
$5 Showdown: Linode vs. DigitalOcean vs. Amazon Lightsail vs. Vultr - knes
https://joshtronic.com/2017/02/14/five-dollar-showdown-linode-vs-digitalocean-vs-lightsaild-vs-vultr/?hn
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nicolaslem
The figures presented here give a general idea but should be taken with care.

A lot of these small virtual servers are packed into a single host. The actual
performance you get depends a lot on how your neighbors are using the
resources they share with you.

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equals2nine
AFAIK, these $5 servers are VPS and the resources allocated are guaranteed
so...how can neighbors affect the performance of your server? Are you saying
they are actually shared hosting plans? If so, do you have any link/article on
this?

~~~
Lazare
> these $5 servers are VPS and the resources allocated are guaranteed so...how
> can neighbors affect the performance of your server

Yes, they're VPSs, but no, a VPS does not provide the level of isolation that
you're imagining. RAM is easy to offer guarantees about, CPU can be (but you
can often burst over your guaranteed allotment, which means there's often high
variability in performance, even if you always get what you're technically
paying for), and disk IO is very hard (and you'll notice cheap VPSes don't
even try and promise you any specific amount of IOPS).

There's a million links discussing this, google "VPS noisy neighbor" or see,
eg:

[https://www.liquidweb.com/blog/why-aws-is-bad-for-small-
orga...](https://www.liquidweb.com/blog/why-aws-is-bad-for-small-
organizations-and-users/)

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oomathias
You could also consider Scaleway.

3€ 2 x86 64bit Cores 2GB memory 50GB SSD 200Mbit/s Unmetered

6€ 4 x86 64bit Cores 4GB memory 100GB SSD 200Mbit/s Unmetered

Gist with the same benchmarks:
[https://gist.github.com/oomathias/175c737c33a1254a28bb4e81e1...](https://gist.github.com/oomathias/175c737c33a1254a28bb4e81e10bb0b4)

~~~
sitkack
while you have a chance, could you move this logorrhea to a gist?

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oomathias
[https://gist.github.com/oomathias/175c737c33a1254a28bb4e81e1...](https://gist.github.com/oomathias/175c737c33a1254a28bb4e81e10bb0b4)

~~~
sitkack
awesome, thanks.

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mcraiha
Before we know it there will be TV ads similar to "Switch to Sprint" but with
VPS Hosting. I can already see in my mind a young customer support person
talking to the camera and saying "we'll even cover your switching fees up to
$650".

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EduardoBautista
I would love to try out Linode again but I recently added $100 in credit at
Vultr because they currently match your first deposit up to $100. Linode
generally offers twice the RAM at all price points so it's almost always a
better value.

~~~
giobox
Linode's biggest short-coming has always been their storage options.

There is still no way to add arbitrary storage volumes to a VPS on Linode, if
you need more storage space you have to switch instance size. There's nothing
like Vultr's block storage or Digital Ocean's droplets.

~~~
hackerboos
According to the forums they weren't working on this as late as August 2016.

~~~
monster2control
Their blog post mentioned block storage beta is coming at the bottom of the
post.

[https://blog.linode.com/2017/02/14/high-memory-instances-
and...](https://blog.linode.com/2017/02/14/high-memory-instances-
and-5-linodes/)

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xjia
I use Linode for many important web services that my company relies on.
However I have tens of droplets on DigitalOcean for number crunching simply
because I can create them in batch and also log into them with provided
pubkey. Given this $5 plan on Linode, I will definitely switch over if I can
create Linodes in batch.

[edit] Thanks to @sitkack's comment, now I think we can create them with
[https://www.linode.com/api/linode/linode.disk.createfromdist...](https://www.linode.com/api/linode/linode.disk.createfromdistribution)

~~~
sitkack
Are you saying Linode has no API for provisioning new nodes?

[https://www.linode.com/api](https://www.linode.com/api)

~~~
xjia
Thanks! I wasn't aware that now the API supports root SSH key on creation.
Maybe I missed it last time I checked :( Updated my comment.

It would be great if Linode exposes on the Web UI :-)

~~~
sitkack
That said, I am using the web UI right now and I'd recommend only using the
API. The API looks a lot more baked.

~~~
throwanem
It's probably a lot newer; I don't recall seeing any mention of it when I
signed up with Linode in 2004.

Incidentally, I gather Linode has a project underway to replace that UI. I
can't speak to progress, although perhaps someone else here could, but I
certainly am looking forward to the result.

~~~
eatonphil
Yes, we do have plans to replace the current web UI. :) It is an open source
app you can follow along with the development on github [0]. And I can't say
much myself, but I believe TechCrunch has us quoted as planning to release
this in beta in a few months. :)

And actually, we have considered both being able to mass-provision Linodes
through the web UI and use SSH keys instead of passwords. But the mass-
provision part sort of got swept under the rug for beta.

Then fwiw the API is also being redone with more features and written
completely in Python. You can finds docs for that here [1].

You can also sign up for alpha access today and play around with the new API
(and free [temporary] Linodes!), as well as set up the manager locally [2].

Work email's in the bio if you need anything else!

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

[1] [https://developers.linode.com](https://developers.linode.com)

[2] [https://alpha.linode.com](https://alpha.linode.com)

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itsautomatisch
I switched to Vultr from OVH for learning/testing stuff, mostly because of the
double credit promotion. I think being able to upload your own ISO or use
OpenBSD on these services is a big plus. They're also giving 50GB of block
storage for free during the beta period, which is neat if you're trying to
play with filesystems. From the times I've messed with DO they have pretty
great customer service and a really slick UI, but it felt very restrained
compared to other companies with what you can deploy.

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simplehuman
"Vultr borked during software update."

This is because it runs apt daily on startup. Been bitten by this many times
on vultr.

~~~
tluyben2
Ubuntu? I am running Debian servers for over 10 years with apt-upgrade and
dist-upgrade; never had any issues. Ubuntu ones had several issues but all
fixable with a bit of handywork in rescue mode (if available; if not you are
often screwed).

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simplehuman
This is just a quirk on vultr. Not to do with ubuntu or debian. If you create
an ubuntu server on vultr, it does an apt-get update immediately. So, if you
'jump' and immediately run apt commands, they fail.

~~~
tluyben2
Ah. Did not know that. That is worth a downvote by the way?

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kreetx
Perhaps a noob question, but as someone who recently discovered the concept of
cpu credits for AWS instances -- are these instances dedicated?

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zomg
i've been a very happy linode customer since 2007.

~~~
davidgerard
yep. Very good support considering this is semidisposable commodity serving.

