

Making scaling a money issue vs. a time issue? - nameless

As a one man band, I've been looking at some Virtual Private Servers to try and make low level scalability issues more of a money issue rather than a time issue. I've looked at thegridlayer.com and mediatemple's dv packages. <p>So far I like mediatemple because it comes with a control panel, Virtuozzo, etc. thegridlayer's solutions seem to require more setup and come with none of these features out of the gate. <p>Is there a better VPS provider with more timesaving features and reliability or an easier way to get a good, quick scaling server?
======
wmf
Are you talking about scaling from 1/10 of a server to 1 server, or from 1 to
10 servers, or from 10 to 1000 servers?

I was turned off by 3Tera/TheGridLayer because their sites are all marketing,
no tech. But I just discovered the docs
(<http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic2/WebHome.html>), so now it's possible to size
up their system without some salesperson sizing up my wallet first.

TGL's prices for individual VPSes do not look competitive and the starting
price of $4000/month for a virtual datacenter is pretty spicy.

Previous VPS discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43949> Most
providers do not mention scalability or upgrades on their sites, so maybe it
is worth paying more to MT for scalability.

~~~
nameless
I'm talking about starting with 1 small server and scaling it up with ram and
cpu, then possibly needing to add a db server. That's about as far into the
future as I'd like to look.

------
gscott
I decided to host one of my applications, a live chat service for 'replicated'
websites on GoDaddy.com of all places, before you laugh it has really worked
out better then I would have imagined. I already had the code working well
under load with stored procedures and everything else optimized. It is not
under active development so the terrible mssql interface didn't bother me too
much. I have 2000 paying customers and no problems. I pay $5 a month for the
best shared hosting ever.

------
staunch
I would totally avoid any special "grid" crap. That stuff is snake oil. I'd
also avoid VPS too, since the price of fully dedicated servers is so low these
days. Less than $100/mo for a machine you can call your own.

I think ServerBeach has a better deal than all the other sites mentioned here.
I've been super happy with them (and a couple friends who signed up have as
well). They do offer cPanel and Plesk and I think give you Webmin by default.
I don't use that stuff myself though.

(If you sign up for Serverbeach you can use my referral # 7XYHDMBU8A for $100
credit and I so get credit too
[http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?...](http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?REF=7XYHDMBU8A)
)

------
nameless
I've been analyzing slicehost and they look great, but it looks like I'll have
to do too much of the server admin myself, including security. Plus, they are
currently back ordered unless you prepay. Says alot for them though that they
refuse customers due to server loads.

MediaTemple's dv offering seems to be 'dedicated light' in that apache, php,
mysql etc are preinstalled. Also MT has a security update option where they
updated tested versions of apps as they come out.

Looks like that could take alot of server admin work off my hands, which is
what I'm looking for.

Anyone else have an easier option?

------
Xichekolas
Can't claim to have actually used them, but I have kept an eye on slicehost
... might be worth a look anyway.

~~~
gmlk
I'm using slicehost and I'm loving it! :)

<http://slicehost.com>

~~~
nameless
Those guys are cheap. Kinda scares me a bit that they say they've built
everything themselves. How is the control panel? Is there any way to view the
real time statistics (cpu, database connections, etc) on your server?

~~~
RyanGWU82
I'm also very happy with SliceHost. But you have to understand the limitations
of their offering. They're offering you a blank canvas -- an empty box with a
standard Linux distribution installed. It does _not_ have any user-friendly
administration tools installed, beyond what comes with the distribution.
Instead, they assume that their customers know how to manage servers
themselves. If you want more of a GUI, you can install any control panel you
want, but you have to install it yourself.

As such, the SliceHost control panel is very minimal. It will display some
instantaneous statistics about CPU time, memory usage and network traffic. It
also lets you reboot your server and restore from backups or from a standard
distribution template. That's about all that it does.

That said, the control panel is very nicely done -- just minimal.

This isn't for everyone, but my personal feeling is that if you're in the
market for a VPS, you should be familiar with how to configure it yourself. If
you're not already comfortable with Linux system administration and the Unix
command line, then I think you're better off with fully managed hosting. I
wouldn't want to try and keep a VPS alive and secure without being a
proficient Linux sysadmin.

~~~
nameless
Thanks for the great reply. I'm comfortable setting up cron jobs and some
minor aspects of server management. I am looking to take the next step so I
have more flexibility but I want to avoid all the work it'll take to customize
a 'blank canvas'.

