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Why do I pay Linode $20/month instead of paying DO $5/month(1)? Because Linode treats their servers like kittens (upgrades, addons/options, support), and DO tr

Why do I pay Linode $20/month instead of paying DO $5/month(1)? Because Linode treats their servers like kittens (upgrades, addons/options, support), and DO treats their servers like cattle. There's nothing wrong with the cattle model of managing servers. But I'm not using Chef or Puppet, I just have one server that I use to put stuff up on the internet and host a few services. And Linode treats that one solitary server better than any other VPS host in the world. (1) I do have one DO box as a simple secondary DNS server, for provider redundancy

mwcampbell 12y ago
I don't see that distinction at all. Both Linode and DO provide persistent local storage. Both let you resize your server. And now, they're competitive on price; Linode even has hourly billing. Granted, DO has lower-end plans than Linode. But I don't see any indication that DO treats servers as disposable or fungible whereas Linode doesn't.
- chc 12y ago
  I don't think anyone's ever gotten good hard numbers, but just from having seen a lot of people's anecdata over the years, my general impression is that Digital Ocean seems to have more short-term outages and to oversubscribe their boxes a bit more.
  - vbtechguy 12y ago
    that's probably due to the massive surge in growth and growing pains for DO
- gtaylor 12y ago
  > But I don't see any indication that DO treats servers as disposable or fungible whereas Linode doesn't. I'm not sure "disposable" is a good word to describe DO's approach. We do know that they cram a lot more people per host machine, though. That may be where the "treat VMs like cattle" statement was getting at. You need only fire up a few instances of comparable type, get some CPU load, and watch some basic metrics to determine this for yourself.
  - nine_k 12y ago
    I suppose they do it because load on a typical instance is low. Probably $5 instances are mostly hosting services like low-volume blogs, personal home pages, ssh/vpn tunnels, etc. OTOH the lowest ($20) tier on Linode is probably used by more serious projects that, on average, exert considerable load.
    - gtaylor 12y ago
      > OTOH the lowest ($20) tier on Linode is probably used by more serious projects that, on average, exert considerable load. I'm not sure about that. For me, I pay the extra few bucks on Linode for the customer service, stability, and the consistent performance. I'm not running my VMs ragged, I'm just willing to pay a little more for a higher quality service. Anecdotally, it's a quality thing for me. Digital Ocean = Economy car, Linode = A nice Hyundai sedan or a higher end Accord.
      - threeseed 12y ago
        Your anecdotes (just like everyones) are meaningless. If you some evidence that DO is inferior at the same price level as Linode then you should post it. I was with Linode and had to deal with constant outages (at Fremont DC) and went through two major hacking incidents where I found out through Reddit instead of from them. I've never been with a worse provider than Linode.
        waps 12y ago
        All these anecdotes make one wonder why these people aren't simply going to hetzner and ovh and simply get a dedicated server for just slightly more (meaning $25/month).
        neverminder 12y ago
        Or you can go with http://kimsufi.com http://kimsufi.com and get a 2GB RAM dedicated server for $13 a month.
arb99 12y ago
DO?
- taylorwc 12y ago
  Digital Ocean
- robertfw 12y ago
  Digital Ocean
- erichmond 12y ago
  Digital Ocean - https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/
- vbtechguy 12y ago
  yeah DO = DigitalOcean
voidlogic 12y ago
>I just have one server that I use to put stuff up on the internet and host a few services. And Linode treats that one solitary server better than any other VPS host in the world. I use DO for this and have used many others in the past and I have never had any problems with DO...
- gtaylor 12y ago
  Anecdotally, I get notifications of maintenance outages every month with DO in NYC1 and NYC2. These are exceedingly, exceedingly rare with Linode's Atlanta DC. Also, stolen CPU on my DO boxes is super high, whereas this is very rare on Linode. You have less neighbors.
  - nine_k 12y ago
    Most of the notifications are about "short periods of higher latency and packet loss", which I can totally tolerate. The last "5-10 minutes disconnect" happened in November 2013.
    - gtaylor 12y ago
      If it were just higher latency, I'd agree. But packet loss is a bit different.
      - IgorPartola 12y ago
        Packet loss is high latency when you are dealing with TCP. So unless you are streaming something over UDP or rely on ICMP for something like monitoring, you are fine.
  - coolestuk 12y ago
    My experience is the reverse. My $5 DO server running almost identical software responds much faster than my Linode server. The Linode server is far, far closer to me geographically. I have put this down to the DO SSDs. It will be interesting to see if this is true. I've been considering migrating from Lindoe to DO because they were faster and cheaper. I've had 2 DO VPS for about 6 months, and never had a problem with them.
vbtechguy 12y ago
Not exactly a fair comparison, you'd want to compare similar plans, 2GB Linode VPS and 2GB DigitalOcean VPS are both $20/month. Some benchmarks between the two posted at https://blog.centminmod.com/346 https://blog.centminmod.com/346. Linode fast disk i/o than DO but DO faster cpu than Linode :)
novaleaf 12y ago
i'm a happy DO user (30 droplets at the moment) and I agree with your cattle analogy. I am not surprised to see multiple droplets spontaneously rebooting on occasion (even when system maintenance has not been announced) however, I have no experience with Linode so I can not say if they are "kittens" as you say.
edwinyzh 12y ago
Just a side node, I occasionally use SSH tunneling to get through the evil local government Internet censoring, so I have a linode a DO (just sever months), and linode's SSH tunneling is much much more fast and stable.
- pangram 12y ago
  That could be caused by the routing, as well, though -- are the servers in the same approximate geographical location?
  - edwinyzh 12y ago
    well, I'm not sure, but since the difference is huge, I'm not sure if routing can cause that significant difference, I'm really not sure about that.
mike-cardwell 12y ago
I moved from Linode to Digital Ocean because of the price and I've noticed no change in level of service. And the support, which I've used several times at both has always been incredibly quick, accurate and useful. I was however happy to have a viable alternative to Linode. I found their handling of the two hacking incidents to be completely disrespectful to me as a customer.
rogerdpack 12y ago
Unfortunately, DO vs. Linode, DO is the only one that can provide me a "reasonably fast box" [cpu, ssd] for $5/month, so I'm cattle, but cheap... :) [pingdom shows 5min worth of outage in the past week (a 99.96% uptime) which may or may not be OK depending on your money vs. uptime pain threshold :) ]

mwcampbell 12y ago

I don't see that distinction at all. Both Linode and DO provide persistent local storage. Both let you resize your server. And now, they're competitive on price; Linode even has hourly billing. Granted, DO has lower-end plans than Linode. But I don't see any indication that DO treats servers as disposable or fungible whereas Linode doesn't.

chc 12y ago
I don't think anyone's ever gotten good hard numbers, but just from having seen a lot of people's anecdata over the years, my general impression is that Digital Ocean seems to have more short-term outages and to oversubscribe their boxes a bit more.
- vbtechguy 12y ago
  that's probably due to the massive surge in growth and growing pains for DO
gtaylor 12y ago
> But I don't see any indication that DO treats servers as disposable or fungible whereas Linode doesn't. I'm not sure "disposable" is a good word to describe DO's approach. We do know that they cram a lot more people per host machine, though. That may be where the "treat VMs like cattle" statement was getting at. You need only fire up a few instances of comparable type, get some CPU load, and watch some basic metrics to determine this for yourself.
- nine_k 12y ago
  I suppose they do it because load on a typical instance is low. Probably $5 instances are mostly hosting services like low-volume blogs, personal home pages, ssh/vpn tunnels, etc. OTOH the lowest ($20) tier on Linode is probably used by more serious projects that, on average, exert considerable load.
  - gtaylor 12y ago
    > OTOH the lowest ($20) tier on Linode is probably used by more serious projects that, on average, exert considerable load. I'm not sure about that. For me, I pay the extra few bucks on Linode for the customer service, stability, and the consistent performance. I'm not running my VMs ragged, I'm just willing to pay a little more for a higher quality service. Anecdotally, it's a quality thing for me. Digital Ocean = Economy car, Linode = A nice Hyundai sedan or a higher end Accord.
    - threeseed 12y ago
      Your anecdotes (just like everyones) are meaningless. If you some evidence that DO is inferior at the same price level as Linode then you should post it. I was with Linode and had to deal with constant outages (at Fremont DC) and went through two major hacking incidents where I found out through Reddit instead of from them. I've never been with a worse provider than Linode.
      - waps 12y ago
        All these anecdotes make one wonder why these people aren't simply going to hetzner and ovh and simply get a dedicated server for just slightly more (meaning $25/month).
        neverminder 12y ago
        Or you can go with http://kimsufi.com http://kimsufi.com and get a 2GB RAM dedicated server for $13 a month.

arb99 12y ago

DO?

taylorwc 12y ago
Digital Ocean
robertfw 12y ago
Digital Ocean
erichmond 12y ago
Digital Ocean - https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/
vbtechguy 12y ago
yeah DO = DigitalOcean

voidlogic 12y ago

>I just have one server that I use to put stuff up on the internet and host a few services. And Linode treats that one solitary server better than any other VPS host in the world. I use DO for this and have used many others in the past and I have never had any problems with DO...

gtaylor 12y ago
Anecdotally, I get notifications of maintenance outages every month with DO in NYC1 and NYC2. These are exceedingly, exceedingly rare with Linode's Atlanta DC. Also, stolen CPU on my DO boxes is super high, whereas this is very rare on Linode. You have less neighbors.
- nine_k 12y ago
  Most of the notifications are about "short periods of higher latency and packet loss", which I can totally tolerate. The last "5-10 minutes disconnect" happened in November 2013.
  - gtaylor 12y ago
    If it were just higher latency, I'd agree. But packet loss is a bit different.
    - IgorPartola 12y ago
      Packet loss is high latency when you are dealing with TCP. So unless you are streaming something over UDP or rely on ICMP for something like monitoring, you are fine.
- coolestuk 12y ago
  My experience is the reverse. My $5 DO server running almost identical software responds much faster than my Linode server. The Linode server is far, far closer to me geographically. I have put this down to the DO SSDs. It will be interesting to see if this is true. I've been considering migrating from Lindoe to DO because they were faster and cheaper. I've had 2 DO VPS for about 6 months, and never had a problem with them.

vbtechguy 12y ago

Not exactly a fair comparison, you'd want to compare similar plans, 2GB Linode VPS and 2GB DigitalOcean VPS are both $20/month. Some benchmarks between the two posted at https://blog.centminmod.com/346 https://blog.centminmod.com/346. Linode fast disk i/o than DO but DO faster cpu than Linode :)

novaleaf 12y ago

i'm a happy DO user (30 droplets at the moment) and I agree with your cattle analogy. I am not surprised to see multiple droplets spontaneously rebooting on occasion (even when system maintenance has not been announced) however, I have no experience with Linode so I can not say if they are "kittens" as you say.

edwinyzh 12y ago

Just a side node, I occasionally use SSH tunneling to get through the evil local government Internet censoring, so I have a linode a DO (just sever months), and linode's SSH tunneling is much much more fast and stable.

pangram 12y ago
That could be caused by the routing, as well, though -- are the servers in the same approximate geographical location?
- edwinyzh 12y ago
  well, I'm not sure, but since the difference is huge, I'm not sure if routing can cause that significant difference, I'm really not sure about that.

mike-cardwell 12y ago

I moved from Linode to Digital Ocean because of the price and I've noticed no change in level of service. And the support, which I've used several times at both has always been incredibly quick, accurate and useful. I was however happy to have a viable alternative to Linode. I found their handling of the two hacking incidents to be completely disrespectful to me as a customer.

rogerdpack 12y ago

Unfortunately, DO vs. Linode, DO is the only one that can provide me a "reasonably fast box" [cpu, ssd] for $5/month, so I'm cattle, but cheap... :) [pingdom shows 5min worth of outage in the past week (a 99.96% uptime) which may or may not be OK depending on your money vs. uptime pain threshold :) ]