

Ask HN: Switching from MediaTemple to Slicehost - pstinnett

Hi everyone. I did a quick search but didn't come across any topics directly related to this, so I'm looking for some help from the community. I've recently become interested in switching from MediaTemple to Slicehost. Some background: right now my MediaTemple (gs) account hosts about 5 or 6 Wordpress blogs, and a few static sites. I'm starting to get into Rails and my MediaTemple account is old enough to have been grandfathered in to the free 64MB gridcontainer. None of my blogs receive much traffic, and I really just use my hosting for learning, testing, and non-critical projects. After seeing CloudKick, and researching Slicehost some, I'm thinking of switching over to the bottom of the line Slicehost server. I like the idea of installing everything myself and I think it meets with my goals (what better way to learn than to set everything up yourself). So what do you think? I have 0 experience managing a server, installing Apache, etc. I'm comfortable enough in the terminal to follow any tutorials I might need. Does anyone have any advice on switching/migration? Any great articles I should read before I make the change? Will the 256MB Slice be enough to continue to manage my existing blogs?
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lethain
I've been running my sites (Django-powered) on Slicehost for about two years
and have been very pleased overall.

A few observations:

1\. Running Apache with both mod_php and mod_passenger (assuming that would be
your deployment method for Rails app) on a 256 meg slice may be tight if your
traffic levels pick up. (Based on experience with mod_wsgi, mod_python and
mod_php, I haven't explicitly used mod_passenger and am unaware of its
memory/interpreter model, but think it is similar to mod_wsgi.) But it will be
enough to manage your existing blogs and additional PHP applications as long
as the load doesn't explode.

2\. You don't need any linux administration chops to get started, but every
year or so I've learned enough additional practices that I grab another slice,
setup the new slice from scratch, transfer my webapps/sites to the new slice,
and power down the old one. There are just a number of small best-practices
that--when avoided--add up to a hard to manage setup over time, especially
when managing multiple sites within multiple servers. You'll probably want to
do the same.

3\. Slicehost has great resources, <http://articles.slicehost.com/> , which
should cover most configuration/setup details.

4\. Switching over to my own slice and doing administration myself has been a
very valuable experience for me, and I really do recommend it.

~~~
pstinnett
Thanks! So you migrate to a new slice each year? Good to know I don't need any
linux admin prior knowledge, but it sounds like this is just right for me.
Hoping to learn a lot from the experience.

~~~
lethain
Yep. They prorate charges, so firing up an extra slice for a couple of days
will only cost a few dollars.

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rickharrison
Yea it definitely will. Just follow the tutorials on slicehost's website and
you will be fine. Start off with ubuntu 8.04 imo

~~~
pstinnett
Excellent. Thanks!

