Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting • Hacker News Board

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#21

Post by waitwhat » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:44 PM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #15

Are there any good alternatives to Linode in Europe? I've been using them for years any not had any issues, I'm just wondering if there is anything cheaper, and also thinking about redundancy. Most of the VPS providers that I've seen are US based, which means 150ms+ pings, which isn't great for SSH.

I've used Gandi for a few years on one project. https://www.gandi.net/hosting/vps

The price was right at the time, and they have a few basic cloud-style features (so not just a barebones VPS provider.)

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#22

Post by Gussy » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:44 PM UTC

josephb wrote: post #2

From the article: > Linode http://linode.com - expensive, no IPV6, really fast network @ 11.9 Mbps Actually Linode have IPv6 support in 5 of their 6 locations :-)

From one of my Linode 512's in Fremont I get 89.0MB/s running the "test" in this blog post.

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#23

Post by waitwhat » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:46 PM UTC

jrnkntl wrote: post #19

gbrindisi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an happy Quickweb ( http://quickweb.co.nz ) customer. They are cheaper than Linode and they have some nice micro vps offers too. They are also providing hosting services to LEB ( http://www.lowendbox.com )

.co.nz (New Zealand) doesn't sound like a reasonable alternative for Europe.

Their servers are in the US, UK, and Germany. http://quickweb.co.nz/supa-vps-plans.html

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#24

Post by darklajid » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:47 PM UTC

waitwhat wrote: post #14

darklajid wrote: post #9

So I thought I give empire-hosting a try to play with a cheap box. >>> Thank you for signing up with us. Your new account has been setup and you can now login to our client area using the details below. Email Address: my.mail@address Password: YepYouGuessWhatWasRightHereInCleartext To login, visit http://secure.empire-hosting.net Ah well.. Let's look at the other recommendations of that list, I guess.

Just because the welcome email contains the password in clear doesn't mean that they permanently store the password in their database unhashed.

First of all: I didn't claim that (although, yes, maybe that kind of got implied). [1]

But I even think this practice is useless. They just sent my password in cleartext. It sits now in my inbox and I have to delete it or I store my unprotected password. And - for what exactly? Does that serve any purpose? I just entered it a second ago.

So I question the usefulness of that approach and consider this very first contact unprofessional. YMMV and all.

1: Just tried the 'Forgot my password' dance and it they don't retrieve it at least: Received mail with link to site which sends a mail with auto-generated password to log in. A bit weird, but well..

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#25

Post by axx » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:48 PM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #15

Are there any good alternatives to Linode in Europe? I've been using them for years any not had any issues, I'm just wondering if there is anything cheaper, and also thinking about redundancy. Most of the VPS providers that I've seen are US based, which means 150ms+ pings, which isn't great for SSH.

futureVPS (KVM), based in germany: https://futurevps.de/

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#26

Post by jsn » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

waitwhat wrote: post #14

darklajid wrote: post #9

So I thought I give empire-hosting a try to play with a cheap box. >>> Thank you for signing up with us. Your new account has been setup and you can now login to our client area using the details below. Email Address: my.mail@address Password: YepYouGuessWhatWasRightHereInCleartext To login, visit http://secure.empire-hosting.net Ah well.. Let's look at the other recommendations of that list, I guess.

Just because the welcome email contains the password in clear doesn't mean that they permanently store the password in their database unhashed.

No, but it does mean that anyone who's able to view your traffic or your mail box content could've seen the password (anyone controlling any router or a mail relay between you and them, or your mail service provider, or even someone with tcpdump on your LAN segment).

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#27

Post by axx » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:50 PM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #8

It's a shame to just write off KVM like that, but to each their own, I suppose.

as mentioned above, futureVPS supports KVM (but they're in germany).

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#28

Post by mspeed » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 12:52 PM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #15

Are there any good alternatives to Linode in Europe? I've been using them for years any not had any issues, I'm just wondering if there is anything cheaper, and also thinking about redundancy. Most of the VPS providers that I've seen are US based, which means 150ms+ pings, which isn't great for SSH.

Take a look @ VR - http://www.vr.org/lg/ you can ping+trace test etc from 11 locations, including 3 in europe.

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#29

Post by waitwhat » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 1:02 PM UTC

jsn wrote: post #26

waitwhat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the welcome email contains the password in clear doesn't mean that they permanently store the password in their database unhashed.

No, but it does mean that anyone who's able to view your traffic or your mail box content could've seen the password (anyone controlling any router or a mail relay between you and them, or your mail service provider, or even someone with tcpdump on your LAN segment).

If your threat model includes hostile mail relays, you probably shouldn't be using bargain basement VPS providers.

Password-reset emails are also easy for an attacker to generate, and no harder for them to intercept than the welcome email.

Re: Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

#30

Post by prib » Mon, Jan 30, 2012, 1:07 PM UTC

LoneWolf wrote: post #4

Anyone here who knows/has experience with Hetzner? http://www.hetzner.de/en

Can only speak for their dedicated servers. We have one there for almost two years now. Excellent price for the hardware you get. Had a few support requests (nothing hardware-related), all answered in a few minutes. Very good control panel too. Know a few people using their dedicated boxes for quite some time too. All happy. :)

Recently we leased a Kimsufi/OVH dedicated box with ProxMox installed. Similar price (without setup fee) and it's been running without an hiccup. Had to make a phone call to support about a billing issue (my mistake) and it was immediately resolved.

From my experience, it doesn't get much better quality/price wise than these two, in Europe.