VPS hosts that aren't useless!

I'm looking around yet again for vps hosting. Current host has failed to fix problems properly. Support is slow. VPS has been down all day which is hopeless if you're trying to run anything of any importance.

So far I have looked at mochahost - lots of complaints
Hostgator - maybe.
Webhost uk - seem to be the same as eukhost
Webfusion - ha
Daily - maybe but they seem to be the same people as above and 123-reg.

Hosting must be decent bandwidth (500GB min). Reasonable memory 500mb min.

Current host is just under £30 a month with plesk power pack and 100 domains.

Cpanel/WHM isn't any good as I detest the Cpanel interface!

Any ideas on any host which isn't rubbish? Every one I have tried has deteriorated into being hopeless.

I've got VPS instances with Nethosted who are Very good if not likely to offer a VPS in your budget at the specs you state, however I've got several instances with Linode who are also utterly reliable and within budget and I'm also having decent service from a new startup called ThrustVPS who have hosts on the RapidSwitch network in the UK.

In reply to a post by RoadRailer_Pilot:

I'm also having decent service from a new startup called ThrustVPS who have hosts on the RapidSwitch network in the UK.

Might be worth making sure you have your own backups with that one as it seems to be run or managed by the same chap who was in charge of Vaserve/FSCK when it had a slight security issue leading to the developer of the software being used; committing suicide.

Matt

The linode idea looks kind of cool. I've got a heart reseller account too that I was going to move everything to but the interface is so dreadful I haven't got far with it.

I was going to resell space but the problem with that is you get the hassle when it is down. If I'd resold anything with my current host I'd have been barbequed by now....

In reply to a post by uno:

In reply to a post by RoadRailer_Pilot:

I'm also having decent service from a new startup called ThrustVPS who have hosts on the RapidSwitch network in the UK.

Might be worth making sure you have your own backups with that one as it seems to be run or managed by the same chap who was in charge of Vaserve/FSCK when it had a slight security issue leading to the developer of the software being used; committing suicide.

Matt

Cheers for the heads up. I have DDoS resilient DNS hosted elsewhere and am a little OCD about backups! Since I rolled out de-dupe on my ZFS storage box I'm able to scatter my sites around various VPS/Dedicated providers with nightly backups of the busy sites with failover to another provide should the VPS vanish into the etherr. Belt and braces!

How much client churn did you have when BSQ took over the VaSERV/FSCK accounts? I am halfway through the 100+ page thread on WHT.

To be fair though - the host performance isn't bad at this price point, one would assume being linked to the suicide of a developer would make one raise ones game entering the arena again...

In reply to a post by RoadRailer_Pilot:

How much client churn did you have when BSQ took over the VaSERV/FSCK accounts? I am halfway through the 100+ page thread on WHT.

Us? Neither have anything to do with us - just giving you a heads up.

Matt

In reply to a post by teabelly:

The linode idea looks kind of cool. I've got a heart reseller account too that I was going to move everything to but the interface is so dreadful I haven't got far with it.

I was going to resell space but the problem with that is you get the hassle when it is down. If I'd resold anything with my current host I'd have been barbequed by now....

To be honest the linode instances are running a variety of GPL control panels including Virtualmin, ISPconfig and GPLhost (sandal wearing beard stroking *nix enthusiast!) and I'm very impressed by the ability to deploy my own OS configurations in any of the linode datacentres and reboot/modify DNS/mount different drives etc for the nodes from the linode app on my iPhone.

Well worth a look.

In reply to a post by uno:

In reply to a post by RoadRailer_Pilot:

How much client churn did you have when BSQ took over the VaSERV/FSCK accounts? I am halfway through the 100+ page thread on WHT.

Us? Neither have anything to do with us - just giving you a heads up.

Matt

My apologies, I looked into your own VPS offerings, noticed you were at BlueSquare added 2+2 and got 5.

Thanks again for the heads up!

Ah ha!

Bluesquare are just the facility, (colo racks) etc.

As far as I know from el reg, fsck et all was bought out by Bluesquare due to situation that the owner was in after the massive hack.

Matt

It's a toss up now between going with a linode or using valuevps and maybe going for a dedicated as they do them for £35 squids a month. So tempting to have my own server then I won't have to share with gimps mucking them up! Downtime due to my own stupidity I can live with

If you don't mind hosting in the US give Known Host a try http://knownhost.com/

I've had VPS with them for several years and never a problem. The few times I've had to contact them to sort out messes I've made myself or with completely non-urgent enquiries, their tech support replies within minutes no matter the time of day.

Webhostingtalk is always a good place to read up on some real customer reviews http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

Knownhost look good, ta.

In reply to a post by teabelly:

It's a toss up now between going with a linode or using valuevps and maybe going for a dedicated as they do them for £35 squids a month. So tempting to have my own server then I won't have to share with gimps mucking them up! Downtime due to my own stupidity I can live with

I would suggest looking at a dedicated server rather than vps given your requirements.

I think you're probably right Might have to bite the bullet and move to cpanel instead of staying with plesk as there is more choice of providers with cpanel.

Other alternative is this cloud idea. That seems to be more fault tolerant of hardware failures which can also knacker your uptime.

In reply to a post by teabelly:

I think you're probably right Might have to bite the bullet and move to cpanel instead of staying with plesk as there is more choice of providers with cpanel.

Other alternative is this cloud idea. That seems to be more fault tolerant of hardware failures which can also knacker your uptime.

Cpanel is pretty nice, plus core services get updated. Make sure you install lfd onto the system if you do get cpanel.!

Post deleted by billford

We purchased Bluesquare's data hosting divisions (Poundhost Internet Ltd, VAServ, Server Arcade Ltd, VPS Ltd and Blueconnex Ltd) in November last year. Press release is at http://www.names.co.uk/pr.html?item=2316

Edited by deleted (Fri 30-Jul-10 09:00:34)

Yes, very good but we are on about the space, not the transit network or other brands and were not talking about something irrelevant to what you have posted.

Matt

I can't get on with cpanel. I have spent ages messing around with the demo to see whether I could get used to it but it just doesn't work how I think so it takes forever to do simple things.

I've decided to get a cloud but stick with plesk as some of the issues were down to other people's vps' making mine wonky. With the new virtualisation technology other people's servers should not beggar up mine. And it is dead easy to scale as you can add extra bandwidth, memory, disk space etc without a re provision.

I spent ages in cpanel trying to work out just how you just list out the current dns settings. I could only find add and edit. Default dns settings are also set to fixed name servers so I'd always be changing those. Couldn't see how you could add a wildcard so you could have 'ns.eachdomain.com' for example. The one useful feature was the one where it would use settings from the registrar.

In reply to a post by teabelly:

I can't get on with cpanel. I have spent ages messing around with the demo to see whether I could get used to it but it just doesn't work how I think so it takes forever to do simple things.

I've decided to get a cloud but stick with plesk as some of the issues were down to other people's vps' making mine wonky. With the new virtualisation technology other people's servers should not beggar up mine. And it is dead easy to scale as you can add extra bandwidth, memory, disk space etc without a re provision.

I spent ages in cpanel trying to work out just how you just list out the current dns settings. I could only find add and edit. Default dns settings are also set to fixed name servers so I'd always be changing those. Couldn't see how you could add a wildcard so you could have 'ns.eachdomain.com' for example. The one useful feature was the one where it would use settings from the registrar.

Not sure why you would want to change the name servers all the time.

http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpanelwhm/try-demo.html

try the whm demo there - should have a whole section on dns there inc dns templates.

As for cloud style services, set up cpanel dns only on server and then add servers as required

I run a very small site with 34sp.com based out Manchester, UK . Been with them for 8+ years. No problems at all. They use Plesk and offer pretty good deals on VPS (among other things). Check them out here:
http://www.34sp.com/vps-hosting

Cheers Norm

i used plesk for 4+ years (dedi and vps) and i've now been using cpanel on a dedicated server for two years. features wise, cpanel will always be ahead of plesk and it's so much faster too.

yes it is a bit silly to have two different interfaces, one for the admin and one for users, default NS can be set up per user but the user has to be a reseller, everything's simple once you know how.

i'm not going to suggest vps.net because they're over your budget and the last time i looked there were no London nodes left which is stupid.

I should switch to cpanel really but I have just found a good deal on a cloud with 1and1 and they offer plesk as standard so I may try them.

Cpanel is the grown up control panel but I get more done with the fisher price plesk

I have to say, I see that as pretty expensive.. Their top package, "Supersize VPS" is £59.95 a month, with 1TB data transfer.

We rent a dedicated server in Germany. Cost is �49 a month, started with 1TB of traffic, got upgraded to 2TB a while back and recently to 5TB data transfer a month (not that we ever come close).. Machine has 2GB of RAM and 2x1600GB drives in a RAID 1 pair.

In reply to a post by Spasch:

I have to say, I see that as pretty expensive.. Their top package, "Supersize VPS" is £59.95 a month, with 1TB data transfer.

We rent a dedicated server in Germany. Cost is �49 a month, started with 1TB of traffic, got upgraded to 2TB a while back and recently to 5TB data transfer a month (not that we ever come close).. Machine has 2GB of RAM and 2x1600GB drives in a RAID 1 pair.

Exactly why we won't sell vps - might as well either stay with reseller hosting or go to dedicated servers .. VPS is a fudge and will always be that

Really?

We'd do VPS that can grow bigger than a dedicated box without having to loose anything, or restore data on a complete hardware change.

Managed VPS or VPDCs are good business for us at the moment, even more than dedicated.

Matt

Edited by uno (Thu 05-Aug-10 16:48:11)

In reply to a post by uno:

Really?

We'd do VPS that can grow bigger than a dedicated box without having to loose anything, or restore data on a complete hardware change.

Managed VPS or VPDCs are good business for us at the moment, even more than dedicated.

Matt

We say its a fudge because vps is only as good as the vps software and ultimately it is that from a tech view point.

I see, I would agree to an extent and there are so many players in the the market with some better than others.

We've used VZ for years but have recently made the switch the Xen-based simply because of the high availability it offers as well as the protection from other VMs.

Matt

go for the small hosts, the large ones are awful..

I host a very large 200 user/peak website and never get any complaints of slowdowns etc with lots of spare VPS capacity left!

avoid cloud. 9 times out of 10 you will be competing hugely for I/O bandwidth as the SAN's and backend network is never up to the job (look at amazon cloud for instance!)

I've decided to get a cloud but stick with plesk as some of the issues were down to other people's vps' making mine wonky.

this should not happen if you have a good VPS provider!

what technology did you have? openvz? xen?

sounds like the classic case of an oversubscribed system.

I wouldnt really recommend either CP, if you *need* a CP directAdmin is the way to go - its secure and can be chrooted properly etc, unlike cpanel.

agreed. I have a customer on a managed VPS with HA/failover paying upwards of 50+/pm.

VPS provides an excellent half-way between a full-blown dedicated and shared hosting, especially if its setup right - too many providers out there that do not know what they are doing!!

Edited by deleted (Sat 07-Aug-10 09:23:56)

The vps provider said they could impact on each other but with their sooperduper cloud system it wouldn't happen..... think my vps was using virtuozzo. It is the parallels one anyway.

Switched to 1and1. Annoyed about finding all the negative reviews after I've switched! 1and1 use xen which I think is the same as the old host does on their clouds.

Also all their first line telephone people seem to sound like daleks. I'm almost convinced they aren't real and they're voice recognition devices!

For some though, we even see them as replacements for whole dedicated boxes as you can do the same but have the added HA/failover and pretty much unlimited* storage.

*yes, there isn't such a thing but money not being a factor, you could just scale up to whatever you needed on what would appear a single machine.

Matt

dont believe all the hype! openvz / virtuozzo is often oversubscribed as it allows the provider to over sub the memory and disk space/cpu etc often 3 or 4 times over.

ive seen providers that have 50+ virtual machines on the one server - with horrible results!

xen performance will be much better for you.

as for the 1st line drones - thats what happens when you go to a big company!

I wouldn't attempt to run "anything of any importance" on a VPS, particularly when dedicated is so cheap these days for basic boxes.

I run a VPS for development sites only with Poundhost, the box is OK; there was a period of downtime a while back which lasted a couple of days [at the weekend] thanks to the failure of the shared HP disk drive unit (the name of the thing evades me at the moment) however the current offering appears to be SAS storage:

http://vds.poundhost.com/template.aspx?ID=4

It's fine for development, but I wouldn't put any production sites on it or indeed any VPS.

In reply to a post by MarkHampshire:

thanks to the failure of the shared HP disk drive unit (the name of the thing evades me at the moment)

HP Storage Works?

Matt

Going the dedi root is the long term plan really.

Backup plan on 1and1 is also a comical 60 quid a month. Going to get a live drive account for a tenner and do ftp

Hyper-V

Knew it would come to mind eventually

Ahh. Thought you mean the storage

Matt