What sort of things would you want or expect from a new VPS provider, like Digital Ocean or Linode?
Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#2The biggest thing I always look for in a VPS host is customisation. Let me choose the memory, disk space and prepaid transfer allowance. Being able to choose the number of cores would be a nice bonus.
I realise this makes billing more complicated but it must be possible, my current host offers this (and the option to rent a dedicated physical machine(s) to get full resources to myself)
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#3From the perspective of a user who isn't really experienced in running servers:
* I think they're called snapshots. Let me setup my VPS the way I want it, upload my stuff, etc, then let me backup/save my entire VPS on your servers. Two weeks later, when I'll try to setup a mail server for the first time in my life, I will probably break a lot of stuff. With a few clicks, I should be able to restore everything in a matter of minutes.
* Slashdot 'protection'. If I bought some starter package, and at some point I start getting 100%-1000% my usual traffic, then instead of killing my VPS for abuse or letting it suffocate on its own, make minimum effort, like boosting my resources, etc. Reach out, help me decide if I want to upgrade, or give me enough time to move out.
* Wiki/guides/tutorials. Maybe try creating a community where users can request guides, and (heavy) contributors could get some free server time :)
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#4Customized images. For instance, I want a simple debian based email and web server. All I need to do is enter the domain name and it handles the rest, as well as maybe giving me instructions on adding SSL certs and so on. A freeswitch PBX - again, all I have to enter is a few things and it is setup for me. There are lots of ways to do this, but it would be a big attraction to some folks if it just worked on setup.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#5Would love some more comments!
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#6Although it's a new technology, I'd eventually like to see VPS hosting built around Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX), if at all possible. As it stands now, we have to completely trust that the VPS host isn't going to do something nefarious with our data; this should go some way towards mitigating that.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#7Honestly, I'm pretty happy with the current offerings on the market.
If you could offer a lot more power for the same or less cost, I'd be interested. Other that that, I'm moderately unlikely to switch.
Oh - specifically I'd be interested in a VPS with tons of data storage. Those are rather hard to find in the current market.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#8One-click Rails setup. Ideally, I would sign up for the service, select a VPS size, "create" a new app (using your built-in web panel) and deploy from my terminal. When creating a new app I could select the Ruby and Rails size, DB etc. Basically, a very convenient Rails VPS host.
How does this differ from Heroku? Pricing, hopefully.
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#9The biggest thing I always look for in a VPS host is customisation. Let me choose the memory, disk space and prepaid transfer allowance. Being able to choose the number of cores would be a nice bonus. I realise this makes billing more complicated but it must be possible, my current host offers this (and the option to rent a dedicated physical machine(s) to get full resources to myself)
Actually something else that would be nice (I haven't looked into the reality of it with an OSS hypervisor like xen) is something I saw a few years ago with ESX: the images are stored on a SAN instead of local disks, and can be migrated (even while running) between physical hosts when required (scheduled downtime, fault, etc) without a reboot.
The "live migration" part is less important but a traditional (ie not volatile like with AWS/"cloud") VPS that can survive a host failure without a complex restore from a week old backup - (auto) nominate the new host and bring up the vm exactly as it was pre-failure
Re: Ask HN: What would you want in a new VPS company?
#10Lot more memory at lower cost - e.g something like the 64GB linode for $100 a month. Would not mind sacrificing storage space and bandwidth (or even CPU power) for it.