After being with Slicehost for 3 months I decided to move over to Linode.

Slicehost provided me with great service but performance was kind of an issue when I was with them. 64-bit and 256 MB of RAM just doesn’t cut it, since in 64-bit, services and programs take more memory, so really I have less. The server I had on Slicehost was 256 slice, 256 MB of RAM, 10 GB of storage, 100 GB of bandwidth for $20/mo. I also used their DNS servers, as creating my own is actually a pain.

Linode offers about the same customizability of the server with it’s control panel as Slicehost had. Linode offers about six different packages. I decided to do some research on Linode (I always look up some sort of review before going with a host), I decided I would give them a go. I ordered the Linode 360, with 360 MB of RAM, 12 GB of storage, 200 GB of bandwidth for $19.95/mo. I decided to chip in another buck for a spare IP, so that totals it to $20.95/mo. So basically now I am getting more bang for my buck.

After ordering, I am brought to their control panel. I configure which Linux Distro I want, I decide to go with CentOS, on Slicehost I used Ubuntu (eh). Linode, unlike Slicehost, gives you the ability to define partitions of each configuration. You also get the choice between 32-bit and 64-bit, in my case I picked 32-bit. I decided to fill up all the disk space with a 512 MB swap. Next I boot the server up, and install Virtualmin. This took a while to install, but after it was done, I accessed Virtualmin and see it performs better than it did on the Slicehost server (on Slicehost it took forever to load the System Information page and ate up all the RAM).

I’ve got everything up and running, I’ve switched over all my domains nameservers, I have more RAM free, and even some spare RAM that I didn’t have before. Since this is my first day with Linode, I’ll follow up on how they go for me in the meantime.