Linode vs. Slicehost?

@fsk:

Are there any plans for Linode to be acquired?

That thought depresses the hell out of me.

This comparison is very recent:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/s … -vs-linode">http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode

James

@zunzun:

This comparison is very recent:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/s … -vs-linode">http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode

I read that already (via Google). There was an interesting bit. The article's author chose Slicehost, but most of the commenters had picked Linode.

I have found that server companies are like banks, when they get bought out by a large national firm, the service and customer support go to the devil and the prices go up.

I hope Linode is an independent for a very long time.

Jeff

@fsk:

I read that already (via Google). There was an interesting bit. The article's author chose Slicehost, but most of the commenters had picked Linode.

If you read the article, he made his choice before he knew about Linode. I believe he has an account at Linode since he is promoting a referral code on the page. . .

The complete ignorance about userland vs kernels leads me to believe this fellow doesn't really know what he's talking about in this department. I would be very cautious about putting any weight on the analysis presented.

Linode is the best, for sure. The control panel is phenomenal, we can migrate and mix & match datacenters, the forums are some of the best on the Web, and the owner is easily accessible.

I came from SH and I must say the community is much more active here. However, more importantly, I noticed since rackspace acquired slicehost, things haven't been the same. Granted I understand the owners have less time to chime in on the forums but it was the personal touch that makes/made Slicehost one of the best service provider. Nowadays, replies we made in the forums would go unanswered by the very people who made themselves available almost everyday a couple of months prior to being bought out.

With that said, I left due to the resources. For the same price, I would get more resources from Linode than I would from Slicehost. I have nothing but good things to say about them but for now, I'm a Linode customer. I admit, I signed up once before but now I'm back. I noticed my "slice," oops, I meant Linode account is much quicker.

I'm a current Slicehost customer seriously considering moving to Linode primarily because Linode offers BOTH i386 and x8664. Slicehost is x8664 only.

@10drill:

I'm a current Slicehost customer seriously considering moving to Linode primarily because Linode offers BOTH i386 and x8664. Slicehost is x8664 only.

Thanks exactly the reason I switched over last week. I had 4 Slices (64bit of course) at one time at SH and am able to do the same here on 2 Linodes (on 32bit) for half the price.

I now keep 1 slice open so my DNS stays active at SH (too lazy to do DNS switches again), but all my other stuff is moved here and I LOVE it so far.

I sign up with both to test and stayed here.

• More Space

• More RAM

• More Bandwidth

• Choice of datacenter (I'm European and Newark is around the corner)

• Choice of 8664 and x8664 (Am big weight in my decision)

The one thing SH have that I like is the "Articles" section that, for newbie like me, is a huge help!

I've used linode a few years ago (2003) but for testing propose and I just love the idea.

They are like "Porto Wine"! The older, the better :)

…

@dcelasun:

By the way, any chance that Linode getting acquired by one of the bigger guys anytime soon? A formal answer would be nice to have.
Here let me be first one to slap you!!!!

![](http://www.rejecttheherd.net/sites/reje … chslap.gif">http://www.rejecttheherd.net/sites/rejecttheherd.net/files/smileys/bitchslap.gif" />

@dcelasun:

A formal answer would be nice to have.

I couldn't see that happening… Someone could answer today "not in the foreseeable future", but tomorrow get an offer from…. lets say HE.net… for a really lucrative sum. That wasn't there when they said foreseeable, but its there now, and they look like they are going back on their word (I'm sure you know how the internet works by now).

@10drill:

I'm a current Slicehost customer seriously considering moving to Linode primarily because Linode offers BOTH i386 and x8664. Slicehost is x8664 only.

What's the difference between i386 and x86_64? (I'm a relative newbie.)

Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?

@fsk:

What's the difference between i386 and x86_64? (I'm a relative newbie.)

Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?

To over simplify it, each variable in a 64 bit OS consumes 8 bytes (or 8 bits times 8 bytes is 64 bits) of memory where a 32 bit OS stores each variable in 4 bytes (or 8 bits times 4 bytes is 32 bits), so your memory usage for a program potentially doubles.

Since addresses (aka pointers) are also stored in these same values, then a 32 bit OS can't access more than one contiguous block of 4 gigs of memory (2^32). That can be a drag to the efficiency of some graphics editing programs who can't load an entire > 4 gig image into memory at first without slicing it up.

Another concern with Linux and Unix is that time is represented as number of seconds past 1/1/1970 and 32 bits to store this time will run out sometime in 2032.

There are various hacks and tricks around all of this (except for maybe the unix time issue, although I could be wrong and there's still loads of time to upgrade to 64 bit before 2032 anyway)

i386 is 32-bit, x86_64 is 64-bit. 64-bit software uses more memory but runs faster (in most cases - ymmv).

@pclissold:

i386 is 32-bit, x86_64 is 64-bit. 64-bit software uses more memory but runs faster (in most cases - ymmv).

You did a far much better job of simplifying it than I did! :lol:

I feel that I need to point out that, in the case of a Linode (a small one anyway), the "uses more memory" thing is far more important to you than the "runs faster" thing. In low memory environments (let's say under a gig), 64-bit uses an unreasonable percentage more.

Slicehost AFAIK has only 2 advantages over Linode right now: better Raid and backups (for a fee).

Otherwise Linode wins hands down in basicaly any other comparison you can think of: better host HW, better value for money, 32-bit systems, bw sharing etc.

That said, if Slicehost starts offering European slices (and I do think they will … afteral they have access to Rackspace's infrastructure now), I will most likely switch to Slicehost ;(.

@darky:

Slicehost AFAIK has only 2 advantages over Linode right now: better Raid and backups (for a fee).

Does the supposedly better RAID actually offer improved performance though? Linode seems to handily beat Slicehost on this Unixbench run, even on the file copy/read sections. I'm genuinely curious here - is there a reason that this sort of test wouldn't show the advantage of Slicehost's disk setup?

What is this better raid? Last I heard linode was on RAID-1 (or possibly RAID-10) - RAID-5 would be slower than that, if anything…

@darky:

That said, if Slicehost starts offering European slices (and I do think they will … afteral they have access to Rackspace's infrastructure now), I will most likely switch to Slicehost ;(.

Have you tried the newark datacenter? Latency to europe is not bad at all… about 76 ms to London.

I though Slicehost used Raid 10 while Linode Raid 1, but that's not the point, those were the only 2 advantages I could think of. If you look at anything else Linode comes ahead as a far better choice than Slicehost.

btmorex: I am in newark and don't get me wrong it's not that bad, but 3-way handshake is a bitch :(.

@tasaro:

@fsk:

I read that already (via Google). There was an interesting bit. The article's author chose Slicehost, but most of the commenters had picked Linode.

If you read the article, he made his choice before he knew about Linode. I believe he has an account at Linode since he is promoting a referral code on the page. . .

Yes, the author does have an account with Linode, and has been quite happy with it so far:-) I initially chose SH on the recommendation of some friends, and while I wasn't unhappy with their offering (quite the contrary, they're good people), Linode's is simply better for the money.

@fsk:

@10drill:

I'm a current Slicehost customer seriously considering moving to Linode primarily because Linode offers BOTH i386 and x8664. Slicehost is x8664 only.

What's the difference between i386 and x86_64? (I'm a relative newbie.)

Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?

programs under 64bit os usually consume more memory

I wrote up a Amazon EC2 vs Linode Vs Slicehost vs Mosso Comparison.

@davidw. 32-bit is more memory efficient.

http://www.xenscale.com/docs/vps-comparison-matrix

Mosso's primary platform is essentially shared hosting and isn't comparable. I think the Cloud Servers offering comes from the Slicehost acquisition.

Even though EC2's entry level costs more, it does has some wonderful features like EBS and is definitely useful in your comparison–but don't compare it to a Linode 360!

In a very limited way, I tested a beefy PHP/MySQL app on a EC2 small instance (with and without EBS) vs. a Linode 1080. The Linode was more responsive. Even though the EC2 instance has more RAM, it was slower, especially when memcached was used–definitely not the result I expected.

// Another concern with Linux and Unix is that time is represented as number of seconds past 1/1/1970 and 32 bits to store this time will run out sometime in 2032.

Not another Y2K !!!!!

Jeff :)

@fos:

// Another concern with Linux and Unix is that time is represented as number of seconds past 1/1/1970 and 32 bits to store this time will run out sometime in 2032.

Not another Y2K !!!!!

Jeff :)

I'm not sure how serious you are, but that's correct. It's called Y2038 or Y2K38. (It's 2038, not 2032.)

Neither is better than the other. I continue to use both and find both to be of good value. Linode gives you more bang for your buck for sure. With slicehost you know you have Rackspace behind the company so there is peace of mind, plus they have backups and nifty iphone apps.

@fos:

// Another concern with Linux and Unix is that time is represented as number of seconds past 1/1/1970 and 32 bits to store this time will run out sometime in 2032.

Not another Y2K !!!!!

Jeff :)

Well, Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038 GMT is when time_t (32bit) rolls over.

I really hope I'm not working then; Y2K was sufficiently boring; don't want to have to deal with both of them.

Since other companies are starting to support ipv6 I think it would be great for linode to start supporting this in Dallas and Fremont…

@RossH:

Since other companies are starting to support ipv6 I think it would be great for linode to start supporting this in Dallas and Fremont…

As a workaround, you can use a tunnel. There are tunnel servers near all of the data centers.

> Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS? I wonder the same. The only reason I can think of is that 32 bit uses a bit less memory.

@Mark_M:

> Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?
I wonder the same. The only reason I can think of is that 32 bit uses a bit less memory.

That's the only reason, but it's kind of an important one. Memory is the first resource you're likely to run out of pretty much regardless of what you're doing with your linode.

@Mark_M:

> Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?
I wonder the same. The only reason I can think of is that 32 bit uses a bit less memory.

Alternate question: is there any reason to pick a 64-bit OS?

> Alternate question: is there any reason to pick a 64-bit OS?

I'm guessing that when people say "the 64-bit OS is 'faster'" they're talking about the increase (doubling?) of general purpose registers available in 64-bit mode. This would be one reason.

@Pryon:

> Alternate question: is there any reason to pick a 64-bit OS?

I'm guessing that when people say "the 64-bit OS is 'faster'" they're talking about the increase (doubling?) of general purpose registers available in 64-bit mode. This would be one reason.

I've noticed that 64-bit is also "faster" because the distros compile it against the newer processors. So instead of compiling against an ancient i386, they are compiled for x86_64 with better optimizations.

@Mark_M:

> Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?
I wonder the same. The only reason I can think of is that 32 bit uses a bit less memory.

I don't know if it's so little.

My PHP processes (fastcgi) dropped from a max of ~60MB per process to ~35MB each when I went from 64 bit to 32 bit.

I'm not sure why the drop was so dramatic; it's Ubuntu Jaunty's release of php5 (I don't recall the version offhand) + APC (32MB cache).

Most other processes also shrunk, but not by very much.

The question isn't "Is there any reason to not pick the 64 bit OS?", but "Is there any reason to pick the 64 bit OS?"

64-bit gives you higher memory usage, and if you have under 4GB of RAM, few benefits if any. I don't think there's really anything a typical server does that would get a speed boost from 64-bit computing.

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu- … benchmarks">http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu-904-32-bit-vs-64-bit-benchmarks

@Xan:

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu- … benchmarks">http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu-904-32-bit-vs-64-bit-benchmarks
Great link, thanks. To sum it up: it depends on what you do with your Linode. 64-bit can be twice as fast in some operations, but more or less the same in others.

@hybinet:

Great link, thanks. To sum it up: it depends on what you do with your Linode. 64-bit can be twice as fast in some operations, but more or less the same in others.
Note that the referenced page doesn't cover memory usage at all (as earlier highlighted in this thread), which can easily trump CPU gains in a general purpose host, especially in a VPS environment where memory is far more constrained, and overflowing to disk a much higher penalty in terms of performance.

– David

grsecurity only works in pvgrub-64, it will segfault on pvgrub-32.

@nfn:

I sign up with both to test and stayed here.

• More Space

• More RAM

• More Bandwidth

• Choice of datacenter (I'm European and Newark is around the corner)

• Choice of 8664 and x8664 (Am big weight in my decision)

The one thing SH have that I like is the "Articles" section that, for newbie like me, is a huge help!

I've used linode a few years ago (2003) but for testing propose and I just love the idea.

They are like "Porto Wine"! The older, the better :)

I also signed up with both so as to test them and see which I liked more. Both were awesome (the two best on the market, in my opinion), but Linode won my vote in the end because of its memory/dollar and slightly better performance numbers.

Note: Performance numbers were mostly based on things I read – I didn't personally conduct any comprehensive tests, though I did notice that my pages loaded faster and the amount of memory used per page was lower with Linode. For example, here is the memory usage information for just my homepage:

On slicehost server:

Memory used at: develinit()=3.99 MB, develshutdown()=43.08 MB.

On linode server:

Memory used at: develinit()=2.42 MB, develshutdown()=26 MB.

Perhaps a couple of my settings were different on the 2 servers, but I'm pretty sure there were no substantial differences. (Also, as far as the actual content being loaded on the homepage, one server's contents were an exact copy of the other server's).

@Chris Einkauf:

On slicehost server:

Memory used at: develinit()=3.99 MB, develshutdown()=43.08 MB.

On linode server:

Memory used at: develinit()=2.42 MB, develshutdown()=26 MB.

Hi Chris :)

Given the same configuration of Drupal, and perhaps very similar setup of the server software and operating system, I assume it's only that you're on a 64-bit system at Slicehost and a 32-bit here at Linode.

@melon:

@Chris Einkauf:

On slicehost server:

Memory used at: develinit()=3.99 MB, develshutdown()=43.08 MB.

On linode server:

Memory used at: develinit()=2.42 MB, develshutdown()=26 MB.

Hi Chris :)

Given the same configuration of Drupal, and perhaps very similar setup of the server software and operating system, I assume it's only that you're on a 64-bit system at Slicehost and a 32-bit here at Linode.

Yeah I'm thinking that was a big part of it.

Slicehost does not yet support using user-supplied kernels. When I learned that linode supports it via pv_grub, I switched immediatly.

FWIW, it is possible to run a 32 bit chroot in slicehost, and with some care, the 64 bit system can be removed, converting the system to 32 bit userland.

@joeyhess:

Slicehost does not yet support using user-supplied kernels. When I learned that linode supports it via pv_grub, I switched immediatly.
This is a very big deal to me, as a current Slicehost customer: I really want working SELinux support, but since the guys over at Slice aren't familiar with it, getting it working with their out-of-the-box kernels has been difficult. (To their credit, they were great about adding kernel command-line parameters that I requested while I was testing, but the process would have been dramatically faster if I'd have been able to drive it on my own schedule; at the end of the day, I wasn't able to get it working because of a few pre-boot needs from initrd.)

You've given me something to think very hard about. :o

@joeyhess:

with some care, the 64 bit system can be removed, converting the system to 32 bit userland.
That's what I've suggested to several people over there; 256MB of RAM actually becomes pretty livable for small/hobby apps once you move to a 32-bit userland. At least on Fedora or CentOS, it's a pretty painless switch if you have relatively decent familiarity with RPM.

I'm in the process of moving all my projects/clients over to Linode from Slicehost.

I signed up with Slicehost back when it was "invite only" and you had to wait for a space to become available.

Back then their motto was "for developers by developers" - now its "we're gunning for the big fish".

They have great support - but in 2+ years and several slices I've needed that "great" support exactly 2 times.

What they don't have it great prices, or even good prices. They have PREMIUM prices for a item that's continually moving towards the commodity market.

Worse, they don't have a clue. EVERY complaint gets answered with a "yes, but we have great support". One of the principals even answered "we will NOT compete on price", but they also don't compete on performance or features or bandwidth.

It's my understanding many (many) Slicer's are moving out, and apparently Slicehost does not care (at least they make ZERO effort to stop the exodus). My guess, if you don't want/need 20 2048 slices today, and won't grow to 40 4096 slices by year end, they don't care if you come or go.

So here I am - I hope Linode is just a tad more interested in my business. It's not big, but it IS important to me, so I need it to be just a tad important to Linode (or they need to at least pretend it is).

So far (a month and a bit) so good.

@vonskippy:

So here I am…

So far (a month and a bit) so good.

Same here. I was on a 256 slice for a year. Closed my Slicehost account 15 days ago and moved to a linode 360 and I'm already loving it! :)