Cons on the planet:
High Price
Limited Hardware
Unflexible Plans
Pros on the planet:
Uptime
Cons on VPS.net:
Found it too late in the game
Technical Skills Highly suggested
Pros on VPS.net:
More Bang for your Buck
Techsupport is great
Bleeding Edge
Free features for subscribers
Worldwide coverage
Promotions! I want my darn robot! :'(
So, one day, I decided I could not and would not keep paying a high premium for a good service on bad hardware. To say the least they offered me a permanent 40% discount and cheap prices for the next 3 months, but once a customer makes a decision to leave it is darn impossible to convince him otherwise, or at least that is my case.
So, looking around for a good provider I was directed to a company (whose name I don't recall, but I bet VPS.net guys would now) that provided great bandwidth (around 10TB transfer) and real hardware for a fraction of the cost (we are talking around 160USD per month) at that time I was paying a lot more than that, but in this site there was a link to "cloud" servers, by a sister company called VPS.net, decided to read about it and... darn was I sucked in by all the things they had to offer, I joined in.
My experience with VPS.net
First off, creating an account is fast and easy, but since I had to pay with credit card and it has to be validated I had to wait 3 full days (that is the bad part of being in a different time zone and booking it on friday morning -friday night for them). It may be faster now, it was 4 months ago. :)
The nodes were set to my account, options where plenty, many OS to select from, and many options being added constantly, I was migrating from windows, so I recreated the setup in order to make a smooth and fast transition, I also added a Storage node I would later remove. I was so impressed by the way I was credited back when deleting nodes, a big plus given that you only pay for what you use. Tech support is quick and responsive (well within 4 hours, but if you want faster support you can pay for it).
The only bad experience I have had so far is that, for some unknown reason the cloud 2 of my servers run routinely gets it SAN out of synchronization and it takes quite a while, ups the I/O access times to a level that makes the vps die. This process can take anywhere from 4 hours up to 4 days. Also, there are some new features not for the faint of heart, I had an issue with snapshots that would not allow me to save it, move it from a cloud to another, etc. Tech support were of great help doing this for me. But as I said, this was a *new* feature and it had some bugs in it. I like living on the bleeding edge.
Migrating from windows to linux within my VPSs was a breeze, removing the windows license (which was a lot cheaper on VPS.net) was also a breeze. I now update my linux servers weekly and the OS uptime is far greater than windows. I recommend you either have a farm of servers with vps running out of different cloud locations or get the cloud hosting directly from vps to guarantee uptime.
I have to say (in VPS.net defense) that the downtime is not entirely their fault. It was more of a hardware failure, predictable, but a failure anyhow.
I recommend VPS.net to anyone looking for a self-managed, self-administered server. Or if you are not afraid of server admin tasks.
Now I think in VPS.
If I need an FTP site to get a file from a client I set up a temporal VPS for the job
If I need a test website I set up a new VPS
If I want to try a migration path I create a new VPS
If I want a GameServer I set up a new VPS
If I want to distribute some software I have the rights for I set up a cloud VPS torrent mesh
If I want to solve something with a PC, I instead use a VPS cuz I haz the internetz!
Last but not least, VPS.net keeps coming up with new deals, promotion, services, options, and do not wait for you to want to leave to give you treats and discounts!
Well, I'm actually writing this because there is a promotion going on right now, and VPS.net said that I could do a review with my experience (good or bad) as long as it is real, so here you are!
I would love to see something like Mac OS X Lion support on VPS but I'm keeping my hopes on the low. :)
If you got this far then go to www.vps.net and get your own account and at least 1 node. Give it a try, it is well worth the money. I have not felt the need to switch providers so far, not even once.
