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I'm disappointed that blogs and podcasts keep promoting Linode. I currently maintain about 30 Linodes and I have been doing so for the past 2 years. Some thing

I'm disappointed that blogs and podcasts keep promoting Linode. I currently maintain about 30 Linodes and I have been doing so for the past 2 years. Some things I noticed: * The internal network is not private. But people don't realise it. You share a /16 with other Linodes. So many open databases, file shares and other services in there. * Block storage performance is really poor, around 100 iops. Same as a SATA disk from 10 years ago. * No proper snapshot / image functionality. * Linode Kubeternetes Engine was based on Debian Oldstable when it launched. * Excessive CPU steal, even on dedicated cores. 25% CPU steal is considered normal. Over 50% happens a lot. * Problems with their hosts. I can only guess what the reason is but 4 to 8 hours of unannounced downtime of a VM happend to me 6 times in the past 2 years. Yes, support is friendly. But my international phone bill is huge because the fastest way to get them to do something is to call.

brobinson 6y ago
With all these negatives, there must be a really compelling reason to stay. What is it?
- PietKachelhout 6y ago
  The owner of the company thinks they are great because you can call them when there is a problem. I'm having a hard time convincing him that these are issues I've never had at other providers. Certainly not so many. We are moving everything away. Most of our servers are with another provider already. And we haven't had any similar issues there. I've never called them! And I forgot to mention the connectivity issues at Linode. When the whole London datacenter was unreachable for 2 hours we lost some customers.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    This is something more companies need to realize: Yes, you should be easily and quickly reachable by phone so that when (not if) things go wrong, I can get good service and resolve it quickly. But if I'm calling you, you have most likely already failed. If I'm calling for information, your documentation has failed to make that information accessible (it either wasn't documented, or not easy enough to find). If I'm calling to resolve an issue (technical or billing), it would have been a lot better if it didn't happen in the first place.
  - gerhardlazu 6y ago
    I use Digital Ocean, Scaleway, Linode, Google, Cloudflare & Amazon on a daily basis, and I have experienced networking issues on all providers this year. It's all public, some even wrote lengthy post-mortems, most have been posted on HN. When failures happen, it's always a series of unfortunate incidents. When we've hit issues with Linode, we reached out and worked on what we can improve in our changelog.com setup, and discussed about the improvements that we can expect on the Linode end. Our common interest is a more resilient system, which requires a healthy collaboration, and Linode has been a great technology partner for us. Expect to see these write-ups on changelog.com as soon as these improvements have shipped, and we have hard data to support the claims ; ) I'm sorry to hear that things have not been as smooth for you on Linode. I hope that you will find an infra provider that you will be able to rely on and work with as we do. Not all collaborations will work out, and that's OK. It's also OK to be annoyed, fed up with the way things are and look for something different, something more suitable for you. My only ask is that you share your migration story with the changelog.com community. That is something that I would want to hear about.
- shaicoleman 6y ago
  In a previous job a couple of years ago, I experienced regular issues with Linode (hypervisor errors, storage errors, performance issues, networking issues, etc.). Despite all that, management decided to stay with Linode for the following reasons: * Change is hard, and "better the devil you know" mentality. * The instance pricing looks cheap compared to AWS. e.g. c5.xlarge ($124) vs 8GB-Balanced ($40) that Linode charges. In reality it isn't so cheap because it's poor oversold technology. * AWS/GCP have exorbitant bandwidth pricing. Linode bandwidth is very generous, as its pooled across all servers in the account. * Having someone to pick up the phone 24/7 when there's a problem is a big plus in theory. However, it's much better not to need to call in the first place because things just work. * Migrating providers can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavour. * Technical debt, interdependencies, manually configured snowflake servers and infrastructure, no documentation, etc. makes changes risky. * Not enough DevOps on the team, and too many fires to put out, and shiny features to ship means cloud provider migration is low on the priority list.
threwawaysoff 6y ago
I ditched Linode years ago because it just wasn't that great. AWS if I need ephemeral boxes (I used to be an enterprise on-prem AWS consultant), but I run most everything on a home 96 EPYC core, 512 GB, SSD, HDD (ZFS) box running KVM, Docker, and open vswitch. It just isn't worth it to rent slow, expensive servers when I need lots of them and to be fast. I don't have any problems remoting into them with ddns and wireguard.
- gerhardlazu 6y ago
  My first Supermicro just turned 9 and it's still running strong, with a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 & k3s over the holidays. The second Supermicro turned 5, and has been running FreeBSD all this time like a champ. They are both loft guardians. A bunch of bare metal hosts run on Scaleway / Online, and different VMs & managed services run in Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS & GCP. I sometimes spin the odd bare metal instance on Equinix Metal (former Packet). A diverse fleet means that there's always something new to learn and try out. A single large host would make me anxious, as no internet provider or power grid is 100% reliable and available. Also, software upgrades sometimes fail, and things get messed up all the time, which is when I find it most efficient to just start from scratch. A single host makes that less convenient. Every approach has its pros and cons, which is why my main workstation is a 20 Xeon W with 64GB RAM & 1TB NVME : ). Yes, there is a backup workstation which doubles up as a mobile one meaning that it can work without power or hard internet for almost a day. Options are good ; )

brobinson 6y ago

With all these negatives, there must be a really compelling reason to stay. What is it?

PietKachelhout 6y ago
The owner of the company thinks they are great because you can call them when there is a problem. I'm having a hard time convincing him that these are issues I've never had at other providers. Certainly not so many. We are moving everything away. Most of our servers are with another provider already. And we haven't had any similar issues there. I've never called them! And I forgot to mention the connectivity issues at Linode. When the whole London datacenter was unreachable for 2 hours we lost some customers.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  This is something more companies need to realize: Yes, you should be easily and quickly reachable by phone so that when (not if) things go wrong, I can get good service and resolve it quickly. But if I'm calling you, you have most likely already failed. If I'm calling for information, your documentation has failed to make that information accessible (it either wasn't documented, or not easy enough to find). If I'm calling to resolve an issue (technical or billing), it would have been a lot better if it didn't happen in the first place.
- gerhardlazu 6y ago
  I use Digital Ocean, Scaleway, Linode, Google, Cloudflare & Amazon on a daily basis, and I have experienced networking issues on all providers this year. It's all public, some even wrote lengthy post-mortems, most have been posted on HN. When failures happen, it's always a series of unfortunate incidents. When we've hit issues with Linode, we reached out and worked on what we can improve in our changelog.com setup, and discussed about the improvements that we can expect on the Linode end. Our common interest is a more resilient system, which requires a healthy collaboration, and Linode has been a great technology partner for us. Expect to see these write-ups on changelog.com as soon as these improvements have shipped, and we have hard data to support the claims ; ) I'm sorry to hear that things have not been as smooth for you on Linode. I hope that you will find an infra provider that you will be able to rely on and work with as we do. Not all collaborations will work out, and that's OK. It's also OK to be annoyed, fed up with the way things are and look for something different, something more suitable for you. My only ask is that you share your migration story with the changelog.com community. That is something that I would want to hear about.
shaicoleman 6y ago
In a previous job a couple of years ago, I experienced regular issues with Linode (hypervisor errors, storage errors, performance issues, networking issues, etc.). Despite all that, management decided to stay with Linode for the following reasons: * Change is hard, and "better the devil you know" mentality. * The instance pricing looks cheap compared to AWS. e.g. c5.xlarge ($124) vs 8GB-Balanced ($40) that Linode charges. In reality it isn't so cheap because it's poor oversold technology. * AWS/GCP have exorbitant bandwidth pricing. Linode bandwidth is very generous, as its pooled across all servers in the account. * Having someone to pick up the phone 24/7 when there's a problem is a big plus in theory. However, it's much better not to need to call in the first place because things just work. * Migrating providers can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavour. * Technical debt, interdependencies, manually configured snowflake servers and infrastructure, no documentation, etc. makes changes risky. * Not enough DevOps on the team, and too many fires to put out, and shiny features to ship means cloud provider migration is low on the priority list.

threwawaysoff 6y ago

I ditched Linode years ago because it just wasn't that great. AWS if I need ephemeral boxes (I used to be an enterprise on-prem AWS consultant), but I run most everything on a home 96 EPYC core, 512 GB, SSD, HDD (ZFS) box running KVM, Docker, and open vswitch. It just isn't worth it to rent slow, expensive servers when I need lots of them and to be fast. I don't have any problems remoting into them with ddns and wireguard.

gerhardlazu 6y ago
My first Supermicro just turned 9 and it's still running strong, with a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 & k3s over the holidays. The second Supermicro turned 5, and has been running FreeBSD all this time like a champ. They are both loft guardians. A bunch of bare metal hosts run on Scaleway / Online, and different VMs & managed services run in Digital Ocean, Linode, AWS & GCP. I sometimes spin the odd bare metal instance on Equinix Metal (former Packet). A diverse fleet means that there's always something new to learn and try out. A single large host would make me anxious, as no internet provider or power grid is 100% reliable and available. Also, software upgrades sometimes fail, and things get messed up all the time, which is when I find it most efficient to just start from scratch. A single host makes that less convenient. Every approach has its pros and cons, which is why my main workstation is a 20 Xeon W with 64GB RAM & 1TB NVME : ). Yes, there is a backup workstation which doubles up as a mobile one meaning that it can work without power or hard internet for almost a day. Options are good ; )