Slicehost vs Layered Tech?
I've been a happy Layered Tech customer for a number of years. After several terrible experiences with hosting companies that didn't charge much, which were the inspiration for Web Hosting - A Market for Lemons, I found that LT offered good, basic service at reasonable prices. My first server there cost $70 a month, and handled what I needed it for with aplomb.
Fast forward to now: LT no longer has servers under $150 a month, and while they're nice machines, I miss being able to get something a little bit cheaper, and am considering Slicehost.
The real distinction between the two is: real, physical machines vs VPS (Virtual Private Servers). The latter earned itself a bad reputation in the past, because many providers 'overbooked' the machines that their clients' VPS ran on. I had some negative experiences with that myself, prior to seeking out a 'real' machine to run my web sites on. However, I've heard that people are reasonably content with Slicehost, so perhaps they're running a tight ship. For those who have tried them out, how is the speed/latency of their offerings, and compared to a more or less 'equivalent' real machine? The positive side of running a well-planned VPS is that you can quickly switch between configurations, allowing you a bit of room to grow, if you plan things right, which might allow me to save some money.
Incidentally, something that I like about both LT and SH is that they're not in the California Bay Area, which is a really expensive place to run what isn't exactly a "rocket science" business. Sure, you want good, solid, smart people, but there's no reason to be in such an expensive part of the country.
Thoughts? Opinions?
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about 1 hour later:
I've been using SliceHost for about an year and I think they rock. I never used LT, so my view is surely biased, but the quality of service I get from SH is really impressive.
about 2 hours later:
We're probably going to go with Linode for our commercial web-services. Similar deal to Slicehost, specs are a little better and they seem to also be pretty popular in the community. The nice thing in both cases is that if it blows, you can pull the plug after one month and only be out $20.
about 4 hours later:
I like slicehost; I have no problem with CPU availability and disk is surprisingly fast. My only grumble is that I'm out of practice running a useful server in 256MB RAM - it takes some care :-)
about 5 hours later:
Have you tried running on Amazon EC2 now that they have Elastic Block Service?
about 8 hours later:
I'm a happy puppy with Slicehost. I started with my personal stuff and as of recent I moved all of Sourcesense servers over there. So far, so good.
about 8 hours later:
Try Gandi Hosting. $7.50/month for a 1-share server, which includes 256MB of RAM, 5GB of data disk (plus 3GB of OS disk), and 5Mbit/s of unmetered bandwidth. All of those scale linearly with shares (even bandwidth), and you can also get more storage quota at $0.15/GB. Furthermore, you can create multiple servers with your shares, and you can move disks between your running servers. Works beautifully.
about 9 hours later:
Daniel, Amazon's services are impressive, but for what I need, something more conventional is probably best.
I think that sooner or later, perhaps something like Amazon will be the way to go, but it still seems to be 'under development' to me, so I'd rather deal with an approach that I know really well.
It's definitely something I'm following with a lot of interest, though.
about 10 hours later:
cari.net ? dedicated stuff still at $60
about 16 hours later:
You could try to find some others to share a real server, using Xen for virtualisation, like Steve Kemp is doing: http://www.xen-hosting.org/
Most VPS providers oversell the machines (especially if they offer OpenVZ/Virtuozzo installations, as they allow to grant more ram than physically available) and at peak hours they become terrible slow.
about 16 hours later:
Just wondering why you are looking to jump ship when Layered Tech offers VPS as well.
http://www.thegridlayer.com/products/virtual-private-servers.php
about 17 hours later:
Can't say anything about Layered Tech, but there's absolutely nobody better than SliceHost for typical VPS stuff. I've been using them for quite some time now and I have zero complaints and only praise.
about 17 hours later:
I have been with Slicehost for a year and they are solid. Support is ridiculously fast. I wonder if they ever sleep.
about 17 hours later:
Slicehost doesn't oversell. And Matt and Jason are awesome.
about 17 hours later:
+1 for Linode
Their servers never have problems, and the staff are extremely knowledgeable and helpful.
Lots of extra little goodies like automated IP failover if you have redundant VPSes, DNS manager & api, multiple boot profiles, etc.
about 18 hours later:
David - let us know if you have any questions.
about 19 hours later:
tektonic.net seems another good offering; $15/mo with 500gb of bandwidth is pretty good. support has been very good to me.
1 day later:
Emor, the LT VPS solutions just don't look competitive to me compared to Slicehost:
http://www.thegridlayer.com/products/virtual-private-servers.php
I'm happy with the service and support at LT, but their expertise seems to be in running real machines. The VPS offerings are fairly recent, and run on some Microsoft system if I'm not mistaken.
1 day later:
Hey David -
Feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions. You can also tap our excellent community for near instant answers: http://www.linode.com/irc/
1 day later:
David:
The grid is on a Linux Platform, although LT has just rolled out (one of the first) Hyper-V for Windows.