We have just opened up a new brand offering low cost virtual machines. These virtual machines are different from the traditional VPS in that they provide a feel that is much closer to a real server.

Highlights of VM service:

- Based on Xen - not Virtuozzo or User Mode Linux.
- Root access.
- Remote console access via SSH / boot into single user mode.
- Web control panel to stop/start/reboot, reinstall server, perform snapshots, change kernel, view bandwidth, and view server statistics.
- Choice of Linux distributions: CentOS, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora Core, Mandrake, or Slackware.
- Snapshot / backup of server included.
- Full access to core kernel networking options including iptables, ebtables, QoS (tc), bridging, tunneling, PPP, IPSec, IPv4, and IPv6. Other features can be added with kernel modules.
- Ability to compile your own kernel modules to extend the functionality of your server.
- Public forums

Plans start as low at $7.99/mo and scale up to compare with dedicated servers.

More information can be found at www.unixshell.com.

Hi Matt,

Stupid question I suppose but how do these packages relate to TekTonic's packages.

To be more specific, if I compare 2 packages you offer each at $15 (FastStart VPS on TekTonic and THE64 on unixshell#) which would be best for what purpose?

Thanks,


Chris

And talk about the 'swap' limit. How much does that come into play? I've read up on Xen (was thinking of setting up a ded box myself with it), and wonder how it compares to Virtuozzo, etc.

I'm trying to run a dynamic PHP/mysql site with 1-2K visitors per day (plus the once-a-year slashdot...), with imap email (antispam/antivir), and trying to figure out whether a VPS <$60, managed, can truly do the job.

Any thoughts much appreciated. Cool to see Xen being offered!

-d

(P.S. I like the option for load-balanced clustered VPS! Tres cool!)

Do you have any screenshots of "Teknic", maybe ?

And, what does "Support Ticket = $10 (one-time)" mean? Does that mean for example, I can't login to SSH for some reason, and I log the support-ticket I have to pay $10? Or, I need you to secure Apache on my VDS, and you would do it for $10 ?

To address everyones questions...

1) unixshell# is targeted towards the 'power user' while TekTonic is targeted more towards hosting resellers / web design firms or those that just require good support. This is the first public mention of this, but we will soon drop the $15/mo plan from TekTonic. unixshell# is meant to fill this gap.

2) Xen is 'different' than Virtuozzo. Both can perform very well. The main difference I can find is that Virtuozzo is designed to be oversold while Xen prevents any sort of overselling. We chose Xen for this service mainly due to total control and to support virtually any Linux distribution (and soon FreeBSD/NetBSD) . Xen acts more like a dedicated in regard to RAM, you are allocated physical memory and a dedicated swap partition. You are also able to add on swap files inside your VM, but if you get to this point performance is going to suffer greatly.

3) I put up screenshots of Teknic at http://www.unixshell.com/index.php?page=technology. The support ticket is for anything above and beyond our responsibilities. Access to the server is covered under standard support, but something like "I broke Apache and don't feel like fixing it, please fix it for me" would constitute a charge for support.

Originally posted by TheWiseOne
3) I put up screenshots of Teknic at http://www.unixshell.com/index.php?page=technology.

Thanks, that helps.

Very nice offer!

I'm really eager to give it a try :)
I guess it's possible to upgrade to other plans without problems?

Thanks... everyone here thinks it is really cool also and we're very excited about the product.

As far as upgrades, yes... we can upgrade VM's to higher plans with no more than a few minutes of downtime.

How can RHEL 3 or 4 run in 32MB of RAM ?
What are the OSs and their versions that you support on each of the packages?

It's not so much the distro, but what you run inside of it. CentOS is no different than any other. If you turn off most services and tune it to use little memory it will run in 32MB. We do put in our Q&A that the 32MB plan is not meant to be powerful and is more for tinkering/experimenting with a Linux system. The supported operating systems are are listed on our front page, but here is a version list.

CentOS 3.4
Fedora Core 3
Debian 3.0
Debian Testing
Debian Unstable
Gentoo 2004.3
Mandrake 10.1
Slackware 10.1

We also provide a minimal version of most of these which has only the bare minimum installed. Users can reinstall with any operating system whenever they like.

I am not a Linux or VM pro yet. So are you saying that 32MB RAM is for services and apps and during installation there will not going to be error saying that I nees 256MB to install system ?

Will CentOS 3.4 work under 32MB with PHP 5 + Apache 2 + Perl + MySQL 4.1 or what would be the absolute minimu for this ? (I don't need for it to perform very well just not too slow.)

Yes, I wonder too if The32 plan can support PHP+Apache+MySQL+Python on Debian. My site is a low bandwidth site (< 100MB/month) and it does not have to be really quick. I require that Drupal CMS should run on it though.

I don't want to speak for Matt, but all my research in migrating my dynamic PHP website (chait dot net) over from Shared to either VPS or Ded has led me to believe that 128MB would be pure minimum for PHP+apache+MySQL+email+firewall/etc., and that 256MB is really good to shoot for. From there, you're more working on better performance as you continue to add memory.

But I'm NOT a linux geek, so I'd love to hear Matt (and other) input on this. ;)

-d

1) CentOS will warn at bootup that less than 256MB is not a supported configuration, but it will install and run just fine.

2) The 32MB plan is not really meant for 'hosting'. When laying out the plans it seemed like a good idea for users to experiment with the different Linux distributions and to run small services such as DNS servers, VPN's, etc that require only loading small daemons. Both Apache and MySQL require lots of memory so i'd recommend no less than the 64MB plan. Even then you should copy my-small.cnf to my.cnf and tune Apache to only run with 1 or 2 spare children to keep memory usage low.

Update: In my VMware
CentOS 3.4 will install into 32MB with 470MB swap in my test (i guess swap could be smaller, but it just auto partitioned it like that. I would say that total should be 256MB since it wants 256MB as Recommended)

RHEL 4 will not install in 32MB at all. It starts text install and in the beginning of it just say "You do not have enough RAM ..." and shuts down. But it will install into 64MB.

Well we don't go through the install process each time... it's all automated using our own imaging process. All CentOS does is the boot-up warning. Installs only take a few minutes to do using our system.

Hi,

Can FreeBSD + DNS + Apache1.3.x + PHP4.x run in your 32MB package?

Well, yes it will run... I just can't say how well it will perform. If it's simply for testing and you tune the StartServers/Spare servers for Apache to very low then it should run fine.

We do not yet offer any BSD's, but do have plans to support them within 3 months.

From what I read so far, XEN is very very unstable.

I don't know where you heard that, but it's in production use as many places. It''s already had 1.0 and 2.0 releases so it is definitely production software and not beta of any sort.

Except for one problem Xen was rock solid during our beta test, all problems related to our software built around it.

You sure about this? Please Google around and do a few keyword search before you say it's stable comparing to Virtuozzo or VMWare ESX

I said it was stable for us and has yet to crash, why should I search Google for that? :) I also stated it has released two "production" releases so far, this is also true.

I'm not sure of your motivation here, but you seem to just want to trash the service. Any more and this will be reported to the moderators. If you want to open a separate thread regarding Xen stability go for it. My companies advertisement is NOT the place.

Matt,

I should apologize for not clearly see it was an offer thread by your company. All my intention is to compare and give good advice to others based on what I know.

Again, I sincerely apologize for the above careless mistake.

Ed.