[evanscottgray]

what was the use case when they wanted you to have a load balancer for a single server..?

[crucialfelix]

I've gotten the same recommendation from them. I complained because they pulled the network connection on the drive connected to the database and completely torched the drive. They were like: well maybe you should consider running multiple database machines with replication so you can survive the next time we screw things up.

[aianus]

This is true for all VPS hosting. They're cheap because they're commodity hardware that sometimes fails.

[funkyy]

Full VPS backup should be standard feature of all premium providers...

[joshmn]

You'd think, but then they lose that easy upsell.

[funkyy]

And get tons of support requests and risk their brand name.

[gaius]

This sounds to me more like a procedural than a hardware failure.

[alanpost]

I was told it was to avoid changing my DNS when I spun up a new server. With the load balancer being $50/month; that was the pitch that put me off Rackspace.

[leesalminen]

The LB itself (in IAD) is $10.95/month + traffic.

[colinramsay]

This was exactly it.

[tinix]

I don't know about the poster above, but commonly load balancers can be used to do SSL termination, which can significantly improve application performance.