My New Hoster: Keyweb
I decided to ditch dreamhost to switch for my own little vserver. It's basically like having your own server (full root access, ability to install stuff and have long running processes) with the small limitation of actually sharing the ressources of the actual server with other people. It's basically like having an instance of VMWare running (which might be more familiar to most people).
The reasons why I quit using Dreamhost for my primary domain (the one you're currently reading this on) is the fact that I basically want to have control over all of the stuff my webpages are running on (webserver, database server, …).
Dreamhost has an awesome deal when it comes to diskspace and bandwidth (basicall unlimited), but when it comes to running a little bit more advanced web applications than the usual blog, you reach the limits of the standard Dreamhost Webhosting account. They also seem to overbook their servers quite a bit (too much users for the available hardware). While I don't have any partiucular complaints when it came to the hardware usage, they f*cked up some small stuff over the last few months.
When their backup servers ran out of storage I really was pissed. Having administered some servers over the time myself, I know that it shouldn't be all that difficult to detect when your remaining space is about to run low and act accordingly. Another thing is that the servers are in the US and I'd prefer them to be a little bit close to home (Germany).
This might also reflect the distribution among my visitors. In April the origins of the visiting IPs so far split up as follows:
- Europe: 1466 53.68%
- Americas: 972 35.59%
- Asia: 173 6.33%
- Oceania: 94 3.44%
- Africa: 24 0.88%
My new Provider is Keyweb [ref link].
At the moment, I use their "VRS-Start 09"; Server which has those nice features:
- 30 GB of HDD
- 512 MB of RAM (786 MB Flexi-RAM)
- 1500 GB Traffic included
- 2 IP Adresses
- Reboot + Reinstall (of the chosen Distirbution) via Web Interface
- Plesk / Keyweb Panel (I didn't use any of those for too long… I like webmin)
- OS: Debian, SuSE, Fedora,CentOS
- Price: 7,90 Euros (monthly basis. 5% rebate if you pay 6 months in advance, 10% for 12 months, 20% for 24 months)
This will allow me to host unlimited domains and play with my own custom configurations (other webservers / …).
An additional bonus for me personally is the fact that I can use the 30 GB of hdd space to back up my most important documents via SCP (WinSCP can do scripting, did you know that?) to my server.
If I ever need more ressources, I could switch to the "VRS – Profi 09"; package (50GB HDD, 768-1GB RAM, 3 TB traffic for 9,90 Euros/month (also up to 20% rebate available) ).
As far as support goes, I have to say that I'm very happy with keyweb so far. They answered all of my tickets (I decided to switch to Debian after initially chosing redhat to see Plesk) within a few minutes and seemed to be very competent.
Keyweb's respective web-interface could use some work :)
Their customer (billing etc) web-interface is kinda crappy… the "Parallels Power Panel"; which is used to reinstall/backup the vserver is pretty decent and webmin works find as far as the actual server administration is concerened… I'm more of a commandline guy though.
In other hosting-related news:
As far as Domain registration goes, I switched to https://www.inwx.de. Their interface is REALLY slick.