Hosting services with Gentoo support

Message

chmod · Post by **chmod** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 3:39 pm

Has anyone had a good experience with a dedicated hosting company that uses gentoo? I need to buy a dedicated server for a customer of mine, and I would like to use gentoo on it. I have a server with tek.net (link off the gentoo homepage) and they have been less than stellar as far as support goes. I have had 3 seperate day-long downtimes with them since September. These were all caused by "hardware".

I have also looked at seven networks, and they seem a bit pricey. Charging for extra ram every month seems dumb to me. I hope someone out there has found a good gentoo host. Keep in mind, I want a dedicated server, not web-hosting. Thanks!

EDIT: Title was "Gentoo Dedicated Hosting?" --pjp

Insanity5902 · Post by **Insanity5902** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 8:38 pm

http://www.servercove.com/servers.php

http://www.jtan.com/dedicated/

https://www.performancehosting.net/dedicated.php

http://mpexnetworks.de/mietserver.html

http://www.yourimachine.com/

Hope that helps you out a bit, I know nothing about them just got them off google

Abnix · Post by **Abnix** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:53 am

Greetings,
I have for over a couple years now been running publicly available gaming servers at www.chigc.com. Last March due to certain changes within the company, I had to find a new host for my Gentoo server when XO Communications closed their data center here in Chicago. I conducted many searches for places to do colocation at here in Chicago--so I wouldn't have to pay shipping for a full length 2U rackmount case, and then hope to god it boots when it got there. In the end with time running out I was looking at one colo/dedicated hosting provider here in Chicago (which will remain nameless as I am *still* 3 months later waiting for their sales manager to call me back after ahving stumped him with a question in a phone call.) and renting a server at managed.com.

I wound up going with renting two servers at managed.com because my site had a nasty habit of pushing 2TB a month. (I've since gotten that under control, about 700GB/mo now) There's just a few things I really distinctly did not like about hosting at managed.com.
No IRC traffic allowed. If it's detected, cords are pulled with no warning.
SSH connections from one host only. (As many as you want from that one host.)
debian or redhat only. (or FreeBSD, they do have windows servers too, but iirc they charge more for those, understandbly so, requires more work to keep them running.)

Those right there are enoguh to kill anyone, but being in a bind to find a new host for my site and players I went ahead with it.
Managed boasts a few of the top bandwidth providers, also 100Mbit connections for their machines. Well yea, they are connected to 100Mbit switches etc, but as I've witnessed firsthand, if any one machine on the switch I'm on bursts up to 100Mbits and is able to stay near that, the rest of us feel a bit, shall we say cramped?

I just last night rented a new machine from a little place I'd never heard of before, www.servercove.com
One of the first reasons this place caught my eye was it clearly stated on the lead web page that they supported Gentoo Linux! I put the exclamation point there because every other hosting place I've talked to, well the sales persons or tech's that I talked to sounded like they wanted to hurt me for asking if they support having Gentoo Linux on their rented systems.
When I was looking at sites for hosting I noticed a lot of them have these little java applets that you start to 'talk to a live salesman!' servercove doesn't have this. They've got soemthing that many of us prefer and have known for a long time to be reliable. An AOL Instant Messenger name. (servercove) So I popped that into my 'gaim' and sent a message. I got a reply *immediately* where with those java things, gotta sit there for it to load, and then the person is likely afk or has the thing buried under a dozen ebay windows.
I talked with their Technical Director, Rick B. asked a few questions, small things that I'd learned from previous hostings.
They allow SSH from anywhere...FTP as well, infact they're pretty unlimiting to what you do with your rented server. (As long of course it is within the limits of 'legalness')
What they do, (and why this was beyond the ability of so many other hosting providers out there is beyond me) is throw in a Gentoo LiveCD, boot the machine up, get it on the network, set a root passwd start sshd and tell you where to find it and the password. Sure you have to do the install yourself.

I don't know about you, but on a production server, I feel a LOT better knowing that only what I put there is installed.

While talking with Rick in chat, he asked to call me to better/faster discuss things. I gave him my number, asked my girlfriend to hand me the phone, which ringing a moment later freaked her out. "How'd you do that??" (o: At the time I didn't have the money for it, but yesterday the money finally came in and I ordered their base package.

I was told in aim chat that the machine would be ready 'by tomorrow night' I was kind of disappointed by this at first. About 30 minutes later my email inbox suggested that 'tomorrow night' was a 'rough estimate' at best grossly wrong. (o:

I had a surpize waiting for me though. I had ordered a very base system, but they threw in a few free upgrades. Significant upgrades too. They changed my Athlon XP 2000 to a Athlon XP 2400 and the hard drive was changed from 40 gigs to 120 gigs. All of these without my asking for them, or even having been told that it'd happen. So it wasn't even used as a sales 'ploy' on me.

After having done a full installation, I checked on gaim to see if anyone was there at servercove, much to my surprize there was an immediate response. It was at that time 3AM local servercove time. (Other hosting places I've had, I found that it was hard to find anyone to answer their phones even during normal working hours. Calling in the middle of the nightwould have been fruitless.) The machine was rebooted and the boot cd removed.
I was able to login and started to get some post-install work done when suddenly the link went dead. I messaged the guy on gaim about it, he said he's go check on it personally 'brb'. A few minutes later the machine came back online, upon the tech's return to gaim, I was told he had found the machine powered down, assumed it was the power supply, swapped that out and the machine has been solid on since then. It was down maybe 10 minutes at most.

In short, servercove has impressed the hell out of me so far. It's been nothing but a distinct pleasure doing buisness with them and I'd encourage everyone that's looking for hosting options to seriously consider taking a look at them.

twstd3bc · Post by **twstd3bc** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 3:10 am

Are you, like, one of those astroturfers?

BoBB · Post by **BoBB** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 10:33 pm

Does anyone have a review of http://mpexnetworks.de/mietserver.html or know if they support american customers. I noticed they didnt have an english portion of thier web page. Seems like a screamin deal though p4 2.4ghz with 512 MB of ram and 160GB of storage for about 98 dollars a month!

Aike · Post by **Aike** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 1:31 pm

http://www.budgetdedicated.com - Not really dedicated, but based on shared servers using uml.

Won't say more cause I work for this company. And could be considered as spamming

linuxkrn · Post by **linuxkrn** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:02 pm

Hey all,

I'm miffed at my current webhosting site and wanted to see if anyone could recommend a good one that runs Gentoo?

Needs:

at least 1GB Disk space
at least 64MB RAM
Gentoo!

Bandwidth isn't a huge issue, my site doesn't use much. Mostly it's a linux and personal photographs siite.

Will want to run it for both webhosting mail if that helps any. http://www.redwoodvirtual.com/ was posted on /. today and it looked good except no gentoo.

Anyone know of one in the same ballpark but that has gentoo?

Thanks

fourhead · Post by **fourhead** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 8:09 pm

Hi, I can't help you, but I have a (somewhat noobish) question: If I would sign up for such a server at redwoodvirtual.com it would have it's own static IP, but whats with a domain? Would I have to register one or more domains (like www.myname.de) somewhere and point it to the server's IP adress? Or how is that done?

Tom

DaMightyWhightyMan · Post by **DaMightyWhightyMan** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:34 am

I'm about to run a gentoo hosting server once I finish some admin scripts, you can email me if you want KyleWeigel@Yahoo.com

Post by **pjp** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:54 pm

Moved from Other Things Gentoo.

wdimmit · Post by **wdimmit** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 2:03 am

I'm currently with linodes.com - virtual hosting company that gives you the option of running Gentoo among other distros. No complaints about service and they were (a few months ago) the least expensive option when I picked them up.

pyro-x · Post by **pyro-x** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:12 pm

I'm looking for a dedicated gentoo server provider!. Now i am at rackshack with a redhat + ensim, and i just can't live with it!! i need gentoo!!!!

.

Did anyone found a dedicated server with a good price/features ratio that allow gentoo as an OS option?.

Thanx in advance!
Pyro-X

Zeos · Post by **Zeos** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 9:42 pm

Does anyone know of any providers who provide virtual private servers based on gentoo?

I'm trying to find a decent, reliable service for a reasonable cost. If anyone has any personal experiance with a company I'm all ears. We're trying to order this by this weeks end preferably, most of them I'm comming across off some variant of RH, Fedora or debian ....I've got most of my experiance with gentoo and would prefer this environment

Thanks in advance for any insight!

positronstar · Post by **positronstar** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 12:29 am

Unfortunately, I don't have too much experience with virtual servers, but it might be worth your while to look at linode.com, as they offer a wide palete of distributions, including Gentoo, of course.

Good luck, and happy hunting.

p.s. The server itself isn't Gentoo. They just offer it as one option utilizing UML.

johnsimcall · Post by **johnsimcall** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:54 am

Go to the Gentoo homepage and look at the advertisements (right-hand side-bar). Tek Alchemy and SevenL.net are two companies who provide Gentoo VPS.

pinr · Post by **pinr** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 4:03 pm

I'm looking for a new web hosting service and I happened upon this.
https://www.rapidvps.com/?page=gentoo_vps
It looks pretty good for my purposes as I develop my sites on my Gentoo machine at home it would be nice to have the Gentoo on the server too. My question is does anyone have any experience with this hosting company and\or this service? Does anyone know of a similar service for around the same price? Thanks

Bash[DevNull] · Post by **Bash[DevNull]** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 12:17 pm

Hi all,
Im searching for gentoo dedicated hosting (not VPS) with english support.
I need simple server with RAID-0 (2x40/2x80 hdd) on board.... My budget is ~150$/mo.
Is it possbile?

nixnut · Post by **nixnut** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 3:50 pm

Merged above post here.

hanj · Post by **hanj** » Sat Jan 22, 2011 5:09 pm

I wanted to follow up on this. About 6 years ago (when prices were good) I signed up to Rackspace for dedicated server. At that time they installed any OS on the system for you. This was my first production Gentoo box, and their service has been unbelievable. Since then, their prices have gotten pretty crazy for dedicated servers so I had to look elsewhere for additional server hosting.

I then purchased a second account at Tek. My experience there has been mixed. Downtime hurts when it happens, and the communication there could be much better. I tried NetSonic.. horrible.. nuff said. I have a friend that went to SevenL, and they had some pretty spotty downtime with horrible support. Now, why I'm posting this, is that Rackspace offers cloud servers, and they're offering Gentoo as a available distro!

I would normally be a little hesitant on cloud stuff, but Rackspace has an amazing network and support is unbelievably good. I've had hardly any downtime in my 6 years with them. I've had hardware failures, which they've addressed quickly, and they ALWAYS answer the phone and are quick with their support responses. My server (the 6yr old one) is having continual drive issues now.. so I thought it was time to 'put her down' and jump to the cloud. It literally took 2 minutes to get the server up, and I was configuring the system. It's super peppy for sure... Quad-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2374 HE

The pricing is funny.. it's by the hour, which I thought was weird, but now I'm okay with it. My 2GB R with 80G disk (with bandwidth) is costing me under $95/mo. Not bad at all. You can scale down or ramp up any time. So basically switching to the cloud, my performance is improved.. and my bill just dropped.

If you guys are looking at Gentoo host.. Rackspace Cloud Servers might be a good direction to check out.

HTH
hanji

pross · Post by **pross** » Sun Jan 23, 2011 1:13 am

Just like to add my VPS provider yisp.nl just upgraded to a cloud type network, with gentoo installable images.

I upgraded a couple of days ago, an so far the service and support as always are brilliant!

So if your looking for a cheap European host yisp.nl has excellent support and uptime.

babudro · Post by **babudro** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 10:31 pm

I have used Tek Alchemy (http://tek.net), Core Networks (http://corenetworks.net), and SevenL (http://www.sevenl.net/). I also worked for a company that used RackSpace.

I have an entry-level VPS (virtual) from SevenL VPS that I use for my e-mail and have rarely been happy with anything except my "grandfathered" $17/month price-tag; the performance is dreadful and the only time I asked them to look into it they said they'd charge me to help, so I've never asked again. Tek and Core are the exact opposite: always ready and happy to help.

They all have good up-time. Tek was the only one I remember complaining to about down-time, although only twice in three years and I stopped using them in 2008 so they may have improved since then.

If I wanted a dedicated server in Canada I would use SevenL, otherwise I'd recommend Core.

Core used to have $30/month dedicated server (I've had one for about two years now), but their price went up recently (probably start of 2011). Even so, they still seem to be the best overall value. You get free use of an IP KVM (not dedicated, but they're very fast about hooking it up) and you can reboot your server if ever needed (like when you make a mistake installing a new kernel and end up with a kernel panic). They respond to e-mail service requests often times within a minute or two. You can ask them to mount any ISO they can download from the Internet, so you can choose any flavour of Gentoo or another distribution you want -- not many are that flexible.

RackSpace is ridiculously expensive and I found their service to be unpredictable and talking with their people felt like I was tutoring them rather than getting help. If they got an alert that something wasn't working (perhaps because SQL server was pegged) they might decide to reboot the box in the middle of a business day without advance notification. Tell them very plainly on phone and e-mail never to do that again and they might go ahead and do it again anyway. I kept thinking it was a fluke, just that one person, but only once in nine months did I get a person whose knowledge and professionalism impressed me. I need to contact Core maybe once or twice a year; with RackSpace it was once or twice a month.

There are my two Canadian cents worth (which is, what?, almost 2.1 cents American right now, so that's a pretty good deal, eh?).

CurtE · Post by **CurtE** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 10:58 pm

How comfortable are you at running the server from your home?

I've been with the cable company for years now and, except for my own lack of knowledge, I've not had any problems with them. I have 5 static IP's and can run any software I wish.

Raptor85 · Post by **Raptor85** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:17 pm

It's already mentioned a few times...but can't get enough props for linode, I was wary of switching to using virtual servers at first but it's proved to be a good move. In my experience with them their customer support is top notch.

I do miss running my own hardware though, but co-locating or running out of the home is far...far more expensive (and in the case of running out of the home, far slower)

disi · Post by **disi** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 9:07 am

johnsimcall wrote:Go to the Gentoo homepage and look at the advertisements (right-hand side-bar). Tek Alchemy and SevenL.net are two companies who provide Gentoo VPS.

SevenL also provides Gentoo dedicated machines...

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 1:58 pm

disi wrote:
johnsimcall wrote:Go to the Gentoo homepage and look at the advertisements (right-hand side-bar). Tek Alchemy and SevenL.net are two companies who provide Gentoo VPS.
SevenL also provides Gentoo dedicated machines...

Wow. They list Gentoo Linux first on their OS list. That is awesome.

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