VPS Hosting from Linode
Introduction
Recently I had a few problems with my U.K based VPS host. My VPS went down and it took me some time to get it rebooted. When it did come back on line the VPS had lost the ability to do domain name look ups. This caused me issues as this machine relied upon this to send e-mails. It took me three days to ge the VPS back on line which was basically a total nightmare.
When my VPS came up for renewal I decided to look about for better VPS hosting. Now there are lots of VPS providers out there but it is always a leap of faith signing up to one. To complicate matters I needed my VPS in the UK as most of the traffic for this system comes from UK organic searching in google.
Linode Hosting
After some searching I stumbled across a company called "linode" and another called "slicehost".
I checked to see if either of them had UK data centres and it seemed that linode did. From what I saw Slicehost didn't seem to so I had to rule them out.
I read about Linode company on various forums and they appeared to get good ratings and feedback. As far as I could tell it didn't seem like the forum posts were fake marketing efforts.
I Took the plunge
What criteria I used to decide to sign up:
-A community forum
-Some good documentation
-Reasonable prices - US prices in my experience are cheaper that UK but you do seem to get good service and features. Affordable hosting with UK companies in the UK seems to stink.
-UK based VPS - I needed this for geo-targeting UK search results
-Professional looking interface and website
One potential downside is it is Linux only - no Windows. That wasn't problem for me as I was using a LAMP install.
Experience so far
So far the experience has been good. Everything was automated including the purchase of a second IP address for the host. I was able to access the console quickly and I didn't have to search for the login details unlike other hosts where you have to post a ticket to get the ssh login (grrr). I have only been there for a month a the time of writing (23/June/2010) this article so I will keep you informed on how my experience continues.
