
High-Memory Instances and $5 Linodes - joshtronic
https://blog.linode.com/2017/02/14/high-memory-instances-and-5-linodes/
======
pjungwir
Linode is my top choice for hosting, but lately I've been tinkering on a
project that needs a lot of disk, and it's hard to find good options there. On
AWS every dimension scales independently, but with Linode I can't buy disk
without buying CPU and RAM too. When I had a similar need a few years ago, I
wound up renting a dedicated server, where even the cheapest came with 2TB or
so. I'd love to just stick with Linode, but I need an option to add disk!

~~~
deftnerd
Delimiter has a clever solution for $10 a month. They call it Slot Hosting.
You ship them a disk and they'll host it and attach it as additional storage
on a VPS. [https://www.delimiter.com/slot-
hosting/](https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/)

I use it to host an 8tb drive that I then attach to a dedicated server I rent
for $20 a month.

$30 a month and I have a server that I use for Plex (16 cores, 3.2ghz, 32 gigs
of memory, and 10tb of total storage).

~~~
BrianT
[Disclosure - I work at Delimiter]

Thanks for the recommendation, slot hosting is a good solution if you need to
get a disk online with a VPS attached to it.

We've had a lot of people asking how you did this so just to explain:

Slot hosting $120/year ($10/month) - that gives you one 3.5" or 2.5" slot to
send your disk in. You can aggregate up multiple slots and aggregate the VPS
resources into one large VM. This is great for things like ZFS and software
RAID. The VM is KVM based. [https://www.delimiter.com/slot-
hosting/](https://www.delimiter.com/slot-hosting/)

The server is this: Dual E5420, 16GB RAM, 1TB or 2x500GB HDD $200/year
($16.66/month).
[https://cc.delimiter.com/?cmd=cart&action=add&id=1718](https://cc.delimiter.com/?cmd=cart&action=add&id=1718)

Slot hosting uses dedicated (non-contended) CPU/RAM/Disk resources so you can
run Plex directly on it if you have enough slots aggregated to give you the
RAM.

~~~
thatusernametho
Why annual pricing? I'd do it if you had monthly pricing.....Since the payment
is annual what happens if 2 or 3 months in I decide to change and need
something else?

~~~
BrianT
Slot hosting moved to annual only as administering a customer-owned equipment
adds an additional layer of headache.

Its not cost effective to have customers who want to load up on 'warez'
cancelling their service, shipping back their disk to get it back the next
week empty for another round.

We're positioning this as a long-term storage product where customers don't
want to be paying the hosting company each month for disks.

------
brettfarrow
I used to use Linode for some projects, and really appreciated their speed and
server quality, which seemed better than Digital Ocean at the time.

But after using them for 12-18 months, and losing several days of data due to
the 2015 DDoS, and reading about more and more security issues, I switched
back to DO and haven't looked back. The performance differences aren't
noticeable to me, and I'd rather have my hosting through a company with a
better security record than Linode.

~~~
Hello71
DO isn't any better, just hasn't been targeted by any serious attackers yet.

until very recently, they didn't allow using a custom kernel (except via kexec
hackaround) and were quite slow updating their kernel for security patches.
they repeatedly gave random dates for implementation, then repeatedly pushed
them back, then eventually just ignored users on this issue for _years_.

their images were also poorly sanitized, leading to the well-known problem of
SSH host key duplication, which was the case for years.

~~~
nacs
> just hasn't been targeted by any serious attackers yet.

Source? Just because they haven't announced any successful security breaches,
doesn't mean they haven't been seriously targeted.

In fact, considering the amount of times my random dedicated server instance
(not hosted at DO) gets hit with random attacks, I'm sure a large provider
like DO has had numerous serious, targeted attacks against their
network/servers/control panel/etc.

~~~
Hello71
> Source? Just because they haven't announced any successful security
> breaches, doesn't mean they haven't been seriously targeted.

True, and in fact the only basis for my statement is that they have
historically taken security so not-seriously that it would be surprising if
they were in fact able to withstand advanced attacks, given that even the most
secure organizations are often unable to do so. (see: every talk at Black Hat)

> In fact, considering the amount of times my random dedicated server instance
> (not hosted at DO) gets hit with random attacks, I'm sure a large provider
> like DO has had numerous serious, targeted attacks against their
> network/servers/control panel/etc.

this statement is just as baseless as mine. perhaps even moreso, since the two
numbers seem to have nothing to do with each other. one could just as well say
"my server gets lots of bogus SSH attempts, so banks get robbed a lot".

------
mwpmaybe
PSA: If you're using the Linode API, the 2048 plan is now PlanID 2 and the new
1024 plan is now PlanID 1. The other PlanIDs were incremented by one as well.
I wish they hadn't done that, but there it is.

~~~
Matheus28
That sucks. Those PlanIDs should never change.

~~~
mwpmaybe
Well, they've changed in the past... it's fine as long as the plans
corresponding to the PlanIDs never get smaller or more expensive. This
particular change violates that assumption and so is definitely not fine.

~~~
Matheus28
The hardcoded plan (PlanID 2) that I had in my program was pointing to a 4 GB
2 CPU plan (4 GB), now it's pointing to a 2 GB 1 CPU plan (2 GB).

~~~
biot
There is an API method to query plans:
[https://www.linode.com/api/utility/avail.linodeplans](https://www.linode.com/api/utility/avail.linodeplans)

Presumably you can select the relevant ID based on plan properties (cores,
RAM, etc.) rather than hardcoding IDs. Though I completely agree that once a
plan has a specific ID, as long as that plan is available the ID should be
constant.

~~~
mwpmaybe
Yeah, that's... not practical.

What if they upgrade the 1024 plan to 1536? (That has actually happened, by
the way.) Now you're extracting the number and comparing it to a range?

> Give me the plan where the RAM is >= 1024 and < 2048.

What if they upgrade the 1536 plan to 2048?

> Nevermind, just give me the plan with two cores.

Okay, do you want the $20/mo plan or the $120/mo plan?

> Fine, sort the plans by cores and memory and give me the smallest plan.

Oops, they introduced a new plan with one core and less (i.e. not enough)
storage.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Just impractical.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
It's not as difficult as you're suggesting. Figure out your minimum specs and
get the cheapest plan that meets them.

~~~
ceejayoz
Or, the API's plan IDs could correspond to specific plans, and never change.
New plans mean new IDs. Like how IDs are supposed to work.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
The plans themselves have changed many times before. They become obsolete over
time. What if your plan ID becomes unavailble, or the specs change in a way
your application can't handle? Don't shrug off your bad design decisions on
someone else.

~~~
ceejayoz
> What if your plan ID becomes unavailble

The API should throw an error, so I can adjust my scripts, instead of silently
provisioning a server I never intended to provision.

There should be a deprecation process when a plan is discontinued, so this
doesn't happen unexpectedly.

If AWS can't provision me a t1.micro, they don't just go and give me a
m3.small instead.

------
zzzeek
I would love to add a couple of gigs of RAM to an existing linode for a small
monthly fee. But there's this dropdown on the "extras" page, "90 MB additional
ram - $5.00 / mo", down to "360 MB additional ram - $20.00 / mo". Yes, those
are MEGAbytes. As in, you can get a 4.36G/ram node for _twice the price_ as a
4G/ram node. Very strange.

~~~
mwpmaybe
Those are legacy options and to the best of my understanding are not available
on new accounts or after switching legacy accounts to hourly billing.

------
rp36
I recently switched from DigitalOcean to Linode and could easily shave off 20%
bill. The migration of VM was much easier than I expected (use rsync -
[https://lowendbox.com/blog/how-to-migrate-a-hosted-server-
in...](https://lowendbox.com/blog/how-to-migrate-a-hosted-server-in-5-easy-
steps-with-rsync/)). My only complain is, I would like to take multiple manual
backups even if it costed little extra.

~~~
braindead_in
VM migration between the cloud hosting services is a big pain. I hope someone
comes up with an app to do that.

------
tomschlick
Nice to see Linode stepping up again and competing hard with DO.

Other than the Christmas 2015 DDOS, I have never had any significant issues
with Linode. Especially in the Dallas DC.

~~~
colept
I've been with Linode for a little over five years and a satisfied customer.

That being said - their policy for handling DMCA notices is abysmal. They will
network filter out your Linode until you respond to the notice.

~~~
tomschlick
I can't speak to that really. Never had it happen and my work's customers are
in Commercial Real Estate so our services don't dabble with DMCA notices.

Hopefully they at least give you some warning before a filter is placed.

------
msbarnett
Digital Ocean _really_ needs to cut their prices at this point. There's no
compelling reason to pay them 50% more for the same thing.

~~~
ben_bai
I don't get the whole VPS thing anyway. 5$ for playing around is great but
anything that costs more is just not worth it.

60$/month for 16GB, 1CPU, 20GB disk for VPS... in comparison a root server
with real remote console access, 16GB, 4 core AMD, 4TB disks, unlimited
traffic costs me 30EUR/month (30$/month).

Or for 60EUR/month (60$) I could get a root server with 64GB Ram, 2x500GB SSD,
i7-6700, 30TB traffic.

~~~
mwpmaybe
What is your definition of a "root server" and where do you rent them? Do you
mean a dedicated server? I've checked a few providers and none of them come
close the costs/benefits you're listing. OVH's EG-16 (4c/8t, 16G, 2x4T) is
$79/mo. 1-and-1's L4i (4c/4t, 12G, 2x1T) is $80/mo.

~~~
msbarnett
SoYouStart (OVH's lower tier brand) has 4c/4t 32 GB 3x120 GB SSD) for $49/mo.
Or same price, same ram, 2x2TB and 8t with a slightly slower clock.

~~~
mwpmaybe
That's interesting. Thank you.

I realize that I am doing that thing where you try to rationalize your
preconceived notions, but here are some high-level observations:

* Looks like there are normally setup fees associated with provisioning new servers, although they are suspended at the moment.

* Support seems next to non-existant, which I suppose is not surprising considering they're a low-cost provider.

* SSD-based servers appear to be frequently out-of-stock.

* If you need a KVM attached to your server, it is $30 for 24 hours or $200+ for a week.

* 250Mbps bandwidth (presumably in and out) cf. Linode which is 40G in and 1-10G out.

All that being said, my interest is piqued. I could see this being a good fit
if 1. you have a more-or-less dedicated sysadmin, 2. need a lot of storage
and/or memory and have solid sizing requirements ahead of time, and 3. cloud
(VPS or otherwise) isn't an option due to cost or other facts. It could be
great for running your own VM or container cluster. Thanks again for sharing!

------
flaviuspopan
I love seeing cloud providers offering better deals, the more the merrier!
However, I still have yet to find a better deal than the one Scaleway offers.
~$3/mo for a dual-core, 2GB RAM, 50GB SSD host. They also support terraform,
rancher, swarm, etc. Been using them for a few months and haven't had a single
complaint.

~~~
Karunamon
I probably wouldn't host a blog there. Their ToS[1] has, among other things:

\- A prohibition against _the propagation of data, images or sounds that may
constitute defamation, an insult, denigration, or an infringement of privacy,
image rights, good morals, or public order_

\- _Users are required to use decent and respectful language_

\- _Users are reminded that they must update software without excessive delay
when a security failing is noted by the user or the software publisher or
Scaleway_

This reads like: If you might offend anyone by the standards of the French, or
might use strong language, or don't run the latest version of everything, this
isn't the service for you.

On the positive side, they lack the litany of restricted services that most
hosting companies I've seen provide, and I don't see any prohibitions against
using your paid for resources to their maximum, so that's good.

US customers should note that all of their prices are in Euro, so -- for
exchange rate shenanigans and currency exchange fees on most credit cards.
There's no selector to show prices in USD.

[1]: [https://www.scaleway.com/terms/](https://www.scaleway.com/terms/)

~~~
ve55
I was concerned about this as well. I use Scaleway but I don't host any
websites with notable content there.

I haven't heard much about these terms being held against users, so I'm not
sure how much action there would really be behind this type of stuff. With
that said, it is definitely more comfortable to be on a host that doesn't have
terms that are this strict.

------
inlineint
It would be really fascinating if you added GPU instances with GTX 1080 cards.
These cards could allow you to make the prices much lower than those of AWS
GPU instances that use K-80 and make it a perfect fit for Deep Learning
applications that don't require double precision.

------
ovi256
OVH.com is selling 2GB VMs for 2.99 Euros per month. No idea about over-
provisioning or any comparison with Linode though.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I use OVH. Their support is horrendous though. For example, I put in a support
request at mid-day this Saturday to ask if their geo-ip feature where you can
select which country you want an additional IP to appear to be from, meant
that the IP address actually terminated in that country. They didn't get back
to me until this morning (3 days later), and the response was a bit vague.

I bought some new IPs 4 hours ago for my VPS. I've had an automated response
to say they've taken payment. Do I have the IPs? Not according to the control
panel. I imagine I'll get them at some point in the next 24 hours. _shrug_ If
not, I'll put in a support request to ask where they are and maybe wait
another 2 or 3 days for a response.

When I signed up a few months back, I purchased my first VPS on a Saturday. At
no point did they tell me that my order needed to be manually checked. I
eventually got my VPS on Monday morning.

Does anyone even work there on the weekend?

Amateurs

~~~
duncanawoods
Meh, doesn't sound too bad to me. Its not like your machine has failed and
they are not responding. You use OVH/Hetzner with the understanding that the
great prices come from minimal support and the hardware will be used or
desktop class. Hetzner support is strictly standard office hours. If you want
instant responses, you can pay 10x at another provider but you chose not to.

~~~
mike-cardwell
The thing is, it wouldn't have cost them anything for them to have sent me an
automated email to tell me that my order needed to be manually checked, and I
would get it within X hours/days. In fact, because they _didn 't_ give me this
information up front, I ended up logging a support ticket to find out what was
going on.

It wouldn't have cost them anything to tell me up front that IPs aren't
automatically provisioned and required manual intervention and it would take
~24 hours before I get them either. Luckily for them, this time I didn't log a
support ticket, because I just assumed that they would have crap processes and
that's why it was taking so long. I mean, why did it take so long? Where they
manually checking my order again, even though I used the same payment details?
Does somebody need to manually pick some IP addresses from a spreadsheet? Why
is this process not entirely automatic?

This is the sort of thing that _should_ be automated for low cost hosting
systems, precisely to prevent having to provide unnecessary support.

------
gkop
Is this a bold move by Linode, or am I the only Linode customer (7 years
going) who chose them in part because they steered clear of the bottom of the
market?

~~~
fapjacks
I'm sorry, but this pricing doesn't put them _anywhere_ near the bottom of the
market. As someone that has been buying from the VPS market for almost twenty
years now, Linode cannot in any reasonable verbiage be lumped in with the
riffraff crap vendors at the bottom. I could rattle off a dozen or more
companies run by thugs and thieves that truly define "bottom of the market"
for VPS, and Linode, DO, Ramnode aren't even on the same planet.

~~~
yumaikas
I know that I switched to Ramnode when I had problems with another VPS
provider back in 2013 or so when one of the Admin panels was hacked across a
large number of VPS providers. Ramnode was down for a few hours, the other VPS
was down for a few days.

------
terrywang
Some feedback: I've been using DO droplets since mid 2013, reliability is
excellent, no unexpected reboots at all.

With the help of Ksplice the Ubuntu Server droplet has achieved 555 and 401
days uptime without downtime (could hang on a bit longer but later decided to
reboot once every 3 months to address security concerns).

DO support has been responsive and friendly, DO keeps (slowly) delivering new
features such as private network, Load Balacer etc. For existing $5/m DO
users, I don't think it's worth the hassle to migrate to Linode (or Amazon
Lightsail), the performance difference will be unnoticeable for most people's
use cases (personal web hosting, strongSwan based IPsec VPN, etc.).

A good reference: [https://joshtronic.com/2016/12/01/ten-dollar-showdown-
linode...](https://joshtronic.com/2016/12/01/ten-dollar-showdown-linode-vs-
digitalocean-vs-lightsail/)

Will provide the feedback to DO and see if they can match the Linode offer (I
am sure they will do something).

~~~
joshtronic
Appreciate the link, I have a $5 review up as well now :)

Since my posts are straight benchmarks, I don't touch on the support side of
things typically (mostly because I only have had support interaction with the
companies I use).

That said, I've had exceptional support from both Linode and DigitalOcean over
the years. Always responsive and friendly.

Interestingly enough though, yesterday my Linode went down due to a power
outage in the Atlanta data center. I'm a huge fan of Linode, but something
like a power outage at this stage in the game seems a bit like amateur hour.

------
Phil_Latio
Scaleway recently added new cloud servers. Example: 10 cores, 60GB RAM, 700GB
SSD, 1Gbit/s Unmetered = 90€

------
astrodust
Maybe one day that ColdFusion atrocity of a control panel will be hurled into
the sun and something better will take its place. Until then, yay, cheaper
high-memory instances.

Redis appreciates it.

~~~
colept
ColdFusion or not - Linode's hosting panel is one of the simplest and flexible
management interface I've experienced. Digital Ocean's is too simple, and some
other providers are too infuriating. Linode is that porridge that's just
right.

~~~
astrodust
> ...one of the simplest and flexible management interface I've experienced...

Well, I'm really questioning what you've used then. It's atrocious. It's right
up there with GoDaddy in terms of dashboards that are needlessly obnoxious.

Digital Ocean's may be simple, but there's nothing wrong with that. It works.
It's clear what it can and can't do. It's not cluttered up with confusion.

For example, on Linode you cannot delete a Linode instance anywhere but the
main view. You must go back to the main listing, carefully look for the one
you want to remove, then click the remove link and double-check you clicked
the right link. If you have a lot of instances and you cycle them over
frequently enough this is a real hassle.

Likewise, there's many occasions where you get kicked back to the index page
for no reason. There's just so many unresolved little things that, over time,
grate on you considerably. It _works_ but it could be considerably better. It
has not evolved much since launch, that's very concerning.

Digital Ocean's interface, to use one example, has evolved considerably.
Amazon's AWS dashboard may be a monstrosity but it's also becoming better and
better organized over time. Linode needs to remember that their dashboard is
important and invest in it.

Maybe all you ever eat is porridge and you're okay with that. Fine. Other
people demand some real food now and then.

~~~
eatonphil
We do think our dashboard is important, and we are investing in it. As a
matter of fact, you can even watch the development take place yourself because
the new manager is an open-source app. :)

[https://github.com/linode/manager](https://github.com/linode/manager)

~~~
astrodust
That's really good to hear. Please give us an option to use it as soon as it's
available for production accounts.

------
bluedino
Wow, $5 finally. Must have gotten tired of DO and Vultr taking those customers

------
throwaway2016a
Might finally get me to give up my ChunkHost account for throw-away servers.

------
proyb2
Why not 2GB Ram and 2 cores, easier for CPU demanding on a $10 plan?

------
dyu-
Thanks to amazon lightsail we now have $5 linodes :-)

~~~
vbtechguy
Yup $5 shoot out between Linode vs DigitalOcean vs Vultr
[https://community.centminmod.com/threads/10437/](https://community.centminmod.com/threads/10437/)
:)

------
nik736
75 Mbps?? Are we in 2005? :-(

~~~
eatonphil
I think that was a misprint. The floor on all plans are now 1000Mbits. :)

------
nilved
Can we stop ignoring the fact that Linode has been hacked several times and
responded terribly in every case?

~~~
falcolas
In the current environment, I personally believe that it's safe to say that
_everybody_ has been hacked to some degree. Linode being open about it, even
if not having the perfect response, strangely makes me feel better. Being a
customer while this occurred and not feeling any impact makes me feel even
better still.

Having to go in and change my password is hardly an exceptional event on
today's internet.

~~~
nilved
They were not open about it. When their ColdFusion system got hacked they
didn't tell anyone until weeks after the fact.

When you search for "linode hack," Google suggests "linode hacked again." They
were hacked in 2012. They were hacked in 2013. They were hacked in 2014. They
were hacked in 2016. They will be hacked in 2017.

~~~
falcolas
> they didn't tell anyone until weeks after the fact.

Unfortunately, this is fairly standard practice in the industry. Companies
want to make sure the vulnerability is closed, positively identify what was
compromised, who was affected, what legal liability exists, and so forth.

Weeks is, frankly, pretty quick to go through that process.

> There's not much more to say -- they are dead.

Huh. Funny, I'm still hosting things there; their prices are competitive,
there are no rumors of acquisition or shutdown... Seems quite alive to me.

> They will be hacked in 2017.

And, as I stated originally, I have no reason to think they will be unique in
this.

~~~
ryanlol
I don't think there's any reasonable arguments left to defend Linode with.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845278)

There's a clear, undeniable pattern of incompetence here.

I also suggest reading this glassdoor review:
[https://imgur.com/sJd56AT](https://imgur.com/sJd56AT)

And this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11136743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11136743)

------
brilliantcode
I'm really curious to what people plan on doing with such insane amounts of
ram.

Maybe it's possible to scale with just RAM! Fire up a uWSGI + Flask and up the
RAM as traffic increases.

~~~
problems
database servers, redis and memcached I'm guessing. All of which are basically
designed to take a memory-time tradeoff.

~~~
icelancer
Yes, this is what I use my high-memory servers for. Giant memcached and redis
slabs.

------
thedangler
AH! Linode! You used to have a $5/mo plan and you got rid of it. I found and
switched to DO. I would have stuck with you but I only use it to mess about
and 10$ was too steep. If you make it $5 Canadian I'll switch back.

~~~
astrodust
It's $5 USD, just like Digital Ocean. If Digital Ocean works for you there's
no reason to switch back. They're equal cost now.

------
gcb0
In the past they kept changing their pricing. I was paying for the smallest
one (static site and a few prototypes) around $150/yr. Then they advertised
that per-use would be mandatory and cheaper for everyone. I kept the site
there barelly receiving any hit, using 0% of cpu and network. Endedup paying
well over $250 after 12 monthly charges.

~~~
teach
Unless I'm mistaken, per-use means you aren't billed for the server when it's
_powered down_.

If the server is up, even if you use 0% CPU, you're getting charged.

Per-use is a lot cheaper for people that spin up servers to meet demand and
kill them once things slow down.

~~~
cmg
From Linode's FAQ:

"If My Linode is Powered Off, Will I Be Billed? If your Linode is powered off,
but is still added as a service on your account, you will still be billed for
it. This is because Linode maintains your saved data and reserves your ability
to use other resources like RAM, transfer, etc. even when your Linode is
powered off. You will be billed for any other active Linode service, such as
Longview Pro or an extra IP, as well."

[0] [https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/billing-and-
payments](https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/billing-and-payments)

~~~
astrodust
"If I'm not in my hotel room will I still be charged? I was at a ball game for
three hours! Also I wasn't in my apartment all weekend, can I get a partial
refund?"

Seriously, people do not understand leasing and renting.

~~~
gcb0
Question here is about they using the new model as a smoke curtain for the
price hike.

All their marketing during the change was how it was cheaper. When it clearly
was over double the price. And your argument is "it is cheaper if you are not
using". So good luck going to a hotel and not booking any room so it can be
cheaper.

~~~
teach
It would never be cheaper for you because you want a single low-utilization
server that's available 24/7.

It's only cheaper for companies that have lots and lots of servers, but most
of them aren't provisioned most of the time.

