[red rocket]

I’m looking to start a smallish Scoop site in the next few months. After looking at a variety of hosting options in the up-to-$20-per-month price bracket, I’m leaning towards getting a 256 slice from Slicehost.

I suspect there’ll be a bit more setup/maintenance effort involved on my part compared to some of the shared hosting offers available, but I like the idea of having full root access.

Have any of you here used Slicehost or another VPS host? I’d like to hear about people’s experiences, positive or negative, and would also appreciate any comments regarding the difficulty level of securing such a set-up, in general.

Cheers.

[Mithras]

As you note, full root access also means full responsibility for the latest security updates, so do bear that in mind. On the other hand, even running Wordpress on a dinky shared setup makes you plenty vulnerable if you don't keep up to date, so it may not be all that different.

I had been interested in a VPS, but couldn't find one in the $20/month sweet spot -- Slicehost looks interesting.

[Maflynn]

check out WHT They have a ton of information regarding all sorts of hosting, its pit falls and what to look for. Unlike many rating/reviewing sites this is an independent site that has a lot of members who are able to provide all sorts of advice.

[red rocket]

Thanks for the link, looks like it’s going to be highly useful.

[besson3c]

What OS choices do you have red rocket? Are you comfortable with Unix already? I strongly suggest creating your own VM test environment so that you can setup your VPS locally. Find out VM solution your host is using, and whether they would support using your disk images.

If they are using a commercial solution such as VMWare Enterprise, you might be out of luck, but if they are using Xen or KVM, you could easily setup your VMs locally using Virtualbox and the qcow2 disk image format. This way, you can be completely fearless about what you are doing...

Does your VPS support machine reboots? What kind of interface do they provide for that?

[besson3c]

Also, I would strongly suggest setting up your partitions with Linux LVM, leaving lots of free space so that you can grow your partitions as needed.

[red rocket]

Originally Posted by besson3c

What OS choices do you have red rocket?

They’re offering a choice between

Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron) LTS
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) LTS
Debian 4.0 (Etch)
Gentoo 2007.0
Centos 5.2
Fedora 9
and
Arch 2007.08.

Which one would you suggest I went with? Their website has some tutorials for setting up servers in the Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS distros, so I’d be inclined to go with one of those, besides I’ve never heard of ‘Arch’.

Are you comfortable with Unix already?

I wouldn’t say ‘comfortable,’ but I’m not scared, either.

Does OS X count? I’ve been using that since the Public Beta.

Seriously, I use Terminal.app on a semi-regular basis, dabbled with X11, fink and building a few apps from source for around three years, and I’ve bought and read ‘Unix in a Nutshell’.

I strongly suggest creating your own VM test environment so that you can setup your VPS locally. Find out VM solution your host is using, and whether they would support using your disk images.

If they are using a commercial solution such as VMWare Enterprise, you might be out of luck, but if they are using Xen or KVM, you could easily setup your VMs locally using Virtualbox and the qcow2 disk image format. This way, you can be completely fearless about what you are doing...

I understand they use Xen. Your suggestion sounds good, I’ll look into that.

However, I’m still on PPC here, so using Virtualbox isn’t an option. I guess I could set up a Linux system on a local machine, but I’m unsure about compatibility with the newer versions Slicehost are offering, the distros available for PPC seem to be a bit behind the times, correct me if I’m wrong.

Does your VPS support machine reboots? What kind of interface do they provide for that?

They've got some web interface, looks like you can simulate soft and hard reboots:

Also, I would strongly suggest setting up your partitions with Linux LVM, leaving lots of free space so that you can grow your partitions as needed.

I see where you’re coming from. Some guy has posted a hack for setting up LVM on a Slicehost slice. The company’s preferred solution seems to be selling separate backup space, but it still appears possible to partition the slices yourself.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by red rocket 

They’re offering a choice between

Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron) LTS
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) LTS
Debian 4.0 (Etch)
Gentoo 2007.0
Centos 5.2
Fedora 9
and
Arch 2007.08.

Which one would you suggest I went with? Their website has some tutorials for setting up servers in the Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS distros, so I’d be inclined to go with one of those, besides I’ve never heard of ‘Arch’.

CentOS = Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). CentOS and Gentoo are the only server focused OSes from that list (excluding Arch, which I don't know much about either). I would start by acquiring a test PC of your own and installing CentOS in a virtual machine. I would suggest using Ubuntu as your host OS using libvirt/KVM, which is super easy to setup and fully supported by Ubuntu 8. I would check to see if the software that you plan to use is available in the CentOS repository, and whether you like the RedHat tools overall. I would also install Gentoo as a guest OS (i.e. separate VM) and compare using it. It is much more of a do-it-yourself OS, but its built in software repository is bigger.

Knowing that your host is using Xen, you might want to look into whether or not they are doing paravirtualization or hardware (HVM) virtualization. If the latter, your disk images can be used as-is... If not, OS modifications are necessary to support paravirtualization (which is faster). Slicehost is probably going to want to control this to ensure stability of their servers, so you'd have to scrap the build your server locally, deploy remotely idea. That's cool, since it looks like you have full control over your server as far as being able to reboot it, rebuild it, etc.

Does OS X count? I’ve been using that since the Public Beta.

Seriously, I use Terminal.app on a semi-regular basis, dabbled with X11, fink and building a few apps from source for around three years, and I’ve bought and read ‘Unix in a Nutshell’.

You'll probably be okay, but this will definitely require some learning time, both in familiarizing yourself with using another OS, setting up your firewall, partitions, etc. as well as your network services. You will have to deprogram yourself to look for a GUI to do things, because Unix admins generally don't work with GUIs (although Redhat does provide some, if you decide to go with CentOS).

However, I’m still on PPC here, so using Virtualbox isn’t an option. I guess I could set up a Linux system on a local machine, but I’m unsure about compatibility with the newer versions Slicehost are offering, the distros available for PPC seem to be a bit behind the times, correct me if I’m wrong.

Yeah, you are out of luck if you are running PPC... I discussed actually building your server above, and how that might not work out for you, but it still is a good idea to have a test server so that you can test everything before you deploy it. And, if nothing more, you should definitely backup your data... Your test server could be used as a data backup machine as well.

They've got some web interface, looks like you can simulate soft and hard reboots:

Nice!

I see where you’re coming from. Some guy has posted a hack for setting up LVM on a Slicehost slice. The company’s preferred solution seems to be selling separate backup space, but it still appears possible to partition the slices yourself.

I'm unfamiliar with what they are referring to as a slice... Maybe this is a prepartitioned, preinstalled OS with a certain amount of space allocated? The idea of LVM is that you allocate only what you think you need, and then grow your partitions whenever needed. You can do this growing on the live system without having to plan for any downtime. LVM is a wonderfully handy feature!