4 ms·

Ok, so can anyone recommend an established VPS provider, with a comparable management interface, and a track-record of excellent security practices?

astrodust 13y ago
Pick two of those and you have options.
- peddamat 13y ago
  I'm happy with "established VPS provider", and "a track-record of excellent security practices". After posting, I realized 1 and 3 are a bit redundant. You have to be established to have a track-record, of course.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Weeeellllll, maybe they established a track record of excellent security practice in a related field and are just getting into providing VPSs? But yes, really, somewhat redundant...
thematt 13y ago
AWS
rdl 13y ago
Amazon AWS has the best security of any virtual server provider I've seen, by miles. There might be specialty providers (e.g. FireHost) which are good dedicated server offerings, too, but I haven't evaluated them -- it usually is "AWS, is it good enough?" and then if no, directly to a cage, do not pass go, do not collect $50k. AWS also has the best first and second derivative on everything related to product; they were essentially crippled crap in 2006, and have turned into a viable option over the past years, without slowing down. Compared to the level of innovation in colo/dedicated hosting (~zero per year) and openstack, AWS is amazing. It's still inferior to a good on-premises or colocated environment (mainly due to technical limitations in the virtualized environment; AWS's policy is top-notch commercial standard), but that may not matter for you. AWS pricing and performance is also worse in a lot of ways than dedicated hardware, but may also not matter to you. A lot of the big cloud/dedicated hosting companies have decent security (SoftLayer, Rackspace), but aren't as good at AWS at policy or technical security. The sketchy VPS providers are miles below the middling standard set by companies like Rackspace. Linode is solidly in the "sketchy VPS provider" realm. A bit better for availability, and not likely to actually be attacking you themselves, but not a responsible choice for anyone who cares about security from everything I've seen. PaaS, in practice, is also a good solution if you care about security but have no skills or budget. While Heroku has its own set of problems around price, performance, and availability, it's more secure out of the box than a badly configured/maintained AWS deployment of your own, or a badly configured on-premises/colocated cage or dedicated servers.
- kyrra 13y ago
  How about for those that just want a small instance system. I just do the smallest linode setup for some personal projects. From my understanding, AWS is expensive for that type of use case?
  - rdl 13y ago
    AWS Free Tier is...free. I'd probably go with http://prgmr.com/xen/ http://prgmr.com/xen/ for low end above that.
    - jnw2 13y ago
      How do people expect prgmr.com compares with linode in terms of security?
  - jaxbot 13y ago
    I second that question, and expand it a little. AWS is likely a more secure and trustworthy option given the recent controversy, but it really is comparing apples to oranges; they're both hosting solutions (fruit), but fundamentally very different. Is there any service close to Linode that provides a similar service for a similar price? I know of DigitalOcean, but their CPUs are very underpowered in each plan compared to Linode's (especially after recent upgrades).

astrodust 13y ago

Pick two of those and you have options.

peddamat 13y ago
I'm happy with "established VPS provider", and "a track-record of excellent security practices". After posting, I realized 1 and 3 are a bit redundant. You have to be established to have a track-record, of course.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Weeeellllll, maybe they established a track record of excellent security practice in a related field and are just getting into providing VPSs? But yes, really, somewhat redundant...

thematt 13y ago

AWS

rdl 13y ago

Amazon AWS has the best security of any virtual server provider I've seen, by miles. There might be specialty providers (e.g. FireHost) which are good dedicated server offerings, too, but I haven't evaluated them -- it usually is "AWS, is it good enough?" and then if no, directly to a cage, do not pass go, do not collect $50k. AWS also has the best first and second derivative on everything related to product; they were essentially crippled crap in 2006, and have turned into a viable option over the past years, without slowing down. Compared to the level of innovation in colo/dedicated hosting (~zero per year) and openstack, AWS is amazing. It's still inferior to a good on-premises or colocated environment (mainly due to technical limitations in the virtualized environment; AWS's policy is top-notch commercial standard), but that may not matter for you. AWS pricing and performance is also worse in a lot of ways than dedicated hardware, but may also not matter to you. A lot of the big cloud/dedicated hosting companies have decent security (SoftLayer, Rackspace), but aren't as good at AWS at policy or technical security. The sketchy VPS providers are miles below the middling standard set by companies like Rackspace. Linode is solidly in the "sketchy VPS provider" realm. A bit better for availability, and not likely to actually be attacking you themselves, but not a responsible choice for anyone who cares about security from everything I've seen. PaaS, in practice, is also a good solution if you care about security but have no skills or budget. While Heroku has its own set of problems around price, performance, and availability, it's more secure out of the box than a badly configured/maintained AWS deployment of your own, or a badly configured on-premises/colocated cage or dedicated servers.

kyrra 13y ago
How about for those that just want a small instance system. I just do the smallest linode setup for some personal projects. From my understanding, AWS is expensive for that type of use case?
- rdl 13y ago
  AWS Free Tier is...free. I'd probably go with http://prgmr.com/xen/ http://prgmr.com/xen/ for low end above that.
  - jnw2 13y ago
    How do people expect prgmr.com compares with linode in terms of security?
- jaxbot 13y ago
  I second that question, and expand it a little. AWS is likely a more secure and trustworthy option given the recent controversy, but it really is comparing apples to oranges; they're both hosting solutions (fruit), but fundamentally very different. Is there any service close to Linode that provides a similar service for a similar price? I know of DigitalOcean, but their CPUs are very underpowered in each plan compared to Linode's (especially after recent upgrades).