October 2010 Update:
Linode Versus Slicehost – One Year Later
A few days ago I posted
Mini Review: SliceHost v. Linode Customer Service. At that time, I was going to cancel my account with Linode based on problems during the sign-up period. However, Linode asked me to give them another chance, so I did. Here are my thoughts.
When I sign-up for a modern Ubuntu configuration with a VPS provider, I expect to be able to type
apt-get install <some application> a few times, make a few configuration changes, and be up and running. My time (like your time) is limited and I judge a good user deployment experience based on how easy and fast I can get a new service up and running. I expect to deploy a complete LAMP distribution in matter of minutes with
Aptitude.
My plan this time was to deploy two versions of
OpenX one on
Slicehost and one on Linode, both with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic). After my initial sign-up with Slicehost I googled for a quick
Slicehost set-up guide and found a number of them, including this one,
Ubuntu Hardy - installing Apache and PHP5. All the Slicehost on-line instructions worked flawlessly and after a few minutes I was up and running Apache2, PHP, MySQL and OpenX. My coffee did not even get cold.
After finally getting activated with Linode, documented in my earlier
mini-review, I googled for a similar set-up guide for Linode. I also found a number of them, including this one,
Setting Up a LAMP Server on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty).
Just like on Slicehost, the Linode documentation (which was nearly identical), instructed:
Quote:
To install the current version of the Apache web server (in the 2.x series) on an Ubuntu system use the following command:
apt-get install apache2
When I did this on
Slicehost,
apt-get found everything immediately. When I followed Linode's instructions directly, nothing happened. The out-of-the-box version of Aptitude on Linode could not find any application, nothing. I thought to myself,
"hey, I am following the Linode instructions directly from the Linode site, what more can I do?"! At this point, my coffee was already cold and I fired off an email to a contact at Linode.
The next day Linode kindly got back to me and explained that, for reasons I am actually not interested in (sorry), customers must update Aptitude first on their distribution using
apt-get update. My response is
"well, OK, but why does your own documentation not say that" and
"Slicehost worked out-of-the-box." Their reply,
"we will pass that along to our documentation team."
Anyway.... after
apt-get update I was able to
apt-get mysql-server but my time had run out for configuring Linode that day.
The next opportunity where I had time to continue with Linode was a day or so later. However, I decided to switch from Apache2 to Lighttpd for this instance of OpenX. Back on Linode, I typed
apt-get install lighttpd and nothing, no files found.
So, just to compare, I logged back in to my Slicehost node and typed the same exact thing,
apt-get install lighttpd, and, boom, there is was, ready to download and install. Slicehost is so nice to us on Ubuntu - Thank you for making my life easy.
I contacted Linode and asked them why this worked out-of-the-box with
Slicehost, but not Linode, and got some more "reasons" which I simply don't care about. My expectations are, like I said, (1) open new VPS account, (2) deploy Ubuntu 9.10, (3) have OpenX up and running in less than one hour, (4) go have a glass of wine and pasta. Slicehost met my expectations. Linode did not.
Linode has a very nice green color user interface. Linode's user interface is considerably more "slick" that the Slicehost interface and they have many configurable options, graphs, and stats. Reviews on the net also rave about Linode's performance. I am sure that Linode is a fine VPS provider and other customers must surely have better luck than me. Maybe they are not in a hurry and have considerably more patience.
As for me, my expectation for a VPS provider is to be able to deploy a working version of a web-based MySQL application, like OpenX, before my coffee gets cold.
Slicehost met my expectations. Linode could not meet my expectations for customer service and ease of deployment on their current release of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).
Slicehost met my expectations on the same version number and easily passed my "Did my coffee get cold?" metric.