New new home
If you are reading this right now, then that should mean that the host migration was successful. No, I didn’t accidentally re-post my last article. I’ve moved Noodlesoft to yet another hosting provider. Noodlesoft is now on SliceHost.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out with WebFaction so I decided to go shopping again.
While many people were recommending SliceHost, I resisted as I wasn’t relishing the idea of doing sysadmin work. I’ve done my fair share in my lifetime, including compiling kernels, setting up firewall rules and mucking with sendmail.cf files. The whole purpose of using shared hosting was that I could pay someone else to do it. Nonetheless, I found myself in need of a higher level of reliability and control. I had to bite the bullet.
I signed up and within minutes, was logged in to my slice. And oddly enough, I found myself actually enjoying setting up my server. Sure, it took some time to get everything up and running but not as long as I expected. It’s put together the way I want and if something goes wrong, it’s hard to beat the response time of going in and fixing it myself. It’s not for everybody but if you know what you are doing then I say give it a try. I would recommend paying extra for the backup feature where you can save snapshots (or have snapshots automatically taken daily or weekly). Restoring slices from these snapshots is quite easy in case you mess up or something else goes wrong. They also have articles on how to install most of the software you’ll need to get up and running. My only beef right now is that I’d like more snapshots slots available (you only get 3).
Here is the obligatory/shameless SliceHost referral link in case you are interested in signing up.
Oh, and I am keeping my DreamHost account for things such as hosting my mail. Also, since DH’s plans offer ridiculous bandwidth, it’ll be good to have as a backup when there’s some sort of burst.
And because it’s what I’ve been dealing with for the past couple weeks, you’ll probably see some sysadmin articles from me in the near future. I’ve even added a “System Administration” category. I’ll post a report on SliceHost and my experiences with VPS hosting in a month or two.
Category: Noodlesoft, System Administration 5 comments »
March 4th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
I’ll be interested to hear how it goes. I’ve been trying the new Dreamhost Private Server addition to my Dreamhost account, which is a nice middle ground between a shared server and a dedicated box. Before that, my biggest problem with Dreamhost was that the people I shared a box with would hog the machine and bring my site to a crawl, if not bring it down entirely. I’ve only been using the private server for 3 or 4 months, but so far it solves that problem by letting me set a comfortable ceiling for my own CPU and memory usage, guaranteeing it to me, and charging me for it.
I’ve been spoiled by a co-lo setup at work, but like you I’m mostly tired of dealing with that kind of thing. Glad you’re enjoying it. 🙂
March 5th, 2008 at 5:14 am
I also bought a slicehost slice a few time ago, and I’m very happy. I haven’t set up a machine ever, and I really like the way I did it, just following their wiki. Easy 🙂
I also have a dreamhost account where I have all my PHP websites (junk). They have a lot of cool stuff (SVN, OneClickInstalls, Jabber) that is easier to use. I keep my slice for running bigger applications (Django mainly).
March 5th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Funny, I just did the opposite as you: move from SliceHost to WebFaction…
I did enjoy playing with my VPS at first but after a few months I got sick of doing the sysadmin work (applying patches etc…) so I decided to go back to “regular” shared hosting. So far WebFaction has been great but I’ve only been there for a few months.
It’ll be interesting to hear your opinion again of a VPS in a few months. Will you still enjoy it or get a bit annoyed by it like I did… only time will tell 🙂
March 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Never noticed the DreamHost Private Server thing but looking at the panel now, there it is. It looks like an interesting middle ground. I still do think there is value in a service where most everything is managed for you. Not everyone wants to or can administer a machine.
That said, my choice of provider in many ways had less to do with the product offering and more to do with my confidence in the company. I’m finding it more important that they (a) have good support with fast response times (b) make things reliable so that I rarely have to use their support in the first place and (c) if something goes wrong, they promptly fix it and take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Aside from the occasional question in the forums or irc, I haven’t actually needed SliceHost’s support so far, so it’s too early to tell. That said, I feel the other two hosts have failed the above criteria in one way or another, hence the switch.
Steve: What package manager did you use? I remember a time when you had to download tarballs, compile and unpack everything yourself but I feel the current state of package managers is pretty damn painless.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Glad to have you with us!