Getting a Slice of the Internet... 1
I have been a Textdrive customer for a few months now. Textdrive's shared hosting plans are pretty good, they always provided me with good support and have a strong user community that helps and supports each others.
The only issue is that as a shared hosting service, there are some limitations to what I could do. Their main focus was on supporting LAMP and Ruby on Rails applications, so Java applications were pretty much out of the question. Same with Camping applications (unless the Camping gem was already installed on your server.) Sure, Textdrive would have installed the gem if I asked. My issue is that I had to ask ;) . Another issue is that you cannot have root access on the server (for very good reasons...).
My solution was to get a Virtual Private Server from SliceHost. In many way, I still share a server with an unknown number of users. We all share the same hardware and internet connection. Each slice has it's own kernel, memory space and slices of CPU time. These are guaranteed and managed so that no one can take over the actual server. I even get to have root access without impacting anyone else.
It took less than 5 minutes to have a slice built and configured after putting in my order. SliceHost has a web console where I can go and restart the server or even rebuild it if I mess up too badly :). The console even provides me with usage information so I can see how close I am to reaching my usage limits.
The only downside is that SliceHost doesn't provide DNS management services. TextDrive's service was fine, but it didn't allow me to add non-TextDrive systems to my domain. I finally found ZoneEdit. With ZoneEdit, you can manage up to 5 different DNS zones for free. You still need to register your domain with a separate registrar (I used Dynamic Network Services as my registrar).
The end result is that you can now visit my latest mapping mashup, which uses Camping for its web framework.
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Comments
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matt 2 days later:Welcome aboard Frederic. Let us know if you need anything.
