[Bradford] VPS (cheap linux servers)

[Kriss at XIXs.com]

Since there was some talk about it on friday I figured I would mail
some useful links.

http://www.lowendbox.com/

A blog that posts deals on cheap boxes, you get root access a linux
install so can do whatever you like with it. Sometimes the providers
(mostly small) will go boom, so beware, keep backups and remember you
get what you pay for.

I actually have a cunning plan to setup a small distributed network of
cheap VPS nodes to provide a service that due to its inhomogeneous
nature will pretty much stay up no matter what (and therefore beat
amazon). This is my backup plan for the sites that I currently have
running on googles app engine.

Also some recommendations for vps boxes on places that are more
expensive but probably more stable/ located closer so you will get
lower latency are http://www.memset.com/dedicated-servers/virtual.php
who I've been using for years and http://www.gandi.net/hosting/ which
would be my second choice. These are borth XEN based which partitions
servers at a harder/lowerlevel than OpenVZ so can be considered more
stable with less leaking/sharing between partitions.

A tiny 128mb box is actually enough to run apache/mysql/php if you
tweak the configs a little bit to fit into low memory. Disable innodb
on mysql (its not used by default and this saves 100mb) turn keepalive
off on apache (keepalive is a site killer when you have a small number
of workers as each worker gets locked to a user) and reduce the number
of apache workers down to 8 (or any small number just remember they
all use memory). That will run a small site just peachy until you get
slashdotted :).


-- 
Kriss

http://boot-str.appspot.com/

http://www.WetGenes.com/