Linode Invests $45M In Slower Hosting

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in internet on (#3J6)
I've been a Linode customer since they launched their User-Mode-Linux offering in 2003. With decreasing component prices and a little help from Moore's Law, they have repeatedly increased the resources available on their VPS instances. Most upgrades take the form of "Double the RAM" or "Double the disk space" and have allowed the company to stay competitive over the years.

However, their latest "upgrade" reduces the CPU core count from 8 to 2 on the most popular plan, drastically reducing the performance of most webserver workloads. Some users have posted degraded benchmark numbers on the Linode blog that announced the upgrade. They have also removed the discounts on yearly plans, thereby increasing the cost of the hosting plans.

Other aspects of the upgrade are more welcome:
  • Doubled RAM
  • Same Cost (Unless paying yearly [Grandfathering available if you forgo upgrades])
  • Same Storage Space (But now using SSD)
  • Same Transfer (Except the lowest plan [Which gets a 50% bump])
  • Increased Outgoing Bandwidth (Unless using a Node Balancer or the lowest plan [Which stay the same speeds])
Disclaimer: Both Pipedot and SoylentNews are hosted at Linode.
Reply 8 comments

Playing the devil's advocate (Score: 2, Interesting)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 09:19 (#14Z)

Well, knowing nothing about what's going on behind the scenes, at first glance is this nothing more than a business optimization? Perhaps they found that typical users needed nothing more than X but were actually getting Y, and if they adjusted they could fit more customers into their existing hardware resources?

That doesn't make it right of course, but would help explain what's going on. Not too late for a competitor to swoop in with a better deal and steal away customers - it's what keeps the business world honest and on their toes.

Re: Playing the devil's advocate (Score: 2, Interesting)

by tempest@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 15:28 (#155)

I'd be surprised if there are any hosts offering 8 cores at $20 a month. That's insanely over provisioned in my opinion. Although I'm not sure what the competition is doing either. This looks far better deal than what I'm paying, although I'm happy where I'm at and Linode doesn't offer FreeBSD hosting anyway.

FreeBSD (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 20:30 (#15A)

If you're looking for BSD hosting - and it doesn't sound like you are, I'm using rockvps for www.dictatorshandbook.net and I'm really happy with it. Or maybe I'm happy with BSD. Either way, I'm happy.

Re: FreeBSD (Score: 1)

by fnj@pipedot.org on 2014-04-28 10:41 (#17G)

RockVPS offers BSD VMs? They don't list it.

Re: FreeBSD (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-06-22 12:31 (#27T)

Interesting (and I wish I'd seen this earlier). I'm absolutely, definitely running FreeBSD on RockVPS, but I just checked their page and it indeed seems they're not advertising it (it used to be right up front). Wonder if it has to do with some recent change of theirs that required me to change IP address and move my image to some new hardware? I'll have to look into alternatives.

Re: Playing the devil's advocate (Score: 1)

by fnj@pipedot.org on 2014-04-28 10:38 (#17F)

I'm not sure there's any difference between getting a time share of 2 cores or a time share of 8 cores (or a time share of 8000 cores for that matter). It all depends on how many VMs are sharing a pool of how many total cores. I assume the number of VMs greatly exceeds the number of cores available in the host. It's not as if you're getting any dedicated cores in any case.

calculated business choice (Score: 2, Interesting)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 14:14 (#152)

I have enjoyed the yearly discount for the past three years... sad to see this go... but there is a certain amount of inertia with regard to researching and perhaps switching to another host service, so Linode may be calculating that most of their clients will just stay put... price was not my only or even main criteria when choosing to go with Linode...

Re: calculated business choice (Score: 2, Informative)

by mrcoolbp@pipedot.org on 2014-04-22 18:15 (#158)

Yes their customer service is outstanding.