Borkfomb

I’ve switched hosting companies. Again. Now I’m with Linode. One of these years I’ll find a host I’m wholly content with. Each time I switch I think, “This time, I’ve found the perfect host!”. Given my average time per host, if I last at least year on Linode, then things are going absolutely swell.

As the nonexistent readers of my blog may know, previously I used Rackspace’s cloud server service and prior to that, Slicehost. This week I switched from Rackspace to Linode for two primary reasons:

1. As my bandwidth usage climbed while resource requirements remained steady, Linode became a more economical choice.
2. OMG FEATURES.
3. Look at me, using an ordered list for the first time on this blog! :3

There’s not much to write about the first reason. I’m just making better use of my money. It’s the same reason I moved from Slicehost to Rackspace last spring. At that time, Rackspace (with its separately billed bandwidth for cloud servers) was more economical because I barely used the bandwidth bundled with my Slicehost plan. One reason I didn’t switch back to Slicehost when my bandwidth usage increased as of late is Linode’s smallest plan offers more memory, disk space, and bandwidth than Slicehost’s, and is slightly less expensive.

The second reason I switched is a biggie. Since April, Rackspace has added but two features to cloud servers: Ability for customers to set PTR records, and an API. For some reason I think there was a third… remind me please if I’m forgetting something. Anyways, nine months and only two features? Grumble grumble. The features available don’t even compare to Slicehost, let alone Linode.

It’d be silly of me to list all the features Linode offers over Rackspace, so I’ll list only some I find most awesome.

• Ability to set more DNS records than A, MX, CNAME, and PTR (why do you make us contact support to alter TXT records, Rackspace?)
• Ability to edit DNS records
• Customers can use a Linode-provided kernel or their own via pv-grub
• DNS zones can be cloned
• Custom partitioning (and disk images can be resized, duplicated)
• VPSs can be easily moved to a different datacenter
• Outbound speeds are capped at 50 Mbps, as opposed to the measly 10 Mpbs on the smallest cloud server (which I was using)
• Entire VPS can be cloned

Support times are pretty much the same between Linode and Rackspace… I receive responses well within an hour. Though last night I opened ticket with Linode and received a response in 53 seconds. Holy crap.

Honestly, if Rackspace had been continually improving cloud servers, it’s doubtful I would have switched to Linode. But to me as a customer, it looks as if Rackspace (mostly) fixed the slow and buggy control panel shortly after launch, and then put any other plans for improvement on the back burner. Nevertheless, I’ll continue to use cloud servers on occasion… the pay-by-the-hour practice makes them ideal for development and such, when a server is needed for only a few hours or days.