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Ask Slashdot: Best Inexpensive VPS Provider?
David Greene writes "After many years of waiting for my provider to upgrade DSL service from the measly 1.5 Mbps I have now, I've decided to go another route. Unfortunately, no other provider in the area (Twin Cities) offers static IPs and permission to run servers. I am looking for a VPS solution to host the public parts of my personal site. What can the Slashdot community recommend as a good, inexpensive VPS provider for personal use? This will mainly be hosting a blog and a couple of Free Software projects (wikis, git repositories, etc.). I would prefer something with KVM so I can manage my own OS install but I am open to other options. Root shell access is essential."
I can't but recommend FDC servers. I've used them off and on since 2008. I've also tried many others but there's always been something wrong with them. Never had problems with FDC tho. They also give unlimited bandwidth so you don't need to worry about extra costs, and they have three datacenters. Two in US (Chicago and Denver) and one in EU (Czech). Servers are also quickly set up. They're an established company too. I've had a few porn sites hosted there, and anyone in the industry knows how demanding those can be on hardware and bandwidth. Never had any problems with FDC tho. Their VPS plans start at $9/month which is hard to beat. Even shitty providers have higher price.
I would avoid any unknown company. While there most likely are many good ones that are less known, it's a hit or miss. Sometimes they just close, either because it was unprofitable for them or just for no reason. There's many VPS providers who are just run by some guy, who leases the servers from DC's. So go with established company that has their own datacenters and years of experience. You save lots of headache.
Here you go champ, lowendbox.com
Been very happy with Linode and PV-GRUB (PV-GRUB allows Xen guests to boot their own custom kernel)
http://www.linode.com/
http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/PV-GRUB
for 20$ per month
RAM 512MB
Storage 20GB
Transfer 200GB
linode is by far the best, it is not even close.
They don't over-sell (far from it!), the service is great, uptime is nearly perfect, excellent tools like remote shell over https.
I tried a cheap $5/month vps for a while, it was trouble. First they falsely claimed that I was maxing out my transfer limit and I switched to linode after a bunch of os files became corrupted. I haven't had an issue with linode and a few of my friends use them. Also 128mb a bit inconvenient for most things(watch out for orphaned ssh sessions chewing up ram at 5mb each).
Prgmr has been the only vps I've used for a very long time now. Very inexpensive and they get out of your way.
For $59 a month I get Comcast's Business Class service (12 down/2up) along with 5 static IPs which I use to host things like mail off a personal server. I've been using their service for almost 3 years now without much issue (the support also is a lot better which is worth it in case you do run into any hiccups). I'm in the Twin Cities area and am pretty sure this service is available to much of the metro area so you may want to give them a call.
www.linode.com Linode is the best VPS provider far and above anyone and for a really decent price. You have full access to your system, you can use pv-grub to load your own OS or just use one of the many they have available. There is absolutely no other VPS provider even remotely close to the level of quality or service that Linode provides.
Slicehost has been great for me in the past, though now that RackSpace is absorbing their infrastructure, I'm not sure what they will be like in the future.
Try IntoVPS (www.intovps.com) - it goes as cheap as 10$ / month for unmanaged VPS (yes, you have root access).
I've had a vm at Linode for several years now, and couldn't be happier.
Full root access with oob-console access, choice of distros, and the ability to do anything legal that you want.
-Jeff
I've been with them for several months now. Their Romania datacentre sucks, don't use it. But their US datacentres are very nice. I have a vps for $20/month with 1gb of ram, 2gb burstable; 2ghz single-core CPU, burstable to more cores; 40gb HDD, 1tb transfer. I usually get around 8 megabytes per second through their network and the Dallas datacentre has yet to go below what it promises. I run a minecraft server, IRC server, and several other things on my vps 24/7.
I personally prefer www.hub.org.
A) You get a FreeBSD VPS (jail'ed)
B) Support the host that hosts PostgreSQL
C) In addition you get access to a number of shared PostgreSQL versions and a number of MySQL's. So you don't spend your RAM or disk space on your DB. Quite convenient for smaller needs.
Recently I discovered that a low cost (semi well known) Shared host I use actually stores passwords (ie login to portal, sql, etc) in a form which can be easily converted to clear text... hell, they even have multiple Show Password links and require you to share said password with them to receive tech support... so they can verify it against the clear text password they see.
I've since been on the hunt for a new host... however have discovered that the treatment of passwords in this manor is not uncommon. Hell, last night I canceled a VPS account less than an hour after signing up as I discovered that not only does the admin exhibit editorial control over passwords (he changed my initial one), but that he too stores them in clear text.
Granted... if you are smart you will use a different password per account/service... however when such a company treats accounts in such a way I can do nothing but run.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Have used them for a variety of shared and VPS deployments over the past decade. Reasonably priced, root shell access, responsive support. Only thing they don't offer is KVM, but they offer most of the standard distros in barebone images, which you can then customize as you wish. They've worked well for me.
They're inexpensive and I haven't had any downtime aside from scheduled maintenance. Plus, it's run by a group of Android developers (more commonly known as Team Douche, hence the name). http://tdrevolution.com/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm in the Twin Cities too. Check out KickAss VPS. They're served out of the Verispace colo center in Edina. I pay $25/month for an Ubuntu server with root access. Never had any problems.
I use a Linode 512 to do web development, run automated tasks (Twitter updates, website production), and keep current on new technologies. It has hosted application servers including Openfire XMPP, NGINX, Redmine, and I'd read of others hosting Asterix and many others. Its a server that doesn't go down due to local power or internet outages. Although the Linode team provides top notch support, I really haven't had to use it. The tools are great and the service just works!
I've been with ServerAxis since November 2006 and they have been rock solid. Currently, for my very small hosting needs, I'm paying $9/mo for 512 MB RAM and a 16 GB SSD HD with 500 GB/month bandwidth. Full root access is included, but you have to install the OS off of one of their base images, with the options being CentOS, Debian, Gentoo and Ubuntu.
I'm not currently a customer, but I've watched them for a while (friends with one of their staff, full disclosure) and will be going to them when I need to move off my DSL.
Not the cheapest but they do offer a discount for open source developers
http://rimuhosting.com/order/startorder1.jsp
I'm not even getting a discount to plug them ;)
"good, inexpensive"
Those are two parts of the triangle. If you also want it to have it fast, then you're simply being unreasonable. You're probably also one of the people complaining about GoDaddy supporting SOPA. Don't you see that these are all related? Find a hosting provider that knows what they are doing, reliable and pay a little more for it. Don't complain when your server costs more than your dinner.
Carpathia Hosting. Worst I've ever dealt with. Not to mention the fact that I worked there and even told customers they should consider looking elsewhere for better service. I tried to stay away from the VPS customers, but unfortunately the company seemed to think that a sys admin was the same as customer support.
I haven't used their VPS but you can look into Dreamhost. I've been very happy with my shared web account.
For what it's worth, I used to think I needed a VPS as well. Then I found myself with limited funds for awhile so I transferred my site to Dreamhost on their shared hosting plan. At the time they had a deal that it was around $48 to pre-pay for 2 years. It averages out to about $1.95/month. In addition to the unlimited domains/disk/bandwidth and mysql database, the account comes with 1 free domain registration, easy setup to have email hosted either through Dreamhost themselves or through Google Apps [which I do]. And it comes with a shell account, which is on the webserver itself running Debian. They have all kinds of one-click installs for various blogs and ecommerce options and whatnot.
As for stuff like git, I'm not sure. I see that there are some git commands on the server, but I don't know if it's possible to run a git server.
At first I thought I would hate it, and would be transferring back to a VPS/Dedicated server first chance I got. Well, it's been 2.5 years now and I have no desire to switch back. I haven't really missed having root access, and it's nice not to have to worry so much about managing everything. Admittedly, this is just personal sites of fairly low importance, but I've been happy with the setup so far. And they don't seem to mind me sitting on irssi on the shell account all day. The only thing it does is it will automatically kill any single process which has been running for a week.
Anyway, it's worth a look and if you don't like it, I think they have a relatively painless process to transfer to a VPS.
As an added bonus, they've been against SOPA since November, according to their official blog.
Nothing to see here
I've been using Linode for a little over a year. I'm using it to run about a dozen instances of the Drupal CMS, plus Tomcat, Solr, and a few other utility-type services.
100% uptime since I signed up.
Here's my "uptime" stats as of about 1 minute ago:
01:07:13 up 416 days, 23:06, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
Mudge
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they're not.
You should be asking on WHT, which is the best-known forum for discussing web hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers.
I would echo the linode suggestion, particularly if it's the first VPS you've ever used. However, they are not KVM. If you want KVM, try 6sync. Another fine choice is BuyVM, though you have to wait until they have stock, which is a minor media event.
I would ignore the suggestions to look at lowendbox, unless you are willing to trade price for stability (which is not always a bad tradeoff, just be sure to do it consciously)
Advice: on VPS providers
OVH Networks is the best unless you are in London and can use the LinX network. I know because I am called up in the middle of the night to fix issues for British Telecom Tier 4 and know all the exchanges in the UK and main hubs.
OVH is your bitch! Merry Christmas :)
All cows eat grass!
I guess you don't use them for outbound email since FDC Servers has a terrible reputation for hosting spammers and having a completely non-responsive abuse department. There are more than a few members of anti-spam lists that advocate a block on sight policy for SMTP as far as FDC are concerned, and I know some that kill them for web as well due to hosted malware.
Of course, that may or may not be an issue for a given individual since it depends on what you want the server for, but I'd strongly recommend a few search queries for "$provider" in connection with "abuse", "spam" and "malware", etc. If they have an entry on Spamhaus, or lots of IPs listed in DNSBLs or URIBLs, then that's generally a bad sign too.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Prgmr.com owner Luke Crawford has some diary entries at k5 where he talks about his business...
I've been happy customer of his for the past 2 years, so this comment is a vote for Luke.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
The problem with all of these cheap VPS providers is that they almost all operate out of some of the worst data centers in the country. I don't mean to pick on linode in particular but last i checked their west coast facility was hurricane electric, fremont 2. That facility is single homed and known for being just about the cheapest colocation money can buy anywhere on the planet. If you're curious about some of the issues HE FM2 experiences take a look at this thread: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1058700 As you move up the ranks in facilities the costs rise dramatically, "cheap" VPS's are a huge DDOS risk as people purchase them for all sorts of nefarious reasons, so unless they operate their own networks the high end data centers won't touch them with a 10' pole. If http://asn.cymru.com/cgi-bin/whois.cgi and check who they use for transport via robtex: http://www.robtex.com/ The easiest rule to follow: if hurricane electric or cogent are in the mix run and don't look back!
I can't believe nobody has mentioned http://webkeepers.com/. You can get in for as little as $6.95 a month, and for $19.95 a month you get an unmatched 250GB of disk and 1GB of guaranteed RAM. They have been excellent for me.
1. Continue to use DSL but get a new ISP. I was forced to use Frontier for the line but had Visi as my ISP and they allowed servers just fine--even reverse DNS.
2. Move to business class cable service. I'm forced to use Charter (which has its share of problems) but most of the rest of the TC has Comcast (which apparently at Business Class isn't terrible). It's about $72/month for business class with one static IP. No reverse DNS on Charter but that's not much of an issue unless you still IRC. If you don't want/can't get either, check out Clearwire's business class (their uptime guarantees are lame as shit, something like 13 days/year are considered acceptable).
4. I don't know much about VPS but thought I'd let you know there are options available even though you think there aren't.
I've been with maybe a half dozen hosts over the past decade or so, from the biggest in the world to one of the smallest. Not one of them managed to come anywhere close to Linode in terms of reliability and quality of service. Yes, they're a premium provider (not in the business of massive overselling to offer super low prices for super high amounts of bandwidth), but at $20 a month for their entry level offering, the barrier to entry is not high.
They've got six datacenters spread out over the world (leased space, obviously), run pretty high-performance boxes (dual quad-core xeons with low contention, 15K RPM SAS drives in RAID-10, etc), have a large degree of automation (so most requests happen instantly since no human has to intervene), support pvgrub for loading your own kernels if you want, have an active community on IRC (where most of their staff idle) and forums, offer more flexibility than even a dedicated server (management interface lets you do everything down to repartition your disk space and install random operating systems, if you want, although anything but Linux is unsupported, upgrading or resizing your VPS takes only the time to migrate it to another homogeneous host box), they use Xen (similar to KVM) for real virtualization, they provide out-of-band console access via a virtual serial port (ssh to the host box or use an ajax terminal), etc. I could keep listing features, but it's better to just visit their site and read up. I'll leave with another parting shot about their management interface (which has smartphone app versions too) being awesome.
Yes, and they suck. BTDT. I just got a VPS at myhosting.com, so far so good. More costly, but you get what you pay for!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
You set up an account, then use their control panel to choose a base distribution and create VPS instances. You configure the machine and pay for only what you configure. You can create a machine, log in as root and manage it. If you try a machine and blow it away a few days later, you just pay for the days it was running.
I've used them for several years and they are very reliable.
They didn't really have a clear idea what they were doing when hardware failed and because of that I don't feel comfortable recommending them.
Considering that Linode's staff don't do work in the datacenters (they rely on remote hands & eyes), I'm not sure how you could get that impression.
Those kind of specs mean they're horrendously overselling. Anybody who uses that sort of service is asking for it.
$9 pr month for a Micro server if you reserve it for 1 year.
Micro Instance 613 MB of memory, up to 2 ECUs (for short periodic bursts), EBS storage only, 32-bit or 64-bit platform
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing
Amazon micro EC2 instances are reasonably priced and I use one for my personal sandbox and mail server. Average price is $14.60 /month ($0.02/h * 24h * 365d / 12) for a no commitment a la carte and drops to an average of $8.82/mo or $6.43/mo with 1 or 3 year reservations https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing . They also have a free for the first year program at http://aws.amazon.com/free/ to get you started.
You won't get KVM access for OS install but there are startup images for all the common free linux distros (Centos, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), Amazon Linux (a custom distro for EC2), and non-free OS's like RHEL and MS Windows (they cost more per hour). Every distro I've used on there gives you either direct root login or `sudo su -l` capability. You have full control over the incoming firewall rules so you can allow specific ports by IP or CIDR range without chewing up CPU or I/O in iptables. You can add additional storage on the fly (including via automated script within your VPS if you can program) and take live snapshots of running disks (including the OS disk) for backups.
I use Amazon for my work systems and much prefer them to managing an on site rack or letting some other host charge us for the impediment to administration that is managed hosting.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
I've been running http://www.sqlite.org/ on Linode since 2004. They've been great. Highly recommended.
I've got a VPS running on interserver.net, and I'm happy with them. I'm not doing anything fancy, but do have a couple domains pointed at the server with simple static pages, and run my e-mail through them. I'm running Ubuntu on my vps which is one of their standard options.
I've been using SSD Nodes for my projects and they've been stellar, although they are a bit pricey compared to most low end providers. 12 network providers (8 tier 1), sandy bridge processors with SSDs and you can't go wrong.
URL: http://www.vservercenter.com/cloud-vps-hosting?ccode=FRMVDSKV20
vServer Center stands against SOPA.
vServer Center's Cloud VPS hosting features:
* Dedicated Operating System: The Operating System can be changed or upgraded at anytime; Operating Systems supported: Linux CentOS, Ubuntu Linux, Linux openSUSE, Debian Linux, Fedora Linux, FreeBSD, Windows server 2008 and Windows server 2003, Windows 7 and Windows 8 (beta);
* SolusVM VPS Control Panel: With SolusVM Control Panel customers can self Install OS, reboot VPS, reinstall or upgrade VPS OS, access VPS console remotely;
* Administrative Access: Root access for the Unix server. Administrative access for the Windows server; Customer can install any software or application on his/her VPS;
* UnMetered Bandwidth: no surprise bandwidth bill each month;
* High performance: KVM Performance Benchmarks test scores are even higher than average Dell PowerEdge Xeon Physical Servers;
* Enterprise Class SAN storage systems and high end physical servers. All live data drives are fiber channel or SAS drives. All live data are protected by dual parity disks plus two additional hot spare disks;
* Lowest Price Guarantee: Buy with confidence!
* 100% Uptime Guaranteed! Our enterprise class cloud hosting service is so reliable, we guarantee 100% service uptime!
* SAS 70 Type II certified Data Center: self owned 20,000 square feet world class data center facility in St. Louis, Missouri, USA;
* Serving businesses worldwide for eBusiness hosting since 1995. High customer satisfaction. One WebhostingTalk user's praise on the WHT forum: "I just wanted to comment and saw for the few days I've had their service, it has been fantastic! Support has gone out of their way to even check up and let me know they can create an FTP share for my ISO to be mounted. Support responds very quickly. Amazing service!"
http://www.vservercenter.com/
High Performance Low Cost Enterprise Class Cloud Server Hosting
Tel: 1.314.621.9991 (24x7)
I'm a fan of Virtacore. They're offering VMs on VMware vCloud Director, which means a full gui console, and pricing is basically cheap. (Cheaper than Amazon when you factor in even modest bandwidth and IO charges.)
If you goal is to find a service for less than $50 a month, expect little in terms of service. Your VPS will be loaded at a ratio of 16 to 1 at the minimum, in bad cases 32 to 1 and in horrible cases as far as 64 to 1. Now keep in mind an 8 core handling 16 or 32 VPS's would be alright, but most of these VPS companies tend to use dual core i3's - that being 2 cores and 2 hyperthreaded cores (or the xeon branded i3).
Really if you not in the $50 a month range forget about it. If you want it done right, you can find tons and tons of dedicated low end servers for $79 and $89 a month.
I have had a VPS with eApps for a few years. I pay $11/mo. They are a legit hosting service with customer service and tech support by phone.
I have 3 domains hosted and have had a few brief outages, but nothing major.
Amazon's AWS platform is probably as cheap as you can get while still getting good (i.e. not horribly oversold) service. They also offer a free micro instance for a year to get you hooked.
I live in Minneapolis myself. I have Comcast business service at home with static ips, no bandwidth cap, and several servers live in my basement as I type. It's not super cheap, but it's quite fast and the service and support is quite good. From what I can tell, their business support is totally separate from the consumer support, and is much, much better (competent, responsive, very low hold times).
Linode all the way, they're aren't kvm but you can run a custom kernel. Their control panel is absolutely top notch.
I've had vps on linode, amazon, some openvz crap server, godaddy, rackspace, and slicehost. Linode is the one i would recommend.
Shadus
Linode uses Xen and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, what virtualization backend is in use is probably not of real concern to most people, and just as many prefer Xen as KVM (I think that Xen is arguably better for VPS-style hosting).
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
Relevant, exciting and well said, sir....
Now, can someone DELETE this spam please?
Same here. I use mine for secondary DNS and an MX backup. I keep mine upgraded to the latest OpenBSD and also have been very happy.
Model 551, Chambered in 6mm
I'm with ARP too. They're excellent. The offering is good and the service is great. I'm not changing any time soon as I've already tried Linode,VPSLink and a couple of others. A big reason for going with ARP is if you care about IPv6, good network (peers, and good APAC service). You have complete control over your OS as they run KVM virtualisation.
The IRC channel is great too and you can chat with the guys who run the servers and some pretty knowledgeable customers. There's a few names in the IRC you may recognise too. The only downside I can see is that their provisioning process is definitely handled manually instead of a fully automated system that can pop out a new VPS in 30 seconds - so if you're used to that you may be annoyed. It's not that slow, and if you're in the USA you're in the right timezone at least.
I'm running 768 MB, 20 GB, 400 GB USD $20/month and I've been with them about a year and a half.
A site you may want to browse is http://www.lowendbox.com/ as they get some good deals from satisfactory providers.
Unfortunately, no other provider in the area (Twin Cities) offers static IPs and permission to run servers.
I'm pretty sure Comcast serves the Twin Cities (at least some portions) and they offer static IPs and you can run servers. You need their business package, a few bucks more perhaps. I use this (not in Minnesota), and find it very stable and consistent, and they never give me any crap about what ports I open.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Great company. All support is local and their servers are fast. free control panel too.
In the wake of SOPA et al, I recommend Sweden Dedicated http://swedendedicated.com/ .
It's great because you can brag about the servers being in a Bond Villain style HQ. I've had great uptime and their administrators are competent enough to be helpful when necessary, but don't expect them to do a lot of hand-holding or CPANEL type nonsense.
I've been using them as well. Went with them for their low-cost Xen hosting and don't have any regrets. A general VPS tip I've had to learn the hard way: avoid anything OpenVZ. The shared kernel causes lots of problems, especially if the host machine isn't too well maintained.
One host I used about a year ago couldn't keep their server's clock in-sync at all, eventually the time drifted so much that it broke our Google Apps authentication and brought down email access for the entire building for a couple hours, which we eventually had to fix with a poor software hack. They were impossible to contact, and because it was an OpenVZ VPS, the VM clock was shared with the host, so we couldn't fix the time on our own. Not an issue, as far as I know, with Xen / KVM hosts.
From what I've read, the cheaper hosts tend to use OpenVZ because they can oversell the server memory a lot easier. Not an issue for Xen / KVM hosts, which is why I'm now using ThrustVPS for all of my personal stuff now - they're the cheapest/best-reviewed Xen host I could find.
... with static IP, server permissions, IPv6, etc?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I use nqhost.com...been with them for a few months now. I am also in the twin cities and I'm running a FreeBSD server for IRC. 30gb storage, 512mb ram and unmetered bw. Been good so far. Also have other vps's like Windows or Linux.
Considering that Linode's staff don't do work in the datacenters (they rely on remote hands & eyes), I'm not sure how you could get that impression.
Maybe that (using the remote hands of the colo faciliting ... of those that offer such ... is how they resolved it.
A facility based provider should absolutely have staff on hand at all times that know how to deal with all their hardware, networks, and such.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That's really interesting how they get 13 usable IPs in a /29. Could you teach ME how? Could apply this trick to get 5 usables IPs in a /30?
Oh wait ... you must be talking about IPv6.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Stop advertising Linode...
I'm also a happy Linode customer... too many customers will split our bandwidth share!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I host a few virtual servers with Panix.com.
I've been using them for several months now. Tech support is great. No downtime, at least none of which I or my users are aware. The staff is very accessible.
I've seen a few other people recommend them already, but I rather enjoyed the low-end VPS offerings from ThrustVPS. I use my VPS for a number of different things (web-facing sandbox, if you will) ranging from web hosting for personal PHP projects to a testing platform for game servers in various configurations.
I've also found their staff helpful and patient when I put in a ticket for a problem, or via the email support system. Such a recent example coincides with a recent change of passwords I made to many of my accounts around the Internet. Well, I eventually forgot what my new password was that I set to access their client area panel, and when I entered the answer to the security question I set, I discovered that whatever I set had some kind of typo. Via the email support system, I negotiated a means of identifying myself to the staff, who eventually reset my password for me.
The only "gripe" I have is their various virtual machines they offer aren't all quite up to date. Not ancient, but it would be nice to have an option to use Debian 6, or CentOS 6 (these might have been updated since I last checked a few weeks ago).
They don't over sell their VPS's. When a server is full, its just full. The users on that server won't see terrible performance as a result. Thrust is usually prompt about setting up more servers as resources permit, but with several different host machines around the world, its not often an issue where you can't get a server near by.
I've enjoyed their service. I would recommend them to anyone provided they keep their level of service up.
View My Server ---> www.viewmyserver.com 2 gig of RAM bustable to 4 gig and 2 cores, 7.5 TB of traffic per month, 75 gig of disk space...for $25.00 per month. They are in Arizona. I have run into issues running Concrete5 on them, but it is a bare metal system, so it is really my problem, not theirs. Concrete5 requires some serious PHP tweaking and I haven't gotten there yet. Really fast support and nice bunch of guys!
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
I use http://bordernode.com/ Cheap (they have a 30% off coupon right now), works...etc etc.. What's not to love? I have their cheapest plan w/ the gbit upgrade, use it for an IRC server. DDoS-filtered, un-metered inbound bandwidth, ('only' 500gb outbound) can't really complain for $20-something a month.
"...Sleep comes like a drug in God's country Sad eyes, crooked crosses in God's country..."
I am also in the same area and Comcast Business Internet is a slam dunk if you can get it. The service reps and phone techs are completely different than the home/consumer experience. They have short hold times and the few times I have had outages or cable cuts (stupid building maintenance people!) I have actually been able to get same day on-site techs. They offer statics for a reasonable price and very good throughput. I have a couple different service tiers at different locations, with the highest being DOCSIS3 50/15 service. Let me tell you that it sure is fun to be able to download things at 4MB/sec if it is backed by a good CDN. I know their home customer service blows, but their commercial service is awesome. And they will install commercial service to a home. The only downside is that you can't get a TV+Internet bundle discount (but with DSL, you aren't getting that now anyway).
after trying FDC, Slicehost, Swvps, & Linode, i finally found a hosting solution that had everything I needed for a good price.
http://hostchopper.com/
Try rootbsd.com It is what I use since I wanted a freebsd vps.
Not the most expensive, not the cheapest, but has been very reliable for me.
I use it as a VPN server. My home network (FIOS) connects to the vpn Server, this allows me access to all my internal hosts (vmware, storage, various other boxes) from the outside world using port forwarding. Gets around pesky filtering.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I use http://silverrack.com/ for my VPS hosting right now. I've got some rails apps, Java apps, and a PHP site. I also use it for source control and backups. The service is pretty simple but the price for is good for the amount of bandwidth, memory, and storage that is offered. They allow additional IP addresses to be purchased, provide snapshot backups, and DNS services as well.
I've also used Linode as to run an external monitoring app. I've liked their service although it cost a little more than SilverRack.
HotSpot Shield is pretty good. They don't store user IPs. They have a free service and a paid one. The free one is good, but puts an ad at the top of your pages while you browse. The paid one is reasonable, and adds a few other perks (pretty sure they make the service a bit faster).
I have had a VPS with them for over a year; their service works well; no major complaints. The server doesn't have virtual memory, so you run out of RAM sometimes, but this isn't uncommon among providers as far as I can tell.
$10/month
512 MB RAM
15 GB disk
600 GB transfer/month
For a while I used EcoVPS (www.ecovps.com) without any problems. Their specs are a little low, though (Guaranteed RAM: 512MB, Disk Space: 5GB, Data Transfer: 100GB)... Also I didn't setup anything too fancy, so these were more than enough for me...
Aww, you gave it away. They are definitely the best, especially considering the price! The last time I checked, they didn't have many servers left. If you want to get on the train, get your ticket now!
I could not agree more about OpenVZ. More importantly, though, is to stay away from providers that only provide OpenVZ. For example, a friend of mine signed up to ThrustVPS after I went on about how amazing their KVM server is, and he got a VZ server. As far as I can tell, that server works just as well as mine. I made a post earlier about blacklisted providers, just search the page for "blacklist". From what i can remember, those hosts only provide OpenVZ servers.
xlshosting in the Netherlands are flexible and affordable. Dual data center with fast connectivity to the AMS-IX, choose your own blend. Only thing I can think of that's not what you prefer is that it's Xen-based, so you have to choose which distro you want and get a pre-setup minimal install of that.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I use BurstNET as my VPS provider. I have one VPS with 1 GB of RAM ($9.95 per month) and two with 512 MB of RAM ($5.95 per month). I've had no major issues over the past 6 months, just two minor slowdowns caused by another VPS client on the same node abusing resources (both times, the person was using their VPS as a seedbox). In both cases, the abusive users were removed in less than one hour. They are completely unmanaged/self-managed of course. Meaning that except in cases of hardware failure or network connectivity issues, you're on your own. Just like all other unmanaged VPS providers.
My spoon is too big.
I have two right now: one at Linode (a 512 with Debian, http://linode.com/ and one at Webfusion UK (http://www.webfusion.co.uk/virtual-private-servers/starter/ with Ubuntu) ... with Linode is easier to manage your VPS, you can even have alternate images stored and load the one you need, with WF is easier to manage your sites, if you host sites ...
Define "inexpensive". Linode are very good in my experience, but some would not call them inexpensive.
Look at http://www.lowendbox.com/ for some very cheap low-but-fine-for-many-things options, though don't just get one. I have a three of cheap VPSs doing various little things. That are of order of 512Mb RAM (one 1024Mb, always look at the guaranteed memory rather than any burst option when looking at OVZ options), 40Gb disk, 500-1000G bandwidth (though I don't use most of that of that most of the time) and they weight in at less than $20/month in total. But while they are reliable and fast enough for what I ask, I don't entirely trust any of them (at that price there can't be much margin, and many cheap VPS providers go under with little notice) everything is on at least two of them and backup up here so I can switch over with nothing but DNS changes if one host should die.
You'll get much better customer service response from the likes of Linode, and much less contended outgoing bandwidth and contended I/O, but depending on your needs the cheaper options may offer better value.
On low-end VMs based on OpenVZ, you will run into issues with the limited virtual memory address space. My VPS has 1GB memory and address space and I've been unable to run several important programs because they tried to access large files using mmap().
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
If you need hosting in Australia, then go for someone like Web In-A-Box. Disclaimer: I'm a reseller of theirs.
Standard home page.
Referral link if you want to be nice to me.
They have their own racks and servers and are a decent and honest bunch of guys. On a technical note, they run Xen and allow you to boot whatever OS you like.
Remember, trust but verify.
If you could somehow get an IPv6 /29 you'd have a lot more than 13 usable addresses. I have a /48 that'll last me until every cell in my body decides to connect to the net...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Yeah! Hetzner is great. You can cancel the contract per month. So just try it for a month for 8 euro and if you dont like cancel it.
I have been using for about a year now. Its stable,fast and has a very easy webinterface for reinstalling your OS if needed.
I got two windows vpses (one 2003 one 2008) for a specific project from burst.net, and they still have problems. Almost daily blue screens on both, even though these servers don't do much (not publicly advertised, just a step between development and deployment, and all access is password protected). Support was quick to respond with some vague wording that the node had to be rebooted, but couldn't give an explanation more than that. When this project finishes we are cancelling and never using them again.
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
a vServer, where someone thinks its important to point out its private (which means not a machine with a lot of users, but a virtual machine just for you, even when the physical one is shared).
http://www.linode.com/
I've been a customer for what feels like 10 years now. Their support is great, they have knowledgable people and yes, you do get root. You can have console access, just not graphical console access. (Who would want X running on a colocated server anyway?)
Here's their faq: http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm - They've got a great community, go pop on IRC on irc.oftc.net and join #linode. Ask your questions there if there's something you want to know that isn't in the FAQ.
Here's a referral link - you don't really need to use it, but if you do I'll get some free service as a thank you for referring you.
http://www.linode.com/?r=8304c52b0c2b67372d5dcbe998ee4e04271275d6
da w00t. mtfnpy?
if you can get by with the minimal resources...
hostigation kvm vps 128mb/5gb $20 a year via this deal:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com//showthread.php?t=1109937
This link will get you a free 512M VPS on Chunkhost for a month http://chunkhost.com/r/fak3r (sorry, US only) It matches your requirements, root with SSH is the only way to go. If you don't like it you can cancel it or let it run out; they'll never charge you unless you say you want to keep it after your month is up. I now pay 14$/month for the service, and it's been perfect for what I need. Give them a try, there's nothing to loose, and their service via twitter has been excellent.
fak3r.com
Comcast business connection in the Twin Cities will get you all that except ipv6, and they're rolling that out.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
A Small Orange. I've used them for about 5 years. First few years
VPS and now with a dedicated server. Good prices and support.
-MichaelC
All comments so far have been anglophone.
www.synalabs.com is the only francophone company I know of. Servers in Paris, which is close to London server space of course.
I'm sure there will be others as well for Spanish and so on, anyone with experience from Mexico?
A blog I run for the wealth
I've been with NetSonic.Net for the last 5 or 6 years. They're a small-ish outfit from what I can tell but their head support guy really knows his stuff (I really needed his expertise when I was having some trouble migrating from Ensim to Plesk)
Their bandwidth is very good and in the years I've been with them, there have been only a couple network outages. I don't have hard numbers, but I'm going to guess they've averaged somewhere between 4 and 5 9's
I have a dedicated server with 4 VPS hosts - Centos with Plesk (I resell some hosting space, so the panel makes it convenient for me to give my customers web-based admin)
Used to host with OLM ... they were not my favorite.
The Digital Sorceress
I run around 40 VPS servers scattered across as many locations and service providers as I could find.
Linode has to be my favorite. 6 server locations in the U.S., U.K. and Japan. Heavily automated, so you don't spend time waiting for a system administrator to do something. Supports Debian Linux in addition to a number of others. Inexpensive. And it performs well.
I have also had solid success with:
Servint
GPLhost
Slicehost
to name a few.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
After some researching, Linode seems to be the only reasonably priced VPS provider that nobody is complaining about. Thus I become a client, and I also don't have anything to complain about.
I can't say their support is good, because I've never needed it. I've never had a problem with them.
Rethinking email
5 usable IP's in a /30 is easy: 1 router IP and the /30 routed to it. Instead of exposing the /30 internally, expose a larger subnet where the /30 falls in the middle and use proxy arp.
13 usable IPs in a /29 is more of a challenge. ;-)
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I just discovered Gandi.net in another Slashdot article, and they offer VPS. Does anyone have any experience with them?
I've been using Linode (transferred from Slicehost). Linode is fabulous, and Slicehost was great in its day but hasn't really been updated since Rackspace bought it. I'm curious how Gandi.net compares.
The point that there aren't 13 addresses in a /29 still holds.
A /29 has 8 adddresses, total. Or 6 usable addresses.
Rethinking email
I run several wordpress/joomla websites, a shoutcast station, and an OpenSim simulator on three OpenVZ/Ubuntu 512MB VPS from ThrustVPS. I've been with them nearly two years with zero problems. The "slices" cost me $6/mo each. This vendor is the lowest priced OpenVZ vendor I've found, and since I run these sites non-profit, I need to keep the costs down. I have an OpenVPN tunnel from each of them to my home network where I rsync each of them nightly, as I fully realize that even though I've had no trouble with them, trouble may be right around the corner, and I want to be able to quickly restore everything to a new slice if neccessary. They offer locations in Dallas, LA, New Jersey and Maidenhead UK. I'm considering getting another one in the UK to set up a vpn/proxy to allow me to watch UK tv over the Internet. They also offer Xen-based Linux and Windows VPs in all locations. The 512MB OpenVZ slices are 512MB/1024MB burst, 15GB diskspace, 1TB/mo transfer. All in all, for my uses, I'm totally pleased with them. As usual, no financial ties to them, just a satisfied customer..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
There are countless providers of DSL and/or cable internet that allow hosting of servers and provide static IPs.
ipHouse
Visi
Comcast
CenturyLink/MSN
Just to name a few.
Just wanted to add that I am a fan of http://btcvps.net
They are a relatively new VPS operation but they have knowledgeable admins available in their IRC support channel at all hours of the day. The servers have been fairly reliable as they are hosted in very solid datacenters.
If you have a need for a VPS where you can pay pseuodononymously using Bitcoin, they seem to be one of the easiest to work with.
p
No, for IPv6 a /29 would have a lot more than 8 addresses (IPv6 is 128 bits, not 32. In general ISPs will get a /32 that they can split up into /48 or /64 chunks for their customers).
But yes, for IPv4 there are fewer than 13 addresses.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
There are a lot of VPS providers that provide a good, stable, service but most of them are not cheap.
If you want good and cheap you want Linode as first choice and Bytemark as a close second. You won't go wrong with either of these.
I switched to JaguarPC for an unmanaged Debian VPS after my old provider had my VPS down 5 days, didn't communicate with me well and ultimately never got my VPS and data back. (I kept my own backups, luckily.) JaguarPC had a special running and had been in business 10 years at the time, so I gave them a try. Never a problem. 3 years later they upgraded my resources and lowered my fee, and did it without having to restart my VPS. I once got an email that they were experiencing a DDoS attack that might affect me and pointed me to a website with running updates, but it didn't seem to affect me. Much better service than I had before and have seen with my friends' providers who would have issues, look at the status page and get a false "everything is fine!" message. I'm about to leave them to self-host at home, so I wrote them a thank-you blog singing their praises.
I'm also a big fan of Arp. I pay $24/month for 768mb of RAM, 20GB of disk space, plus a /29 block of IPv4 and a /48 block of IPv6. Great support, although I've only ever needed it once. The guy who runs it hangs out on IRC a lot so you can ask questions there too. You get SSH access to the *console* (like a serial console, in case you get locked out).
Overall, I can't speak highly enough of them.
Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
I needed a host to handle my OpenArena server (MeTaLNET) that I had been running for a year out of my garage, during a short-term period of couch-hopping in-between housing, because I was really enjoying hosting the game and was starting to accrue a great bunch of regulars playing on my server. After a tiny bit of self-education about virtual hosting, I decided to settle on Linode because they seemed to be one of the premier Xen-based offerings, and Xen sounded like the way to go for my needs. I backed up my server configs and such, e-mailed the stuff to one of my regulars, and started up a base-level Linode account for us. Within a week, we had our old server back up and running, now on the Linode, with better performance for everyone - not just our regulars, but for newcomers from around the world, as well. The transition was really simple, since we were able to run essentially the same O/S version that I had been able to use in my garage. Here we are, just about a year later now, and I'm proud to say our bottom- level Linode server is now hosting about 12 game servers spanning three games, a web file-dump, a web forum and wiki, an e-mail system, full IDS and more. Performance is great, we still haven't gotten even close to tapping out that little slice even though it's only got 512MB RAM! We only get the occasional lag-burp that's apparently caused by disk I/O, probably just our swap file, so we're looking at implementing ZRAM to see if that will help us squeeze even more out of the system. Bottom line? We've created a growing group of gamers who are all getting enjoyment out our little Linode, and have achieved goals we never imagined, all for $20/month - which is far cheaper than the cable access I had been originally paying for at the house where my server was originally located. The folks at Linode were great, both technically and with regard to courtesy, the one or two times I talked to them on the phone with basic questions. Guess I don't need to say much more - Linode has been great for my needs!
http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/
http://www.4tnetworks.com/
http://www.dailyrazor.com/
http://www.eapps.com/
http://www.eatj.com/index.jsp (FREE!)
It's rather funny that the person asked for a VPS hosting company located in the Twin Cities for a reason and everyone is mentioning how good or bad the the services are at some place else outside Minnesota. GoldenGate Internet Services, also known as IPHouse, http://www.goldengate.net/ located at 331 2nd Ave S, Suite 540, Minneapolis MN 55401 Phone: 612-337-6337. Has been around since the early 1990's, and has opened a few data centers in and around the Twin Cities, with the main data center located in Blaine, MN. I was a customer of theirs since they opened until I moved 10 years ago. I've never had any significant problems with their services, like outages, or unscheduled down time. Give them a try. Notice I did not post a referral link other than their actual site link, and I'm not getting paid. This is how much I believe in their services.
You may talk to these guys for a customized hosting http://www.lowendbox.com/
Casteism
I'm not sure who the OP is getting his DSL service from, but it's probably not Century Link (formerly Qwest). From the beginning, Qwest offered a choice of ISPs with their DSL service. The newer, higher speeds (anything above 1.5mbps) only goes over MSN. This is a consequence of the DSL equipment that they are now using, not any overt attempt to screw over their customers (that's just a happy bonus to them). In any event, I had a a static IP with Century Link and MSN. It's not advertised, and it was a bit of work to find it and set it up, but it's there (and it only cost me an extra $5/month). There are a few stray pockets in the Twin Cities that are served by other phone companies, so the OP may be correct, but I'm kind of doubtful. Now, I did switch off from CenturyLink/MSN for something cheaper and faster as of about 2 months ago, but at that time, the static IPs were still available.
You can get Comcast Business Class which offers static IPs and allows you to host a server. You can also do the home based business option which isn't much more than normal residential service, has higher speeds, and gives you 24/7/365 trouble calls among other advantages.
The owner of prgmr.com is one of the authors of The Book of Xen; he does an excellent job, worth more than the $5 you pay for the smallest instance, and he really does know what he's doing (read the book to see just how much he knows).
Reliable, fast, and low-cost(as low as .03 cents/hour(USD).
I've used them for years for hosting sites, as well as testbed stuff. Never had issues that weren't handled within minutes.
http://www.fastvps.co/vps-hosting.php
These guys are having a promo for $1 a month, although it ends today. Something's just odd. It's just too cheap.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/