Thread

I am currently looking for a shared Linux hosting situation. I don’t need a cheap $10/month or cheaper plan - I am willing to pay up to $30/month for a company with outstanding customer service, good reliability, and none of the odd CPU restrictions imposed by the companies that notoriously oversell such as Bluehost (who I am completely tired of).

So, no Dreamhost, Bluehost, Lunarpages, or anything of that sort. I don’t quite need a dedicated plan, these are low-traffic websites…but I do need a host that isn’t going to take a site offline because a query ran too long one time, and who will respond to support requests in a timely manner…Media Temple might be a good example of the quality of service I’m looking for, but I’ve heard too many nightmare stories about their grid service, with sites being down for a few days at a time, etc….

We may be able to help your with this, but still I would recommend either Media Temple or a VPS provide until we are fully up and running. At the moment our servers are reliable and our support is very personal, but we are still refining and customising our services until we find the perfect solution that you guys will love. At the moment we are running on a couple of Dedicated servers, but we are looking into moving our services onto EC2 or similar. Our Shared Plans currently start at £0.99/mo which is about $2, which is well below your budget but we don’t offer unlimited space or oversell our services.

Once Again it is up to you and we are not trying to spam this forum, just tell us what you think and we can try and work something out for any CI users.

Slicehost: http://www.slicehost.com

slicehost.com +1

Slicehost is a great provider, but not what the OP is looking for.  OP wants shared - not VPS.  Managed VPS may work, but that is not what Slicehost is.

Slicehost is a great provider, but not what the OP is looking for.  OP wants shared - not VPS.  Managed VPS may work, but that is not what Slicehost is.

Actually, when I asked for a shared server, I just meant as opposed to a dedicated server, and solely for price reasons - I am accustomed to shared and dedicated hosting as the only two options. I am just hearing about VPS now, which sounds very intriguing to me. Seems like a nice hybrid of the two - the flexibility and freedom of dedicated, and at $20/month for the cheapest “slice”, which is what I’d expect to pay for a semi-decent shared plan. I’ve been researching Slicehost tonight, and it looks very promising…

Other than some possible learning curve and the time it would take to get up to speed on VPS, is there any disadvantage? I have a few web projects I would like to migrate from ColdFusion and Mambo to CI and RoR…Slicehost seems like an ideal playground for something like that, and I have some time I can invest…

Then go for it.  Just note that a provider like Slicehost isn’t managed, which means you will have to install, configure, and maintain almost ALL software your website relies on.  This gives you great flexibility and power, but requires management.  If you have basic sysadmin experience it is not that bad, but if you don’t, you may find it difficult.  In any case, Slicehost is great and I recommend them.  They also have helpful information to get you started if you don’t have experience managing a server.  Other VPS providers, e.g. MT, provide managed solutions which means you get your new box with a bunch of software loaded and with the provider managing updates;  in MT’s case you will get LAMP, Mail (w Horde), Plesk, et cetera.  You will still have to install and maintain any additional software.  FYI, I think MT’s dv server line is garbage.  Good luck.

My only suggestion is to carefully select a virtual hosting provider.  Check to make sure they’re not overselling there RAM( i.e. 1G Ram ( 512 dedicated + 512 burstable ).  I ran into this problem recently where apache was crashing every few hours.  Found out that as I went above my initial 512M the virtual client was requesting additional Ram from the virtual host, however the additional 512 was already tied up w/ other virtual clients so centos resorted to shutting down the most memory intensive apps(i.e. apache).  Found out this is a ploy by hosting companies to falsely represent the amount of actual memory your server has and is a problem w/ Virtuozo or OpenVZ based systems - not sure about others but mine is OpenVZ.  Supposedly Xen based virtual hosts are the way to go due to increased stability and accurate memory allocation.  My current host is Eapps but as of now I am looking at purchasing a rack and putting in my own equipment b/c it seems all virtual hosts have pitfalls.  I am checking into slicehost however.

Update - just noticed that slicehost is xen based.

We are also offering VPS hosting on the Xen Platform with no burstable ram. We offer packages with 256mb+ of ram which is guaranteed for the life of the virtual server.

FAQ on our Service:

Do I get ‘burstable RAM’?

No, neither of the virtualisation technologies we use allow burstable RAM. There are two reasons why burstable RAM is a bad idea: firstly it means that areas of physical memory can be allocated to one server one minute and another server the next - this has security implications. Secondly, if you use burstable RAM your server might later see its memory allocation reduce. This plays havoc with the performance of some applications, particularly databases.

How many virtual servers run on one host?

Each host can run somewhere between seven and thirty virtual machines depending on the memory requirements of the virtual servers.

My only suggestion is to carefully select a virtual hosting provider.  Check to make sure they’re not overselling there RAM( i.e. 1G Ram ( 512 dedicated + 512 burstable ).  I ran into this problem recently where apache was crashing every few hours.  Found out that as I went above my initial 512M the virtual client was requesting additional Ram from the virtual host, however the additional 512 was already tied up w/ other virtual clients so centos resorted to shutting down the most memory intensive apps(i.e. apache).  Found out this is a ploy by hosting companies to falsely represent the amount of actual memory your server has and is a problem w/ Virtuozo or OpenVZ based systems - not sure about others but mine is OpenVZ.  Supposedly Xen based virtual hosts are the way to go due to increased stability and accurate memory allocation.  My current host is Eapps but as of now I am looking at purchasing a rack and putting in my own equipment b/c it seems all virtual hosts have pitfalls.  I am checking into slicehost however.

Update - just noticed that slicehost is xen based.

You should def. check out Slicehost.  Also, I suggest you look into using Nginx with PHP as either fcgi or proxying to Apache.  This will bring your memory footprint down, speed up your site, and prevent swapping.

Before I make the jump and go for Slicehost today, I’ll just put it out there one more time to see if there are any good shared hosts I might be overlooking…

Although, it’s probably about time that I gained some experience with administrating a Linux server…

One plus for Slicehost is they have awesome articles and walkthroughs on getting your server configured and secured.  I think they would work well for somebody who at least has an idea that administering a Linux server requires command line fun.

despite slight network lag on the low level plans, my spry.com vps (cpanel 200) has treated me well and they support most issues you’ll have. they are running a special now too ... so check it out.

i’m upgrading to the cpanel vps 300 now ... the low lever plans has this bottle-necked connection issue that i’m trying to get out of ... not that it is slow, but a client of mine has a softlayer box and i swear it’s so fast it feels like it’s on my lan.

One other one maybe worth a mention - mosso.com - I haven’t used them, but I’ve heard a few good comments about them.  No shell access and features are somewhat slim, so it probably would be better suited for someone who doesn’t need alot of server customizations.  I think they run ~100.00/month though.