Eccentric Flower:201008/WANTED
From Eccentric Flower
«August 2010 «Eccentric Flower
WANTED
One web hosting provider. Must meet the following requirements:
- Some flavor Unix. I shouldn't even have to specify this, but apparently I do.
- Reasonably bulletproof uptime (by which I mean I assume there will be occasional acts of god, but under normal circumstances I will want at least three days' notice of scheduled downtime, and downtime not more than two days in any thirty).
- A great deal of web space. Traffic limits upwardly negotiable for extra fees if need be, but lots of web space from the get-go.
- Access via both secure FTP and secure SSH.
- Full back end control. That is, I install what I want where I want, configure it the way I want, and I have sudo so I can do all the things I need to do. You, as the ISP, should take the attitude that it's my space and you've sectioned it off so that the most harm I can possibly do is trash my own space, no one else's, and so if I do, no skin off your nose. You assume I know the risks and leave me the hell alone.
- It's nice to have a control panel for making some things easier - notably, configuring email settings which are a pain to do directly in Unix - but is not an absolute requirement.
You'd think this would be an easy list but it isn't. Apparently there is no money in ISPs who simply say, "Here's your web space, here's how you log in, knock yourself out, you can try calling us if there's any trouble but we may have to charge you, no guarantees" - and then just go the hell away and cash the checks. You'd think they'd be lining up to do this.
My requirements are fairly minimal, and I am prepared to (in fact often prefer to) install them myself: MySQL, Perl and/or PHP, Apache, OpenSSL, MediaWiki, maybe a few other goodies, all of which I have been wrangling professionally for some years. It's true that I may want to open negotiations with you about opening access holes to contact a remote database, but if you're a good ISP, that should be no challenge for you.
We have fairly big needs in outsourcing some of our websites here at the workplace (which I can't go into here for obvious reasons). We are prepared to throw money at not one, but several independent hosting accounts - if we can ever find an ISP that fits this bill.
I'm beginning to believe this ISP is impossible to find. If you know otherwise, especially if you have personal experience to the contrary, do speak up.
N.B. 1: No OLM properties need apply, and Westhost is current negotiant disappointing me, so don't suggest them either.
N.B. 2: Don't assume I have tried or heard of anybody, no matter how well known they are. All suggestions welcome however obvious - as long as they're not OLM.
A couple of the companies I work with swear by MediaTemple (www.mediatemple.com). For really high-end stuff, you could also go with Servint (www.servint.com), though they'll be more expensive.
-- 18:24, 9 August 2010 (BST)
We use MediaTemple, and they pretty much do exactly what you're asking for. They do have simple tools that will do all the back-end stuff for you, but they'll leave you alone if you want that, too.
-- 18:48, 9 August 2010 (BST)
The funny thing is, I've never had any sort of trouble with my Westhost PERSONAL account (the one which is running this web site) including unfettered back end access. Is it possible that I bought and paid for a full VM on this account? I do not know. (I no longer remember what I bought, I just pay their bill every two years.) I agree that it's a lot harder to "rope off" sudo on a hosted account than a VM. But then where does that leave the poor hosted customers who are literally unable to run their software in anything but the out-of-the-box config the ISP gives them? Do most customers not care?
P.S. These suggestions are great and I'll be investigating them - thanks much! Anybody else who wants to pitch in, feel free.
-- 19:19, 9 August 2010 (BST)
Chip used to run his own webhosting services -- which was no-frills as you describe -- but tired of it and moved all his clients to Dreamhost. Which he was fairly happy with and so were they, but we are talking about musicians and other people with teenyntsy websites, so I don't know if they are suitable to your needs.
-- 20:33, 9 August 2010 (BST)
Iain:
You'd think this would be an easy list but it isn't. Apparently there is no money in ISPs who simply say, "Here's your web space, here's how you log in, knock yourself out, you can try calling us if there's any trouble but we may have to charge you, no guarantees" - and then just go the hell away and cash the checks. You'd think they'd be lining up to do this. [...] But then where does that leave the poor hosted customers who are literally unable to run their software in anything but the out-of-the-box config the ISP gives them? Do most customers not care?
Not only do the hosted customers not care, but 99.99999995% of all hosted customers would be deeply distressed if they were made such an offer. Most customers don't want or need that much unfettered access; if they did, there'd be no market for something like Squarespace.
-- 22:03, 9 August 2010 (BST)
You sound like the type of customer I wish we had. I'm sending my partner (who actually owns the business) your link to see what he charges (I'd point to our website, but he seems to have not gotten around to posting the price list). If he does come back with an offer, it will most likely be a virtual server running Linux (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, Perl, PHP, we're pretty flexible really). I have such a setup for my own site ( http://www.conman.org ) and I have had no issues with it. Then again, I also admin the physical box so ...
-- 01:29, 10 August 2010 (BST)
Just heard back from my partner. $100/month was the ballpark figure for a virtual server (most likely from the Charlotte data center we have our servers) but that price varies depending upon the amount of disk space and bandwidth. You can contact him at charles@harmonylogic.com with the particulars.
And yes, you have full control over the server.
-- 04:12, 10 August 2010 (BST)
DanLyke:
Seems like if you want sudo, then you're going to need some sort of virtual machine/VPS. If you have sudo, there's no way for a hosting provider to partition off your space so you can't take down the other sites on the machine aside from giving you a virtual machine, or the machine itself.
VPSs aren't generally cheap, but http://www.asmallorange.com/ has a "developer" plan for $25/month (albeit with, snicker, 5 gig of space and a piddling amount of memory). ASO may also allow you to do what you want with one of their regular more basic accounts if you can just do Apache mods you'd want to do as root with cPanel and .htaccess files.
But at some point VPSs are just commodities, and it might be worth seeing how Rackspace or Amazon S3 stack up against what the smaller providers will give you.
-- 18:11, 9 August 2010 (BST)