hosting in USA

Sun May 9 10:48:23 IDT 2010

Hi, sorry for joining in late... but I'll add my own experiences in US
hosting until now, to add to what everyone else has written here.  *See
also my end point about speeds from Israel*

1) unixshell.com; this is where I started off, it was a VPS running of
Xen.  Was great for over a year until my VM neighbours started doing
some weird shit and the thing became unusable.  Being dependent on my
neighbous to watch their iowait and otherwise play nice didn't suit me. 
Their sister company tektonic.net running virtuozzo claimed that it
handled iowait better, but I decided to get my own dedicated server.

2) server4you.com; was very happy there also for over a year, until I
had problems I couldn't fix myself (i.e. on their side).  Traffic simply
stopped coming in on my primary IP.  We exchanged many emails, their
response time was appaling, and every time they said it was fixed it
wasn't.  Eventually after TWO WEEKS they told me I was blocked on their
providers routers because someone tried a DDoS against my IP, although
it's hard to know since they "conclusively" told me the problem was a
number of other things.  Kitzur, I had migrated all my data and was up
and running on another server at another company long before they
"fixed" the problem.

3) serverbeach.com; this is where youtube was hosted before google
bought them.  Their tagline is "by geeks for geeks" which I liked,
because I hate dealing with stupid people.  Been here for over two years
now I think.  It's a bit more expensive then I was used to, but I'm
happy to pay more for quick response time and people who know what
they're doing.  Problems when they arose were sorted out very quickly
(including a hardware failure).  What I also love is that whenever they
have a problem, even it only affected some users, they post a report and
post-mortem analysis -- what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what
steps they've taken to ensure it won't happen again, including on issues
related to customer satisfaction.  That responsibility sold me aswell,
because a lot of other providers like to pretend the problem is on your
side, or doesn't exist, etc.  Lastly, they're partnered with peer1.com,
one of the US' big first tier backbones.

Also wherever you go make sure you have good tools to e.g. reboot your
system, AND access a recovery mode, etc.  I got a cheap VPS in Israel
for VPN use, and was amazed that I had to call an after hours number and
physically ask someone to reboot the machine for me.

With all the servers above, a primary concern was of course speed to
Israel.  You have to be pretty careful here.  It can vary by ISP of
course too.  I can say with serverbeach that off-peak on NV, I tend to
max out my 7mbps connection (I get around 750K/sec or so...).  At Peak
times, NV treats their users like Gaza, but fortunately I have a
smuggling tunnel (aka VPN) which still works great ;)

Obviously latency cannot compare to a local server, but everything else
is cheaper.  To my server at ServerBeach I get around 164ms.  Note the
big companies have multiple data centres, make sure to check out latency
and bandwidth to all of them... generally you want something on the East
Coast.

If anyone wants to check out serverbeach, let me know... maybe I can get
points for it or something :)

Good luck!

On 07/05/2010 00:01, Steve G. wrote:
> There is no 'one size fits all' internet. Rackspace is a good company,
> no doubt, but if you do not need 100% uptime guarantee, you may save
> 30-50% or more by using another provider, who would give you 99.995%
> uptime. There are many choices, from shared to virtual private
> servers, to dedicated, to managed dedicated, each at a different price
> level and with many excellent hosts.
>
> I suggest you check out web hosting forums in the US (google), I am
> sure this is addressed regularly.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Z.
>
> On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Stan Goodman
> <stan.goodman at hashkedim.com <mailto:stan.goodman at hashkedim.com>> wrote:
>
>     At 16:30:03 on Thursday Thursday 06 May 2010, Serge
>     <linux-il at vects.com <mailto:linux-il at vects.com>>
>     wrote:
>     > Hello there,
>     > Could you advise any good hosting provider in USA? Somebody wants to
>     > move from godaddy. Any input very  appreciated.
>     >
>     > Thanks, Serge.
>
>     My domain has been hosted by Host Excellence
>     <http://www.hostexcellence.com/> for years. I can recommend it highly,
>     but of course someone may have needs that it can't answer, I wouldn't
>     know; for example, I didn't enquire into the possibility of hosting a
>     co.il <http://co.il> domain, but as far as I know, they don't
>     care. It's inexpensive.
>     It's worth looking into it.
>
>     --
>     Stan Goodman
>     Qiryat Tiv'on
>     Israel
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Linux-il mailing list
>     Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il <mailto:Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il>
>     http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Check out my web site - www.words2u.net <http://www.words2u.net>
>
>
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-- 

Gadi Cohen aka Kinslayer <dragon at wastelands.net> www.wastelands.net
Freelance admin/coding/design HABONIM DROR linux/fantasy enthusiast
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