

Show HN: Mediapig – Simple, affordable VPS hosting - philgourley
http://mediapig.co.uk

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SuperKlaus
Pricing seem to be (too?) close to DO or Linode and they are established
players that provide way more technical specs, not sure why I'd go with
mediapig.

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psykovsky
Also, DO and Linode provide phone numbers and addresses for their respective
companies.

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philgourley
Hi HN,

After some early feedback here a few weeks ago we're now ready to put our new
product under 'Show HN'.

Starting earlier this year my co-founder and I wanted to create a product that
approached VPS differently. We wanted something we'd be happy to use. A
service that would provide a real use, away from the terminal window. While
our ideas extend much further than our initial product launch we're excited to
be able to open the doors to our first customers.

Our first round of feedback was incredibly helpful and as such we've been able
to drastically improve our processes. I wanted to approach HN once again for a
new round of critique, discussion and brainstorming.

If you're interested in any new features or improvements over the coming
months. You can follow us on twitter at @MediaPigHost.

As a token of thanks for our previous and any future critique HackerNews
readers / users can now use this 20% discount code (HCK20) on any order.

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AdamGibbins
It's not clear to me how this differs from Digital Ocean, other than being
(minimally) more expensive. Don't get me wrong, competition is good, and I'm
always on the lookout for more hosts (I run a distributed (S|P)aaS, I want as
many providers as possible). But a comparison of some description could be
useful.

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virmundi
One point of difference is that DO and Linode both have fixed SSD sizes. This
company allows you to mix and match CPU, disk and RAM. Neither to the former
allow that (at least not yet).

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AdamGibbins
That's not true with Linode, you can add additional disk, memory and transfer
under the extra's menu once you've purchased a slot. They'll migrate you as
required.

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virmundi
Neat. I did not know that. Do they post that information anywhere on the
public, you-haven't-paid-for-this-yet site? I've been trying to figure out
what I'll need for hosting for the last few months. Linode looked best, but I
worried about having to get beefing systems just to get more HD.

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stevekemp
You provide root-logins for virtual machines, which sounds nice. Cheapest
seems to be £6 a month for 512Mb and small disk space which isn't excessive,
but doesn't mention VAT.

Do you provide IPv6? Can users run their own kernels, or are these externally
provided? Do you provide access to the serial console, or VNC, if the user
makes a firewalling mistake? Where are your machines hosted, and do you own
them or merely resell? Can users configure custom reverse DNS for their IPs?

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philgourley
Hi Steve - Thanks for your questions! We're going to update our site to
reflect some of these answers but I wanted to answer you directly. I'm pleased
to say that there are no restrictions for users to run their own kernels. We
also do provide access to a remote console access via HTML5 Canvas. That's
available in your account immediately after purchase. Currently our machines
are owned by Hivelocity but we do have around the clock support with them. And
we do allow users to configure custom reverse DNS for their IPs.

We really appreciate the comments and questions!

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stevekemp
Good answers, thanks.

The obvious omission was the lack of reply about IPv6 support. Do your guests
get IPv6 access by default, or can it be added if not?

PS. You might want to update your SSL configuration to avoid the POODLE-
attack, and add perfect forward secrecy too.

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philgourley
Steve - Thanks for bringing the SSL configuration improvements to our
attention. While we aren't open about offering bug bounties. If you could send
me an email to team@mediapig.co.uk we'll arrange something for you as thanks.

We're now operating under Grade A SSL on all our applicable domains which
includes POODLE-attack protection and perfect forward secrecy.

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=mediapig.co.u...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=mediapig.co.uk)

~~~
stevekemp
I've dropped you a mail, thanks.

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rahimnathwani
It would be great to see:

\- A test IP (to check ping times)

\- A test URL with a 100MB file (to test throughput from a specific location)

Also, if you use KVM (as you indicate here in the comments) it may be worth
mentioning that somewhere on the site (I didn't see it), as otherwise many
will assume you use OpenVZ, for which providers usually charge less than you
are charging.

Check out lowendtalk.com to see the types of questions/comments people often
post about these services.

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hejuehdh
I can't quite understand why this is a UK company, apparently registered in
England and Wales, but yet the data center is in the US. The main reason I'd
go for a UK company over a US one is if the support matched my hours, but with
a 24 hour SLA response time, it's not particular great. That mixed with an
overseas DC makes it a strange choice for UK customers, I can't see it working
out favourably for the company

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philgourley
Hi hejuehdh - We understand your concerns here. The reason for this is after
working with various datacenters we found the one who could provide us with
the best support; best hands on support and the best SLA were based in Tampa,
FL. Whilst the SLA response time is currently 24 hours, as business grows we
will work to reduce this. We are also continuing to look at hosting in other
datacenters closer to home that will provide us with the same level of hands
on support. We're keen to get this right to begin to reduce our SLA response
time. Expansion into regional support is a logical next step for us.

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etcet
Where is your DC located?

Is that HDD space or SSD disk space? What will I be relying on for my storage
and can you back it up?

What virtualization tech do you use?

Can you give me a months credit free? :)

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philgourley
Hi etcet - Thanks for your questions!

Our DC is located in Tampa, Florida. We'll be looking at expansion to further
regions as growth continues. Our disk space is using RAID 10 SATA and use KVM
Virtualisation and I'm pleased to say that we can provide backups. At the
minute these need to be individually requested but we want to automate this in
an upcoming release.

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rubiquity
Why can't we specify how many cores we get? I'm sick of having 2GB or more of
RAM and only one core. Some languages can actually saturate 4 cores and use
less than 2GB of RAM while doing so. Are there any CPU core friendly VPS
providers out there?

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bryanlarsen
You're not getting exclusive access to a core, you're only getting part of a
core. If the host machine has 20 cores and 256 GB of ram, then you're probably
getting (2 * 20 / 256) of a core. Would you rather get (2 * 20 / 256) of a
single core or (2 * 20 / 256 / 4) of 4 cores? Time slicing and threading adds
overhead, so you're generally much better off with a provider that pretends to
give you a single core than with one that pretends to give you 4.

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ukandy
Site looks good, but you need your business details on the site for people to
take you seriously. I wouldn't deal with an unknown entity, hosting in an
unknown location

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seidler
So you want 60 GBP for less specs (4G RAM, 100 vs. 200 G HDD) I can get for 8
EUR at contabo, for example? No level of service can make up for that.

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longlivegnu
Where are the servers located?

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philgourley
Hi Longlivegnu - thanks for the interest! Our servers are located in Tampa,
Florida.

