[jerryji]

At the moment we have 5 small Linode VPSes (1.5/1/1/768/768) for app/db/solr/redis/async-jobs and paying around $200/month.

I've been looking for alternatives, preferably hybrid dedicated/cloud with good RAM/IO for app/cache/db and cloud based storage. Rackspace seems to offer something like this, but at a higher price. Any other suggestions?

[ohashi]

Linode is one of the cheapest providers of VPSes that are mainstream. I think you will have a hard time finding something comparable. I track web hostign companies for my startup ( http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting ) and the only company that jumps to mind is RamNode. But I haven't collected enough data on them to say anything meaningful. They seem to be offering high ram + ssd drives which would match what you're after.

[olgeni]

CloudSigma may be worth a try. You can tune CPU/RAM and HDD/SSD storage as you see fit, and they give you 7 days for free to test all the weird things you can come up with. It's based on KVM and you can install anything by uploading an ISO.

Full disclosure: crazy CloudSigma customer running FreeBSD with ZFS in the cloud :)

[hboon]

Note that Rackspace cloud (not sure about their managed services) do not include free bandwidth. It can be a killer if you rely on Linode's bundled bandwidth.

I migrated to Rackspace cloud, due to the Slicehost acquisition and the first month bill was hard to swallow.

[staunch]

We don't do cloud storage, but S3 works from anywhere of course. Uptano https://uptano.com