Getting Started with Slicehost
There comes a time in everyones life when they have to setup a linux computer from scratch. OK, so maybe not, but if you’re a web programmer you might well be faced with the problem of putting out a colocated server, just a VPS where you have full control over the box. With full control comes full responsibility though, so I hope you’re willing to learn a little on your feet.
For the new rails site I’m putting together, I decided on Slicehost. Why Slicehost? For cheap, respectable rails hosting with a load of support it just kept coming up. You have all the default features — the ability to upgrade your account at any time, a variety of operating systems. For someone just getting started, you might also want the ability to rebuild your system at anytime, which is possible from the Slicehost web panel. If you decide you want to switch from Ubuntu 7 to 8, or from CentOS to Fedora, it’s just a matter of selecting the option (well, and then rebuilding your slice from scratch). You can also restart of course.
What really sold me was the wealth of information available by other Slicehost members. There’s a wiki with some details but the technical article repository is a fantastic source of knowledge for getting a fresh install up and running for just about anything you’d want.
I’m still in the process of getting this setup, but I’ll post about my experience at Slicehost more as I use them. If you’re looking for a quick start with Rails from scratch, whether you’re experienced in setting a box from scratch or not, Slicehost offers some very useful tools.
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Comments
Nice, sounds like a good place for a CF host, aside from the initial CF expense — but at least that’s portable to whatever host you move to. I went with Ubuntu myself, although not the latest (Gutsy Gibbons). The way I see not everything has been tested on the latest Ubuntu, so going to the previous one might be a safe bet. For getting started I thought the most used OS with the most used release would be a good place to get my feet wet though.
@Geof
Actually I’ll probably keep it on Dreamhost. I haven’t had any issues that were deal breakers in 2 years here, and at a lower cost, with simplier features it just works more for the issue. Dreamhost offers some more useful features for blogging like one click upgrades of wordpress and general shared hosting tools. It’s nice not having to worry about server config, and spending time blogging/creating instead.
For the project I’m moving to Slicehost I’m not even going to move the entire domain there either. Mail and Jabber will through Google Apps; Trac, SVN and the blog will be here on Dreamhost, then MySQL and the main www site will be over at Slicehost. Basically I’ll be using it as just a host for the Rails specific stuff for starters. If I can move anything to EC2/AWS or Googles new thing I’ll probably start looking into that for fun as well. Less stuff that runs on that box, the more ram I’ll have available to run the rails side of things.
yea, I’m actually on the verge of getting myself a slice and loading up CF8… What distro did you load? CentOS, Ubuntu?
getting stoked for my slice! Although I’ve been searching for competitors, the only one I’ve came close to finding is linode: http://www.linode.com/
do you know of any? Just want to weigh my options…