Joe Blog's A Day In The Life Of Your Average Joe

New Host

I can't remember whether I made a blog post about my previous VPS switch to Fivebean (now part of Bluemile Inc). The service I received from Fivebean was brilliant, and I can't fault it at all. I opened a few support requests with them during the initial period (as Fivebean), and recently (as Bluemile) - I genuinely cannot fault the replies I've had, which have been stunningly quick, and incredibly helpful.

However...I have (as of yesterday) migrated the site to a new VPS with Linode. I have almost the same VPS (now a Linode 512), however I was suffering from some high memory usage with the Fivebean VPS, which have inexplicably gone away with the Linode host. I don't think this was the way the physical server was setup, it could quite easily have been Ubuntu 9.10, which is what the previous host was running. The new server is now running 10.04.1 LTS.

The main reason for me moving the service to Linode was not because of bad service from Fivebean/Bluemile, or because of the high memory usage issue. It was, in fact, because I almost always experienced lag when I was accessing the server via ssh. And when you run some things in screen via ssh (IRC being one of these), and frequently use the ssh connection to the server, you'll soon come to realise that it becomes frustrating using it with lag all the time.
Again, this was nothing to do with the server (as far as I'm aware), it was more to do with the fact that the datacenter is in Texas, whereas I'm in the UK. The new Linode host is in a datacenter based in London, which is around 100mi away from where I live, thus, much better in terms of lag. Not to mention a convenient iOS app from Linode which allows me to check the stats of the server wherever I am, as well as reboot it, if necessary. Combined with the SSH app I also have, remote administration is remarkably easy for me.

I'd still recommend Fivebean/Bluemile to anybody who is in the market for a VPS, as they offer incredible service, however, Linode is a strong competitor, and it's hard to promote one before the other.