[clug] Re: OT: Hosting? (linux Digest, Vol 71, Issue 5, Message 6)

[Miles Goodhew]

Carlo,

> Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 11:53:01 +0100
> Message-ID:
> 	<46ba3d380811040253l1bd7b549h4b50102e20a23c8e at mail.gmail.com>
>
> I do off-site backups (unison) to my web hosting site which has ssh
> access. I only have 1.5Gb so I'm looking for hosting with more space.
> The Linode 360 plan looks good but on the other hand I don't think I
> want to deal with securing my server. I really just want disk space
> with ssh access and basic Apache/PHP/whatever. I'm based in Europe now
> so a service with servers in Australia isn't too useful (not for
> another year or two anyway).
>
> What do you people use?

	For "pure storage", I'd consider Amazon AWS's S3. you could possibly  
use an EC2 frontend for "conventional" FTP or SCP access to S3, but I  
think the cheapest you can run one of these is US$70/mo if you need  
it up all the time. If your update frequency is lower, you could use  
one of the cheaper solutions below and interface to S3 and/or start- 
up an EC2 instance on-demand (may require a bit of creative coding  
and a mind-shift into the impermanence of EC2 instances).
	I use dreamhost for casual/personal stuff. They offer "virtually  
unlimited" bandwidth and storage and are very flexible with a  
sensible web control panel. There are a lot of "off the shelf" tools  
for building web sites, email addresses, DNS setups, etc. They can do  
Web-DAV for NFS-like behaviour if you need it too. Things to keep in  
mind: It's shared, virtualised systems, so you can be affected by  
other users' processes and you can't have root access (but it's  
remarkable how much their tools let you do despite this). They  
operate on a low-margin "gym membership" model with no SLA, so  
there's a chance that they could have a resource-demand surge and go  
out of business (I think it's unlikely though). You can't have long- 
running processes and CPU hogs can and will be shot out of the sky  
without notice (I've had it done no me).
	Another alternative for long-running Internet presence is vpslink  
(Spry), which offer complete control of really tiny virtual machines  
with static IPs for a pittance. The storage is cramped on the bottom- 
plans, but if it were a frontend to one of the larger-storage  
services above, that may be workable for you. The root-level access  
is great. They seem to operate on a similar funding model as  
DreamHost, so they may just disappear one day.
	Similar to VPSLink is slicehost. However slicehost offer more  
"meaty" plans and prices.

Hope that heals,

M0les.



--
Miles Goodhew
miles at m0les.com
http://m0les.com/bl0g