Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying you're wrong but I disagree from my own POV. It's a common play in the hosting business to grow big quickly then sell out to a more enterprisey company (as happened with EV1Servers, Softlayer, Heroku) and if DO is taking such large amounts of funding, something will have to happen (IPO, acquisition, etc) and some companies don't make the transition well (I'm not saying DO wouldn't, but you never know).

Linode, on the other hand, can remain a company focused on just being a long term business forever. They might move a little more conservatively, but they have owners with skin in the game and customers to keep happy. I use both DO and Linode, but Linode for my most critical stuff simply because I "feel" they're more likely to remain basically the same in 5 years' time and I value that consistency as a business.

I think DO is superb, I have great admiration for them and I recommend them a lot, but I also feel they're the riskier horse to back even if the potential upside is so much greater.

>> It's a common play in the hosting business to grow big quickly then sell out to a more enterprisey company (as happened with EV1Servers, Softlayer, Heroku)

And that's exactly what Slicehost did, years ago.

I wonder if Rackspace ever courted Linode. Slicehost always seemed to be the inferior one in price and performance.

Customer opinion too. I have old data on SliceHost (http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/25/slicehost/) versus Linode (http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/24/linode). Linode seemed to have the better rep and then SliceHost got dismantled. Tables seemed turned a bit now though with Digital Ocean (http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/101/digitalocean) having a marginal lead over Linode. But DO's opinion has been slightly downward over the years and getting closer to Linode.

Before it was sold, Slicehost tools and documentation were better, and their customer support was incredible. You would get answers in minutes, even if you only rented a $20 VPS.

For all the money Linode has on hand, and the size of their technical team, it's absolutely insulting they haven't made any tangible improvement to their management front-end in at least five years, if not more.

The way it's behaving it's as if it was acquired and kept on life-support.

Perhaps users don't have any complaints about their management interface? Do you?

Perhaps users mostly want performance and value which have been greatly improved by their substantial infrastructure upgrades?

Not doing regular improvements is how you end up being years behind your competitors, without even noticing it, and having to do a huge rewrite just to achieve parity.

Yes.

Their IP Failover is really badly documented and hard to work with.

Their Nodebalancers are noticeably slow, the interface is alright, but you are better off setting up your own loadbalancer.

I feel that static networking could be made easier, and more automatic when I am adding a new node.

Their stackscripts should be able to receive parameters for when it is running, and the error-reporting should be better. I had issues where my scripts wouldn't run and I had no idea why.

Other than that, I am a happy customer.

I agree that networking is a pain point in terms of front-end interface. It's not horrid, but it could be improved.

I'd love to see them offer a storage solution as other commenters have mentioned.

Regarding static networking: https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/network-helper

Oh that was hidden away, I have never seen that interface before, thanks!

When was the last time you added a node? New nodes default to 'automatic' networking now which configures /etc/network/interfaces automatically

I scale up and down weekly. I didn't know about that, I will look into it, do I just need to add static networking to the node?

Perhaps those complaints just get ignored.

I know Digital Ocean's control panel has improved several times since their launch, and their ability to launch instances with a complete stack is extremely useful. Linode has done nothing here. They point to their badly documented StackScripts system and shrug.

There's a hundred things Linode could do to make user's lives easier and they've done maybe two or three of them.

For what is worth, I've been a Linode customer for a few years and never really felt their management front-end was in urgent need of an update. It's solid and does the job for us. My only complains to be honest are 1) the lack of storage dedicated nodes, as OP points out, and 2) the price, it gets very expensive very fast as you scale and spin more nodes.

We are currently considering moving to dedicated machines but only because of 2), otherwise we would happily be their customer for life.

> never really felt their management front-end was in urgent need of an update

Even when it was hacked multiple times and customer VPSs compromised e.g.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/bitcoins-worth-22800...

Nothing is worse than spending weeks securing every aspect of your VPS only to have incidents like this appear. And worst of all ? To this day Linode never clearly said what happened or what they did to prevent it happening again.

Not sure why this is being downvoted but the whole Linode hack incident was a huge factor for me to switch all my VPS's over to digital ocean.

I went to Vultr. DO's interface is just as bad if not worse than Linode's. :(

Its not that bad, it has been updated frequently though. Seems to be getting better.

I do remember it being quite lacking back in the day.

I haven't used DO since 2013 and I probably won't since I'm extremely happy with Vultr, but it's good to know that it's been improved!

Why Vlutr and not something like Scaleway (https://www.scaleway.com/)?

I've recently switched from DO to Scaleway and would never go back.

Actually, I did try Scaleway when I saw them on HN like 9 months ago! I recompiled a Go program I was working on [1] for ARM and benched it against Linode.

It was literally 10x slower than Linode even after playing around with Go's concurrency level to find the fastest runtime, and even with the dataset in memory. :( ARM just wasn't the right arch for what I was doing.

I ended up going with Vultr because it has the $5 pricepoint for hosting tiny websites and tons of datacenter locations. Their CPU performance and network speed were great in my tests.

[1] https://github.com/robinsonstrategy/go_backtesting_simulator...

I chose vultr over DO because DO used so many external web services to run their site. Every new page at their site required me to turn on 5 more domains in NoScript. Vultr only required me to enable their site. The performance at vultr was also very good for what I needed: test servers.

It "does the job" but it's not as pleasant to use as it could be. A lot of the navigation is pointless and confusing, information is often buried several levels deep, and there's missing information on some of the detail screens you need to go back to the main listing to find: Instance type is only shown on the main list, not the individual instance tab, for example.

If GitHub had never improved their site since they launched it would be awful. Every time they move things forward I'm happier to be a paying customer. With Linode I reluctantly use them, but for new projects I'm using other services that work better.

Same here, moving to a dedicated server from a Linode this week. For slightly under 2x the monthly cost I'm paying at Linode, I can get a dedicated server with 8x the memory, infinity more transfer on the same size pipe (unmetered 100Mbps connection), 20x more disk space, and 2x the CPU, and all dedicated so no worries about phantom performance problems related to other tenants. Lish &c are a big plus for virtualized nodes, but I think I'll live without it.

Linode is good and simple if you have a not too large amount of nodes or complex need for extra bits, and I appreciate them for that.

I didn't really need anything shinier. Is it super-cloudy? Not so much, but also nice that you don't have to think about it.

Why do people think "well designed" translates to superficial and pointless? Yes, sometimes this is the case, but when you have pride in your work you'll want to present it in the best possible light.

Would you rather eat in a restaurant where all the chairs are creaky, where the tables are wobbly, and where the wait staff is doing their best to get by with broken equipment, or would you instead visit down the street to a place where everything may not be new but it's well maintained? If the food quality was the same, why would you insist on going to the place with crappy, broken stuff?

Linode just doesn't seem to care about their site at all. If they did they'd listen to user feedback and improve things once in a while. You know, like at least once every six years.

I'm not sure if I am meant to be "people", but I certaintly don't think that design is superificial, but rather I think Linode is designed fine, and just works, and doesn't really need changes.

If we talk about DO in comparison, then DO's interface is just ugly and almost unusable. Every time I use it, I want to leave their site as soon as possible.

If you think Digital Ocean is ugly and almost unusable I have to wonder what you think is better.

Their one page instance creator where you pick size, location, and distribution is extremely convenient. This is three separate steps with Linode that happens over the course of six screens, plus two more if you want to enable private networking.

Eight steps vs. one.

They also don't offer the ability to install a system with an SSH key pre-installed avoiding the need for password authentication when bootstrapping your system. Even on a technical level Linode is way behind here.

I wouldn't call DO's interface ugly but I hugely prefer Linode's. Much better visual feedback and it feels like a solid management console rather than a pretty toy.

Why does Linode look "serious" and Digital Ocean look "toy"? It's a phenomenon I see happening primarily in the tech industry where ugly trumps functional and clean. People like the complexity aesthetic, the rugged, rough edges.

I suppose a lot of engineers prefer function over form rather than the other way around. If anything I'm suspicious when a tech/engineer focussed product prioritises aesthetics over function. Might be irrational but it's my first reaction.

Try to open this link https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets and find current balance of your account. I can't understand why it's under "Settings". When I'm in the dashboard, I want to see as many controls as possible, not as minimal interface as possible.

I never felt the need of more polished interface. It just works.

I disagree, Linode is much superior than DO. I can trust to DO only fault-tolerant services when to Linode I can trust any kind of service to run.

Why?

A reasonable question

For me :-

* Excellent reliability (no unscheduled downtime in 6 years from 3 to at one point more than a dozen nodes)

* Excellent hardware - when I've benchmarked real production systems on Linode on a $/perf ratio beats DO hands down

* Excellent support - tickets are generally answered in under 30 minutes and staff are knowledgeable

* It just works(TM)

* Straightforward interface and pricing

* Rock solid network, like bulletproof

* I trust them (after 6 years of the above they have earned it)

For me:

a) Average reliability - had numerous incidents at their London and Fremont DCs. And the complete inability to tell me what was happening in a timely manner was pretty unacceptable.

b) Average support - they will answer the simple questions very quickly. But anything reasonably complex they will actually not bother responding at all.

It's been sweet sailing for me for years, maybe you should try one of their other datacenters instead of complaining about Fremont.

Edit: Their support is top of the line.

"maybe you should try one of their other datacenters instead of complaining about Fremont"

Wow, just wow.

Could not disagree more. I would NEVER run anything serious on Linode.

They have a long history of withholding information from customers in the face of security incidents and outages. The last time they were hacked I found out from Reddit that it happened and even when they bothered to tell me they failed to say (a) what actually happened or (b) what steps they took to prevent it occurring again. And many, many outages had information communicated on the IRC hours before website was updated.

It is the culture and professionalism that differentiates one VPS provider from another. Linode gets a massive thumbs down for me.

Their blog answer most of your questions.

https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/

You can't prevent 0 days, and the informations hacked were encrypted.

Remember that was the 2nd or I believe 3rd time the same management UI was hacked. And that post was done days after the incident occurred e.g.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=8646073

The issue here is not the 0 days occurred but how you deal with them and what systems you have in place to prevent them. Linode has consistently been sloppy at notifying customers and their auditing systems are/were clearly inadequate since their positions changed over the few days. Sure their data is encryptable but if you are sloppy about the process you're likely pretty sloppy about the implementation. It's trivial to decrypt data if you haven't encrypted it properly.

Clearly you haven't tried using their Fremont data centre.

It's been terrible for years. And it's not like you have a lot of choices when it comes to Linode data centre.

I'm sure your experience has been good, but there's a huge swathe of ex-Linode customers with pretty negative memories.

I use two of their datacenters, not Freemont, the two I use are fantastic. Linode is exceptional.

Yes, I saw their stats of Fremont DC (in linode forum) and decided to not use it. London DC is most stable by my experience.

Funny... I remember when Linode first became really popular, it was right around the time Slicehost got bought (and subsequently shut down by) Rackspace. A lot of people moved over to Linode because Slicehost was no more (or when the writing was on the wall that it would soon become no more).

So perhaps you're correct that lack of funding is making Linode lazy now, but that doesn't mean that getting bought or accepting a bunch of money would solve the problem.

Side note: the original slicehost founders grew to regret their decision of selling to Rackspace, see: http://37signals.com/founderstories/slicehost

Also, look what happened to Slicehost after acquisition. Rackspace woke up, realized Slicehost customers are cheap, and drove them off by raising prices.

https://angel.co/digitalocean

Jason sits on the board of DigitalOcean. :)

When people ask, "Why does HN/the tech industry pay so much attention to the companies that are raising money?" I'll point them to this.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with bootstrapping and making a good living, but the stuff that goes big and wants to scale quickly usually has to raise a bunch of money to get there.

That's true, but IMHO hosting is not a service that benefits significantly from economies of scale beyond a certain (though reasonably high) point. Would Linode be any better for me as a customer if it were immediately 3x the size? I'm not sure. As a customer, would I prefer a Linode that were 10x the size and having to head for an "exit" of some kind? No way.

I'm not sure; Amazon putting data centers in glaciers or Google trying to float a ship out into the ocean to water cool it certainly seem like they could could provide either performance or prices an order of magnitude greater than what is currently available; the tricky part is building up enough steam that you can be trusted with enough cash to make that happen.

If nothing else, we all benefit from the prices. AWS is so cheap I barely have to think about it.

I mean when I think of economies of scale, I would name datacenters pretty high up on the list!

Thing of the googles and facebooks making their own servers instead of buying from off the shelf guys...

OTOH, taking money puts pressure on a bigger exit/revenue scaling plan. To me, that means more like GoDaddy and less like prgmr, which is not what I want from my service providers.

The pressure to expand is a negative indicator when I'm a user of a service.

fun fact about linode: if it says automatic backups are on in your control panel, they can still be off on linode's end. I went to go recover from a recent snapshot, only to find our latest backup was 11 months ago. That it would be "on" on our end, and be broken for 11 months for a service i'm not supposed to have to think about, that really blew me away. But, to their credit, DO does not offer the same level of backups.

Xen to KVM was nothing but smooth and my node is now flying.

Same experience here, Linode did their homework and the transition was extremely smooth.

>> Linode stalling over the past few years

>> And yet the biggest development in recent years at Linode has been a proprietary stats and monitoring system

>> Linode is now switching their entire platform from Xen to KVM, a curious move which will create risk

>> I have been a huge supporter of Linode over the years

Uh huh, right.