[dejb]

It might be more marketing and product related in your case. Also when people get to the $400 level they probably want to know that there is someone they can call you can physically access the server 24/7. It isn't clear that this is the case from your material.

I'm a VPS customer by the way. Reliable service from what I've seen but I found it a little too 'bared bones'. Wasn't expecting to have to install and configure Apache, Mysql etc. Maybe I chose the wrong image or something. Great for an existing or aspiring sysadmin but too tough for me. But I'm tempted to hold onto the VPS 'just in case' at those prices.

[lsc]

ah. thanks.

Yeah. My setup is very bare bones, and you do need a SysAdmin.

I am focusing on creating a flexible and inexpensive system where it is possible to do everything you want to do, before I'm going to spend time making a system that makes it easier to do specific things. For instance, I let you run any paravirtualized kernel you like, and you can change kernels without my help. (well, any kernel that works with pvgrub. I've not gotten OpenSolaris working with PVGRUB, though it seems to work on my systems with PyGRUB. )

Yeah, there are many customers who want an easy web-based control panel, and they are better off with linode or slicehost. There are many of us who prefer the command line, though. Scaling a support organization is very difficult, and it's much cheaper, easier, less stressful and more fun to support people who are willing to figure things out for themselves, so why not target those people, and pass on the savings? I'm ramen profitable now at 600 customers; if I double in size again, I'll be edging into the 'more money than I could hope to make from a salary job' range. So I don't need to target everyone. I'm happy in my niche.

I'm trying to get something together so that you can build images and share them, like you can for ec2. (only I'm trying to do it with kickstart-like systems, rather than with images, which I think mitigates most of the trust issues. Usually kickstart-like systems result in much 'cleaner' systems; systems that are easier to upgrade.)

Personally, I think the biggest weakness of prgmr.com right now is provisioning delay. I need to automate that (and really have no excuse for not doing so before now) as part of that, I need to setup a system where users can do automated 'network installs' of many systems.

As for support, yea most of my competitors have better staff hours and better response times than I do. But then, I think I can say that I'm a little bit more experienced than most front-line tech support people. This is the usual small company/large company tradeoff. (and yes, I sleep about 30 minutes from the data center, but hey, you have a serial console, so I expect you to be able to figure most things out yourself.)

[dejb]

> There are many of us who prefer the command line, though.

I prefer it too. But I never realised how much work setting up the LAMP stack could be. I must admit I was trying to set it up with php4 for a legacy system so that probable made it harder than it needed to be. I recon a default LAMP install would be a good option. But I can understand the motivations for wanting to scare off the cpanel crowd who will most likely demand 'managed server' type support and then badmouth you for not providing it.

Apart from automating provisioning you should have an automatic payment option as well. I'm sure most hosts would have a large number of 'sleeper' customers who can't be bothered to get around to cancelling their account even though they don't really need it. So apart from the time saved with chasing payments, you'd have more customers who use little or no resources. Kind of like I might end up being. Now I've got to go and pay your most recent invoice.

[lsc]

supporting legacy systems can be a huge amount of work. If you use whatever all the kids are using, setting up a LAMP system is trivial... seriously, apt-get install php5 should get you something that works in 90% of the cases, and it will be done before you have time to get a cup of coffee.

But yeah. once you want something weird, well, then you've spent the afternoon recompiling source packages and tracking down security patches for obsolete libraries, or dicking around with some half-broken poorly-maintained third party repos. I mean, it's not that hard, if you have experience with autoconf and compiling stuff, but even so it's a few hours of dicking around, and after you are done, you feel like a moron 'cause you just spent three hours installing php. (granted, there may be a good repo with a well-maintained php4 package out there somewhere, but I'm paranoid, and generally am slow to trust 3rd party repos.)

but then, php4 doesn't seem like it should be that weird. In fact, it should be just like apt-get install php4, but I just tried it and it doesn't work.

E: Package php4 has no installation candidate

so yeah. this is part of why I hate languages like python that aggressively break things that used to work when you upgrade. From what I remember of janitoring php, running php4 code on php5 usually worked just fine, though.

[lsc]

heh. Yeah. well, my billing system is in no shape to do any sort of 'pull' based billing. using paypal helps keeps me out of a dreamhost-style billing disaster where I bill everyone for the next year all at once.

I will set something up with paypal recurring payments, though, for those who want it. But I like to think that the people using my service are getting something out of it, you know?