[ILUG] recommendation for virtual private servers

[Greg Farrell]

On Fri, 2005-06-24 at 14:59 +0100, Cian Cullinan wrote:
> As a matter of curiosity, what do people use these VPS accounts for?
> What niche do they fill that isn't covered by hosting and colocation
> companies?

For 30$ a month (less annually) I get a server professionally hosted in
a big data-centre.

I can run any of a dozen distros of Linux on it, have full root access,
can install anything I want excepting the grossly illegal and have
72gigs of bandwidth a month.

I can reboot it myself instantly whenever I want. If I mess things up
and can't login normally anymore I can ssh to the serial port. I can
have multiple partitions with different distributions of Linux on them
and can shutdown, change a simple gui option and boot up a different
version of Linux should I want.

Mostly though I run my mail and webserver on it, and any other publicly
accessible processes I want (like voice-comms software, authentication
servers, whatever). 

> I imagine people use them to get the level of control one has when
> owning the server without having to lash out on new equipment, am I
> close? I'm intrigued.

And that's the best thing. I have almost the same level of control as if
I had my hands on the actual box. I couldn't afford a co-lo'd box, and
for me this is almost as good at a fraction of the price.

    Greg