The Search Begins

Recently I was ranting about Slicehost being assimilated by Rackspace and how bleak its future seems. I have a few virtual machines hosted by Slicehost and tried out Rackspace to see what I was in for.

Deeply saddened by their service I started looking for a new home.

Evaluating the Competition

Linode looked promising at first — native IPv6 was up there in my requirements — but their downfall was US-only data centres.

Next up was Host Virtual, not only did they have native IPv6 connectivity but they also had data centres across the US, Europe and Asia — perfect!

The Host Virtual Experience

So, I jumped right in to Host Virtual ... creating a small 256MB server (just $9.95/month) for starters:

Account Creation

• Sign-up was straight-forward and all in one page, name/address and billing details all done for in one go — account created.
• As I was a new customer they had to validate my information — nothing to do but wait 10 minutes for them to do it in the background.
• Sure enough, 10 minutes later and my account is active and ready to rock.

Server Deployment

Next, to deploy my VM:

• You're presented with a list of pre-canned operating system builds (CentOS, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu etc. etc.)
• Pick a data centre — several US ones, London, Amsterdam, India.
• Enter a couple of details (passwords), and whack the deploy button.
• Allocated IPv4 & IPv6 addresses immediately, OS build takes about 2 minutes.

The Verdict

In all it took 14 minutes from clicking "Sign-up" to getting logged in over SSH. I am thoroughly impressed, a quick poke around the network/routes/bandwidth and everything looks good.

Going to get settled in and make full use of their money back guarantee if it doesn't work out.

Slicehost I am sorry to say, I think I have found a new home...