes of DigitalOcean then we would have something interesting.
Also this is a terrible way for a company to earn trust. It should be earned based on their behaviour during the bad times. And we know how appalling Linode handles those.
My comment wasn't clear. Linode has earned my trust along the years (been a costumer since Jan/2009), via top notch support and quality hardware/network.
2TB is good... their old bandwidth was paltry.
Everyone chant with me: price war! price war! price war!
Everyone chant with me: price war! price war! price war!
Once I moved out of the Fremont DC, I was very happy with Linode.
But I have sites that choke on quite modest I/O. I waited for Linode to install SSDs, then waited, and waited more. Last week I gave up and moved to DigitalOcean.
But I have sites that choke on quite modest I/O. I waited for Linode to install SSDs, then waited, and waited more. Last week I gave up and moved to DigitalOcean.
Linode hands down is the best VPS company. I fully expect SSD drives to be available in Nextgen as well, looking forward to it.
DigitalOcean has been working well for me. They have SSD, but only single core.
Looks like they have up to 4 cores in their standard plans, and up to 24 on their larger plans, all SSD:
https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing
I have been Linode customer since sometime 2008 I think till last month, when I fully migrated to Digital Ocean to two, individually better instances for half the price than my one box at Linode.
I was running Gentoo at London DC without any issues, my major gripes with Linode was how hard was it to get additional IPv4 addresses without lying about your reasons - i.e running services on different IP addresses or separating your business/personal websites (and very easy if you lied, I know someone who did). Another thing was that I paid them by a virtual CC and always put there just enough money for transaction every month, it's dedicated for internet pay only and prevents cc fraud, but every now and then they'd get the card declined at the beginning of the month cause I didn't put the money in yet, like 2nd or 3rd day and always always there was this template threatening ticket put in by a person in my account. I was paying them every month for years, so what if I have outstanding balance on the 2nd or 3rd, is that the reason to threat deleting my stuff? That felt really alienating.
Digital Ocean, while don't hand out IP addresses at all, costs so little that it's $1 + damn good reason at Linode or $5 and a VPS on top for the IP at DO.
The support at DO is nor fast, nor technical, I had issues with my Gentoo builds basically where after reboot /dev/null would come up being a text file with junk in it, you can mknod it but it wouldn't survive reboot. I've raised a ticket and they've removed Gentoo from selection, but I doubt it's fixed and and I'll have to work some ugly hacks to work around this if it happens again.
They use a kernel loaded from below, so you won't really have latest and greatest Arch if you use that, kernel upgrades are in pkg ignore list and even if upgraded it won't load.
I might return to Linode sometime in the future if DO messes up my Gentoos again and Linode does better at matching DO's offer.
At the moment, if you don't need to scale a lot (it's not as convenient at Linode, $20 vs $5 starts to hurt as the number of boxes go up, also Linode doesn't bill you by the our) and just want a personal server for your website I'd still go with Linode, especially after increased transfer quotas.
I was running Gentoo at London DC without any issues, my major gripes with Linode was how hard was it to get additional IPv4 addresses without lying about your reasons - i.e running services on different IP addresses or separating your business/personal websites (and very easy if you lied, I know someone who did). Another thing was that I paid them by a virtual CC and always put there just enough money for transaction every month, it's dedicated for internet pay only and prevents cc fraud, but every now and then they'd get the card declined at the beginning of the month cause I didn't put the money in yet, like 2nd or 3rd day and always always there was this template threatening ticket put in by a person in my account. I was paying them every month for years, so what if I have outstanding balance on the 2nd or 3rd, is that the reason to threat deleting my stuff? That felt really alienating.
Digital Ocean, while don't hand out IP addresses at all, costs so little that it's $1 + damn good reason at Linode or $5 and a VPS on top for the IP at DO.
The support at DO is nor fast, nor technical, I had issues with my Gentoo builds basically where after reboot /dev/null would come up being a text file with junk in it, you can mknod it but it wouldn't survive reboot. I've raised a ticket and they've removed Gentoo from selection, but I doubt it's fixed and and I'll have to work some ugly hacks to work around this if it happens again.
They use a kernel loaded from below, so you won't really have latest and greatest Arch if you use that, kernel upgrades are in pkg ignore list and even if upgraded it won't load.
I might return to Linode sometime in the future if DO messes up my Gentoos again and Linode does better at matching DO's offer.
At the moment, if you don't need to scale a lot (it's not as convenient at Linode, $20 vs $5 starts to hurt as the number of boxes go up, also Linode doesn't bill you by the our) and just want a personal server for your website I'd still go with Linode, especially after increased transfer quotas.
Cant Love them Enough, they are meticulous in their efforts and the most trustworthy VPS providers.. Just love them - can do free advertising for them - call me fan or follower.. we love Linode
Woo Hoo! I really don't understand much about what you guys are doing, but well, I'm a happy linode customer, so whatever it is that you are doing to make things faster, better, bring it on!
Wahey! I love good news. I'm still running a bunch of linodes for free off the credit I won for http://faxitforme.com in Rails Rumble 2012
I made little benchmark, Linode vs Digital Ocean http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5221477
The irony is that, in spite of these upgrades, my first attempt to load the blog post timed out, and the second attempt was not speedy (or should I say SPDY?)
I also had a time out. Perhaps they host their blog on some external service
Probably an AWS micro instance
If you went from 200GB to 2000GB, you increased 200GB 10 times, you increased it by 1800GB, you increased it by 900%, not 1000%. Just sayin'.
A 10x increase in bandwidth is pretty impressive. More useful to me at least is the increased throughput though, 250Mbps is pretty speedy.
I love Linode but the paltry RAM got me to move to someone else that I have been happy with for the last month. The customer service was great but the specs were bad. If they double the RAM for the same price I would move back in a heartbeat.
Hopefully Nextgen v.2 adds RAM for the same price.
Hopefully Nextgen v.2 adds RAM for the same price.
Been using linode for 3 years now for a little instance to do basic stuff on. Its only ever been down once for a move to a new, faster, host. Even that they gave significant notice for and plenty of time for me to move it (I chose when to move it).
Someone in the world are always unsatisfied for everything, yes, everything, no matter what you changed, no matter what you improved, they always always can point something out there to complain about. Example!? Right here!
For those with high bandwidth needs this would really make sense. The cheapest package has 2TB of egress bandwidth; this would cost $228 (0.12 x 1900GB) with AWS EC2.
What is the cost of a Cisco Nexus 7000 Router and Switch?
$83,490 but the price rises dramatically if they filled all of the expansion slots.
http://www.ctistore.com/catalog/cat/prod,574258.html?gclid=C...
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Cisco-Nexus-7000-Series-32-...
http://www.ctistore.com/catalog/cat/prod,574258.html?gclid=C...
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Cisco-Nexus-7000-Series-32-...
MSRP is (super roughly) $40-80k depending on how it is tricked out (choice of modules, etc).
They talk about interconnectivity bandwidth, but not the pipes going out to the backbone or peering. Anyone know?
Now we are waiting part 2 and 3 of Linode Nextgen. (I think one part will be storage)
As a new customer who has had nothing but a great experience so far, thank you.
What about Rackspace Cloud?
Managed cloud at rackspace starts at $100 plus usage charges. Seems a bit high.
If managed, but unmanaged starts at $16.xx for 512MB and outbound traffic is at 0.12/GB I think
Except now rackspace is even more expensive than linode for certain uses as the 2TB of bandwidth free would cost you an extra $240 on rackspace cloud and because bandwidth is shared between all linodes this extra bandwidth can make a big difference.
If you are having 2TB BW then you would not host on linode or rackspace cloud, but take a dedicated server.
I have Linode VPS for 3.5 yeras now, no problems at all.
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I've had a system on Linode for the past two years. Zero problems, zero downtime. My experience with Linode has been very consistent and reliable.
My Linode accounts on their Dallas data center have gone through quite a bit of downtime over the years. Their support is why I've stuck with them, though.
original title: "Linode is increasing the monthly transfer quota 10x after a hw upgrade"
Its nice that they are now increasing the bandwidth cap, but it was on the low side to begin with. My takeaway from this is that "linode finally joins everyone else in network speed and bandwidth."
Don't get me wrong, I have used linode in the past and enjoyed them very much and never had any problems, and support was top notch. but their offering is not very impressive at all.
Edit: wow, thats a lot of hostility... didn't realize linode reached fandom status. I guess I should keep my opinions to myself then?