I used to have a setup at home that was good enough. It consisted of an expensive Cox Business cable model line, a set of Dell PC’s which acted as great makeshift Linux servers, a spider web of network cables and a crappy router. What a waste! I have enough junk cluttering up the den, it was time to downsize the den and the pocket book.

I needed a place to host my blog and my development efforts in Ruby on Rails. After trying and looking at alternatives that “supported” Ruby on Rails I decided to give Slicehost.com a shot. I love them and here are my thoughts…

1. It is mine

It’s like growing up with siblings, but having your own room. I love sisters and all, but I wanted to play in own space as a kid. With Slicehost.com, I’m in a separate bed room playing with my toys in my own world.I don’t have the same security issues. The server software I run is up to me. I love the TV show Scrubs, so I wanted to name my server Rowdy.

2. Fast signup and setup time.

I only waited about a week or two to get an email response from my “reservation request”. After about 5 minutes to signup, pay them… my slice was all setup and ready.

That was fast!

3. Control

Just as it was with my home server installation, I am the system administrator. Not only do I get full root control, but also through a web interface you can restart your slice, reinstall it, or upgrade it. If I wanted to decide on MySQL versus Postgresql in a production environment, I can.

4. Great for Ruby on Rails

Because of #3, I was able to install the version of Ruby and Rails I wanted. I could get all the gems and dependant libraries I wanted to use.I have been doing a lot of Ruby on Rails development lately.

When I am under a contract, I have used this slice to demo their application/feature and then move it to a co-location. Others have been under my own business. Regarding those Ruby on Rails applications, I would do a 512MB slice. My mild benchmarks and the super-guesses of traffic would be fine with 512MB. I would probably be concerned on my bandwidth for images, etc.

I think it would be cool if Slicehost.com had an Ubuntu slice with these things configured. But if you do it once and keep your builds, you won’t have to do it often.

5. Great for Ruby on Rails + PHP

As of this writing I am running Wordpress (PHP4) and a Ruby On Rails application. I have had two running at once. They were used for super small prototypes and moved off the site to a co-location. I feel confidient that I could upgrade to a 512MB slice and have my blog and a high (relative to what I have now) traffic rails application run well.

6. Still good for Java

My 256MB slice ran Tomcat and a few web applications great. I did this just to see if it would work. Running that at a large load and it may not be such a good idea. I couldn’t imagine running JBoss and all it’s features on a 256MB slice, but a slimmed down version might be fine. My personal business doesn’t have much of a need for a Java application server right now.

7. Great for my database options

My database queries no longer stand in line to be executed. They don’t have to share resources with other applications’ MySQL operations. I mostly use MySQL and I can have my own installation the way I need it. This gives me power over users, databases, server usage, logs, etc. This is fantastic if you are developing applications in beta or version one stage. Not such a big deal if you are just running a blog; unless you built the blog :).

8. Choice of Linux flavor

I currently run Ubuntu Linux 6.06. If I wanted Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, or CentOS I could run those.

I prefer Ubuntu.

9. Production ready

This isn’t some discounted shared service like other hosting companies. Those alternative have given me all sorts of reliability issues, performance problems, security concerns, and they are bad news for Rails applications. Slicehost.com you don’t see that.

Currently I see around 100-200 visitors a day, plus all the development and use of prototype Rails applications. When it comes time to releasing the next uuber hip web 2.0 application, I may look another direction. That way I can have an SLA and administration services.

10. Cheaper

Okay, not cheaper than most shared hosts. But slicehost.com is still cheaper than my home solution. Also a shared host isn’t really a good option for ruby on rails applications.

Previously I was spending this a month: Cox line ($80) + Server power usage ($10) + (???) My time to support the dang thing = too much.

For $20 a month, I am getting huge value.

And for the curious… what do I run on my 256MB slice?

  • Ubuntu Linux 6.06
  • Apache 2.2 w/ PHP 4.4. All tuned for a small foot print and low traffic.
  • This blog using Wordpress 2.2
  • MySQL 5. Tuned for a small memory foot print.
  • Ruby 1.8.4
  • Ruby On Rails (1.2.3)
  • Subversion 1.4

And look at my uptime (as of July 3, 2007)!Theecotone.com uptime!

Final Thoughts

With the rising popularity in VPS (Virtual Private Servers), I wonder why there aren’t more services like Slicehost.com? I mean this company can barley keep up with the demand of customers like myself.