Slicehost | VPS.net | GigeCloud | Online Virtual Servers

Slicehost is a great service where you can essentially rent a virtual machine. In fact, it’s just a step below true dedicated servers. They use Xen virtualization and so you can install a linux distribution (you get a choice) in your “slice”. You rent your slice based on the disk space, bandwidth and processor share (1/256th of a server I believe is their smallest slice.)

Anyway, I’ve used slicehost for a few interesting projects. One is an openvpn implementation to replace something like HotspotVPN usage.

I’ll collect references and tutorials for various purposes here. Some of the items listed here may not be exclusive to slicehost, but work for linux and ubuntu as well.

Setting up user directories under apache2 on ubuntu.

Setting up name based virtual hosting. (Again using apache2 on ubuntu linux).

VPS.NET

Vps.net provides a similar service. They also use xen to allow a server to be divided up into “nodes”. You essentially rent a number of nodes and then can split it up into the number of vps’s that you like. (There is a minimum of 1 node to create a virtual private server.)

GigeCloud

I’ve given a try out to gigenet Cloud lately as a compliment to slicehost/VPS.net I have not had a bad experience with vps.net (quite the contrary), but I find it useful to have options in case the offering changes (or in case I want a good backup strategy that can get all the eggs out of one companies basket.) They have a slightly different payment model it appears (I had to purchase credits in advance and then your credits are spent just when your vm is on.) It’s an interesting approach and has me wonder about setting it up as a backup server that wakes up at a certain time, receives backup data an then shuts down…..

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