Tag Archives: review

Hi,

recently, in the work, we brought a VPS at linode.com basically to use it for test server (we have some shared accounts also for this purpose, but some of our scripts use a full pat on the root of the HD, so a shared account is not possible) and i wanted to share some first impressions about their service.

we brought plan linode 512 that consist in a vps with 512 mb of ram, 16gb of hard disk, 200gb of transfer per month, with 1 dedicated ip.

Features and Control Panel

of course, as a VPS, you have a ssh access to the server, where you can perform any operation with your designated resources, but also linode give you a control panel with several extra features that i need to say, i found very useful and practical.

Basically when you buy a linode, you are buying resources and those resources you can use them as you wish, with the tools that the control panel provide. the first time you log in, the control panel guide you to the process of installing a linux distribution and installing a HD schema. they provide pre-made linux images called StackScript, that with a few clicks you can have several standard configurations, as a LAMP server, a rails server etc.. i tried the LAMP server and it worked flawless really. at today, the support the most famous distributions, including debian, ubuntu and centos.

the web admin, also provide the feature to have several configuration profiles, that let your boot the vps with different kernel version, HD schema,  amount of memory available and network configuration. the usability of the web admin is really good, you have direct access to the most important items as DNS configuration, profiles etc.. and graphs of the network, I/O and CPU uses by hours, and the total used of bandwidth in the current month.

Reverse DNS

this is some of the most valuable features i think also, the correct configuration of a DNS is really a painful job (i say it by experience) and linode make it easy in this case. basically they provide you of the complete DNS service, where you can add and edit zones for your VPS and even create slaves zones, that will be following your master DNS settings in your own DNS server. the setup is simple to use, with instructions in each step and field to fill, that fits for experts and newbies.

Conclusion

i tried other vps service, including the godaddy and vpslink.com, i didn’t see in they web panel’s a useful one really, most of the task needed to be done in ssh and they do not offer those dns features that linode have. i think is a good vps service for small/medium projects, that let you have a server working in a few hours (remember that still is needed to install a mail server and ftp server is most web servers, and that takes time). unfortunately i’m unable to make a performance test, as this is a test server and almost do not have traffic.

i hope this help you in some way

Regards,

Shadow.