Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Super Cheap Virtual Private Servers - the Wild West of Hosting

blog.maclawran.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 65 posts

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

#31

Post by zwp »

LoneWolf wrote: post #4

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

I've used their cheapest monthly VPS for about 18 months. Provisioning was excellent, uptime also. On the one occasion I needed support they were responsive and my problem was solved promptly. Web-based console access a nice feature.

They experienced a break-in a few months back. Communication to customers was clear, timely and reassuring. (All companies experience problems at some point, it's how they react to those problems that is important. Hetzner's response was very good).

Some small amount of their site/documentation is in German. That's not a big deal (google translate or whatever) and generally it is only the more obscure corners.

Disk size might be limiting on the cheaper offerings (20GB / 7.90 EUR).

I have not experienced the "heavy firewalling" mentioned elsewhere in this thread but I haven't tried putting any serious traffic through it.

Overall very positive.

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

#32

Post by waitwhat »

darklajid wrote: post #24
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.

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 conta…

Deleting an email really isn't that onerous a task, but you are of course free to use whatever criteria you wish to judge a host.

And as you point out with the "forgotten password dance", access to your email account gives an attacker access to your hosting account anyway (although not stealthily).

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

#34

Post by darklajid »

waitwhat wrote: post #32
darklajid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conta…

Deleting an email really isn't that onerous a task, but you are of course free to use whatever criteria you wish to judge a host. And as you point out with the "forgotten password dance", access to your email account gives an attacker access to your hosting account anyway (although not stealthily).

Again, I didn't claim it is.

This was the very first contact. Sending me passwords (same for 'temporary ones' after a reset. I consider that a cumbersome process whereas I consider the initial mail just plain "wrong") delivers more than just the text over this channel.

I read between the lines "Here's your password again from 2 minutes ago. File it away" which again is nothing I consider a good idea. The impression is that they write the digital form of a post-it note of the password for my monitor.

Is it a big issue in itself? Nope, probably not. But it certainly ruined the first impression for me and I'll walk away now. I shared that part because others might (or might not) agree and to potentially save like-minded people a registration.

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

#35

Post by sandGorgon »

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.

Actually - I dont think they save it at all. They kickstart a new VM with the root password and forget about it permanently.

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

#36

Post by jscheel »

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.

Interesting, how would your perception change if the email included a notice saying something to the effect of, "here is you password... rest assured, we have not stored it on our system. Please memorize it and delete this email for maximum security"? Of course, you really need to protect your email as much as possible. If someone gains access to your email, they can pretty much ruin your day anyways. All they would have to do is click the "forgot password" link, wait for the email to come in to your inbox, and go from there.

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

#38

Post by LoneWolf »

prib wrote: post #30
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 (with…

I checked kimsufi, the prices look pretty good for the specifications, can you say for how long you have that one?

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

#39

Post by dpritchett »

EwanToo wrote: post #17
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.

Rackspace UK's cloud offering is pretty much a VPS with a nice API - it works well and is cheap. Brightbox.com also do good options for UK based VMs

Same here. I have an $8/mo prgmr.com VPS and a $10/mo. Rackspace cloud instance. Both running Ubuntu LTS with similar options, but the Rackspace box has more disk and is generally more responsive.

Given the "I'm gonna break something" feeling I get when using the Xen console on prgmr coupled with my desire to kill and rebuild VMs regularly I'll probably just stick with Rackspace in the future.

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

#40

Post by ique »

I've been using DirectSpace [1] for quite some time now and I see no other mention of it.

I signed up when the 512mb instance was only $4/mo, but it seems they've upped it to $8/mo now. Anyway I haven't experienced any significant downtime or bad performance, but then I'm not doing anything important on it. I also have no clue about their customer service level since I've never used it.

[1] http://directspace.net/webhosting/vps/inventory.php

Post reply on HN