Review: Slicehost VPS

I recently made the switch from shared hosting to a non-managed VPS from a great company called Slicehost. I came across Slicehost back in September, and after reading over their website and searching through a few testimonials floating around the web, I was convinced that I needed to have a 'slice'.

The term 'slice' is how Slicehost refers to their Virtual Private Server offering. It's similar to a shared hosting environment, where there are multiple users hosted on a single dedicated server; however, with a VPS, you get dedicated resources for your applications to use, so that you do not have to worry about overselling causing performance and stability issues. As well, Slicehost uses Xen virtualization software to make every slice appear as though it is it's own dedicated server, including root access and a fresh OS install.

When I first tried to signup with Slicehost, there was a fairly long waitlist. Due to their overwhelming popularity in the developer community, they couldn't keep up with demand. As well, I signed up at the worst possible time, while they were in the middle of rewriting their backend, and putting plans together to open up a second data centre. In total I think I waited about 2 months. However, once the second data centre was open, I got my slice almost immediately, and I realized the wait was well worth it. (Note: at the time of this writing, they've cleared out almost all of the waitlist. If you sign up now, you'll wait about 2 weeks at most with the lowest pre-payment term of 3 months, and wait less that a week if you signup with any of the higher pre-payments terms.)

Now, by no means is Slicehost the only VPS provider in the marketplace, but I in my opinion, they are certainly one of the best. The following is a small review of my experience so far with Slicehost.

Account Setup

Setting up my account couldn't have been easier. It was a simple matter of filling out a screen of billing information, and then some information about what I wanted my hostname to be, what OS I wanted installed, etc. In total, it took about 10 minutes from the time I began the account setup to the time when I was sitting at a root login prompt, and that includes the time it took them to put the OS image on my slice.

Slice Setup

I was going to be using my slice for serving a small rails blogging application, as well as a couple small PHP based sites. I've had no previous experience setting up my own server from scratch, so I was a little concerned that I might have some trouble getting everything installed and configured correctly. However, it appears that this must be a concern for a lot of new Slicehost customers, because they've put together a fairly large repository of articles that provide in-depth instructions on how to get a complete hosting stack installed and configured for a few popular combinations of software (Apache + PHP + MySQL, NginX + Mongrel + MySQL, etc.). Another great thing about Slicehost is that you can re-image your slice at any time with any of the following operating systems:

• Ubuntu Dapper LTS
• Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10)
• CentOS 5.0
• Gentoo (2007.0)
• Debian Etch
• Fedora Core 8

So if you screw something up, re-imaging your slice and starting fresh is only a click away. So far, I've been using Ubuntu Gutsy, and have been very happy with it.

Another part of setting up your slice is DNS. You basically have two options when it comes to DNS. You can either use a third party DNS provider such as EveryDNS, or you can use Slicehost's own DNS service. The advantage of using Slicehost's DNS is that you can control your DNS records directly from Slicehost's management console, rather than having to go to a different site. I've found both options to be equally easy to setup, so it's really just personal preference as to which one to use.

Performance

According to Slicehost's website, their servers are 64-bit, Quad Core machines. In my experience so far, they've performed very well. Much better than my previous shared hosting. One thing to keep in mind though, is how much RAM you will need. For instance, if you are running mongrel instances to serve rails applications, each mongrel instance will use 50-60 Mb of ram, so you'll need to choose the amount of RAM you order accordingly.

Reliability

So far, my slice has been rock solid reliable. I've seen no downtime whatsoever, and upstream/downstream speeds have been great as well. Reading the Slicehost blog, it appears as though they were having some problems at their original data centre for a few days, but that seems to have been cleared up now, and they haven't had any problems at their new data centre as of yet.

Support

I think one of the best things about Slicehost is their support. They have more contact options than most non-managed VPS providers. You can e-mail them, pop into their Campfire or IRC chatrooms, or call them on the phone. As well, they have a great, and very active support forum which gives the Slicehost community a chance to help each other out. This is such a great idea because even though the Slicehost employees have a great amount of knowledge between them, the developer community has almost limitless knowledge and experience with everything related to web hosting. It's rare that you will not be able to get a solution to a problem from someone on the Slicehost forum.

Conclusion

I've only been a Slicehost customer for a few weeks now, but I'm very satisfied with the service and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a VPS solution. Even if you don't think a VPS is for you, or are uncomfortable at the command line, you might want to check out Slicehost anyways. Their cheapest plan is $20 a month, and that is a pretty low price to pay to get quality experience setting up and configuring your own server. Chances are you'll end up enjoying it so much that you'll move all your projects over to Slicehost from that slow and unreliable shared host you're currently with :)

NOTE: I have nothing against shared hosts as long as they're fast, reliable, and not oversold. I've heard great things about Mosso, and to a lesser extent Media Temple, but you need to be willing to pay the price, financially speaking. The types of shared hosts I don't like are the $5/month, 10TB transfer plans that basically bank on the fact that most of their users won't come even close to their quota. In doing so, they put too many accounts on a single server (i.e overselling), and the performance and reliability suffer greatly as a result.

03:00 PM | 5 Comments