Re: Catalyst Hosting

Michele Beltrame wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I have a couple of slices at SliceHost, which seems
very good to me (and support
> is just fine!).
> 
> OK, they're Rails coders, but they do well... 
> 
> Michele.

Another vote for SliceHost here, been with them for a while
now and more 
satisfied than I have ever been with another hosting
company.  I give 
them huge props for writing ALL their own hosting panel apps
and keeping 
everything useful and lightweight (even if it is rails,
heh).

I tried a handful of VPS providers (but skipped linode for
some reason, 
don't recall why) before deciding, and what sold me on
SliceHost was:

* Developer-friendly admins (that is a HUGE plus right
there)
* The cleanest out-of-the-box VM images of any provider I
have dealt 
with so far
* Tons of distros to choose from, and they are proactive
about offering 
new / updates ones (they are gunning for a BSD image when
the technology 
catches up, which I am excited about)
* They don't oversell their server space (which leads to the
only 
downside, having to wait for them to allocate space for
you)
* Their homemade panel software is awesome:
   * You can console in to your box via an ajax webapp if
something goes 
horribly wrong (!!)
   * They offer a regular rotating backup routine for only
$10 extra per 
month
   * Insanely easy to wipe or restore a VPS image if you
bork it (no 
support tickets, just click a button)

Don't mean to sound like a shill, but I burned through a
handful of bad 
VPS providers while waiting for my slice to be ready and was
overjoyed 
when I got to it.  The VM images at some of those places
were messier 
than a shared host environment.

For shared hosting, I still like asmallorange.com for the
price and the 
support, but stay away from their VPS service (comes
pre-loaded with 
cPanel, and don't dare touch the apache config or the whole
thing goes 
to hell).

Danny


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Thank you everyone for your information on hosting
companies. (And
that new wiki page is cool, though needs comments from
people now.)

I decided to take a two pronged approach: cheap low priority
storage
at a shared host plus a fanatical developer-loving vps
host.

So I signed up at hostgator.com for their Baby package,
$10/mo. with
the first free from a coupon. This is 100GB and a terabyte
of
bandwidth, for a couple family sites and to serve video
content
perhaps.

For the VPS host I am deciding between linode and slicehost,
I'd start
with 10GB.

Slicehost is a 5 week wait, or 2 weeks if you pay 6 months
up front.
It sounds quite cool, heck I want it bad, but  from a place
that says
no initial payment it give me a funny feeling. I mean, I
used to run a
hosting company myself (in 1995, Tokyo) so I know what they
mean when
they mention cashflow and hardware. They probably will have
great
service since that is their main thing, and I hope Google or
somebody
smart invests in them. There must be some rich hackers in
the
vicinity.

It was not clear from either linode or slicehost what tools
are
recommended for ordinary operations. A graphic login might
have too
much latency from here. Perhaps webmin.. what I mean is root
is fine
for apache configs but some things I'd like to use a web
interface for
example to quickly change user email aliasing or whatever,
if it's
plesk or whm or HSPComplete or webmin, fine. I suppose some
examples
of common administration would be useful, they both mention
custom
interfaces but I can't tell what.

Linode though has a he.com data center which means I can
shave
50-100ms off latency to Japan if I pick them so I am leaning
toward
them.for the catalyst vps... though I am wondering if
slicehost has
the more advanced infrastructure, and maybe linode has more
handholding? Tough call, maybe should get both? I like
slicehost's
attitude and their extra backup service, but also I've been
watching
Hurricaine Electric for a long time so ++ for linode. At any
rate
there has to be something said for any company that can get
you
running the next day.. I already have 100GB now at hostgator
even if
it is a cpanel site, and I don't know if I trust their hard
disks to
stay up, but they do seem to have most positive reviews at
webhostingunleashed among shared hosts. Oh well, more
agonizing to do
now but now I can enjoy it in a bittersweet way thanks to
all of you.

Regards to all,

Matt Rosin

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