Linode Simplifies Plans, Reveals CPU Priority

It wasn't immediately clear to me what changed. Here's the old homepage:<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110713211922/http://www.linode.com/index.cfm" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20110713211922/http://www.linode....</a><p>It appears Linode removed the 768 and 1536 plans, renamed the 1024/2048/4096 plans to 1GB/2GB/4GB, and added an 8GB plan. They also added a row in the table showing CPU priority. The 512 plan is unchanged, as are specs and prices for the other three remaining plans.

I am consistently surprised how many VM hosts refuse to tell you what your CPU guarantees are. EC2 at least gives you a general equivalence to a specific hardware. Rackspace refuses to go into detail. Others I've spoken to will only commit to saying "core", without specifying what the reference hardware is. And even then, actually making sure you've got a <i>commit</i> of that CPU is a whole other issue. I think EC2's compute units are a commit, though.<p>Linode's "priority" seems like ex-Slicehost's way of saying "hey bigger machines get a higher proportion"... nothing really useful for figuring out exactly what you're buying.<p>And you can't ever really figure out what you have: things could be severely over-committed, and you'll never know until you get starved. So you can't just benchmark your way out of it.

Linode keeps instances homogeneous, so only the same type/size of instance exists on a given bare-metal machine.<p>Unless that's changed, that would mean that all instances running on a given machine share the same CPU Priority, there will just be fewer instances demanding service from the CPU(s) the larger the plan you have.<p>...so wondering if that's what CPU Priority means, or if Linode is about to mix instance sizes on same hardware?

Linode forum discussion on this topic (that I could find): <a href="http://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&#38;t=9544" rel="nofollow">http://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&#38;t=9544</a><p>And maybe I'm just ignorant on the topic, but what exactly does CPU priority do here? I understand basic linux process priority (like the 'nice' command), but how exactly does CPU priority behave on linode. Searching through their docs, I couldn't find anything.<p>EDIT: to maybe answer my own question, maybe this is the Xen credit schedule? <a href="http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Credit_Scheduler" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Credit_Scheduler</a>

What do they mean by CPU Priority?<p>I'm assuming that meant access to part of a processor, but how does that work with 4 CPU and 16x priority? (I'm working on the assumption that 1x priority ~= 1 core.) Of course, my assumption is probably wrong - just curious how this affects the load on a given server and how the VPS interacts with other VPS's on that node.

Am I the only one here who thinks that for personal use, owning a server in house is a better choice than using a hosted VPS or server?<p>It's quite easy to get a decent micro HP server (even with SSD storage) within $1000, which would cost $150.00 - $300.00 a month for a equivalent plan on Linode. Suppose you upgrade your server every two years, the monthly cost of the server is less than $50. You get dedicated CPU time and I/O, permissions to managing everything.<p>Internet bandwidth might be a problem. But let's put ourselves in the 2 or 3 years future. What if you already have Gigabit Internet like Google Fiber for $70/mo?<p>And you get other benefits for owning a server in your house. Since it's connected to your home LAN, it can be used to help build a smart home, control smart sensors/cameras, or serve as a media server.<p>Am I missing something here?

I'm actually disappointed. I liked the 768 package, it was big enough that you could run a fair amount of stuff [0], and cost only $30/month. I was planning on buying a new one over my Christmas holidays and moving my stuff over so I could get onto a newer CentOS. CPU has never been a problem, so this new priority is meaningless to me.<p>For my needs, $30/mo was about as much as I'd spend on a server to host mine and a few friend's blogs, some photos, and some remote services. $40 is too much for me and the lower plan just doesn't have enough RAM to be interesting.<p>So now my options are 1) find somewhere else, or 2) backup my data and rebuild the box in place.<p>0 - I manage a few Linode 768s including my own. 768 was a great size for a few small blogs and a low traffic Rails site, or a larger traffic blog.

I recently evaluated some cloud providers. There were differences of 10x latency for a bunch of basic (unix filesystem plus some bash script) level operations between EC2 and Rackspace. The Rackspace people failed to take complaints seriously, so we took our business elsewhere.<p>EC2 is good but their spin-up time is crap.<p>Though same-kernel is obviously a security reduction, the speed is far better: I for one can't wait to see more LXC and other lightweight virt stuff being made available with real cgroup-level guarantees.

Anyone care to share their experience with linode.com vs. <a href="http://prgmr.com/xen/" rel="nofollow">http://prgmr.com/xen/</a> ?<p>(We setup a few vps's with rackspace and have been happy so far.)

The change (removal of some plans) is a couple weeks old.<p>About CPU priority, Linode never kept it a secret. For the small VPS (512MB RAM), you get a guaranteed 1/20 of a 4 core XEON processor and it scales linearly with each plan's RAM.<p>As explained on their FAQ, their machines have 8 cores each and house 40 512MB VPS.

While I love Linode (It's my VPS host of choice) it's always bothered me they don't do any kind of volume discount - ie: the cost of 8 GB is just 32 times that of the 512 MB.<p>I was hoping this change would rectify that, wishful thinking I suppose.

Why would someone get a linode when they can get a dedicated server for $15? <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838729" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838729</a>

Since there are all VPS users here, what do you think is the best way to market a VPS product.. or rather, how did you end up becoming a Linode customer?

I've heard good things about Linode, but ultimately, why not get a dedicated server for just a little more money? I pay 30€/month for mine with Hetzner, yesterday there was another host with prices starting from 10€?<p>So what is the appeal of Linode? That you can upgrade to a faster server quickly?

I wonder how these new plans will affect existing users. My plan falls directly between two of these simplified plans. The prices seem the same still, so it would cost me $15 more a month to increase to closest new package.

This is disappointing. My Rails app gets just enough traffic that it uses 1.2-1.4 gigs of ram on average. The 1.5 gig plan was perfect for me and I've used it without issues for years now.

Weird they haven't updated their blog with a post about this.

Have they updated their security and disclosure policies ? If not they can remain in my "dodgy vendor who you can't trust" list.<p>For those that don't remember hackers managed to get root access to several VPS via some Linode vulnerability. Didn't bother to let customers know. Didn't bother to update their status/website. Didn't bother to tell anyone what they've done to fix it. Compare that with CloudFlare: <a href="http://blog.cloudflare.com/post-mortem-todays-attack-apparent-google-app" rel="nofollow">http://blog.cloudflare.com/post-mortem-todays-attack-apparen...</a><p>Linode continues to be a recurring example of how not to behave as a vendor.

Since there are all VPS users here, what do you think is the best way to market a VPS product.. or rather, how did you end up becoming a Lin