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by reidman 6388 days ago
We've been on dedicated servers for a long time, and we're at a point where cost-efficiency and flexibility are our two biggest factors.

We're expecting pretty linear growth, so scaling isn't a huge deal. Up until now we would regularly switch to a better server, stay there until we outgrew it, and then jump again. It's kept us relatively lean/current and our costs have stayed low as the cost/quality of hosting has changed (and we've gotten better at sniffing out good hosts).

Places like linode and slicehost would have been decent options in the past, but we serve 1-2 TB of data each month, so we like to have lots of bandwidth available. And while many dedicated servers offer that, our server admin is pretty picky about the hardware, so she'd like to be able to manage it on her own.

Out of curiosity, how easy is it to 'hook up' two separate Xen instances, assuming Xen is what slicehost and Linode run on? I'm not a server guy, but I actually share a slicehost plan (separate from this particular venture) with one of our fellow News.YC hackers, so I'm familiar with how excellent the company/service is. If they're really that easy to connect/scale then it might be worth the extra cost...

2 comments

There's a story about a site named FaceStat that was linked on the front page of Yahoo! one day, and had to spin up several Slicehost slices, complete with load balancing and all (or most) of the trimmings. Unfortunately, the admin's site is suspended by bluehost (or someone), and I don't remember the details. Here's a post by Slicehost that is related: http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/6/4/facestat-scales-f...

It is definitely possible to create a VPS-based system to replace your dedicated servers. In fact, that is the direction a lot of people are going, because it's relatively cheap to spin up a new VPS to scale horizontally, as opposed to purchasing a new server. Without knowing what your needs are in more detail, I couldn't say with any confidence whether Slicehost or Linode would work for you, or something else.

Do note that many traditional datacenters are starting to offer some sort of "cloud" solution, or at least some solution involving virtual machines that they have made sure involves the word "cloud", for the buzz factor. So, you could find a reliable colo facility, and work with them to migrate to a VPS-like solution.

Xen is open source: http://www.xen.org/ Why not install it on a test box in house and decide for yourself how well it fits your needs?