HN Explorer

Poll: What do you think is the best Linode data center?

6 points by bengtan ↗ HN
I need to get a new linode instance soon. In light of the recent Fremont power failures (which I was affected by), I thought it'd be useful to get some opinions on which is the better or 'best' data center (Obviously, this is a subjective question).<p>I'm mainly interested in reliability and uptime (past or expected), but discussion of other factors is welcome and appreciated.<p>Thank you.

7 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 34.7 ms ] thread
pankratiev
For my project I am using Linode servers in London. I have not encountered any serious problems with them. I've started using Linode five months ago. So I voted for London. Actually, I didn't work with the other Linode data centers.
mhansen
I don't think you're going to get a good data set with a poll. Just get the one with the lowest ping times from your location.
mnordhoff
Reliability and uptime are not subjective questions. Linode uses good data centers. None of them are particularly better than the others. All data centers occasionally experience downtime; Fremont was just unlucky this time.

The only thing that matters is location — both for latency to you and your users and, perhaps, if you dislike US or GB laws.

The only other difference is that the Atlanta data center used to block numerous ports (most notably 6667), but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

AdamGibbins
This is very debatable, it totally depends on what you're looking for. What on earth is the "best".

London is the best in my opinion because I get the best latency to it (not surprising - I live < 50 miles) and its had 0 outages since I've been in it.

They're all equally reliable in my opinion, Fremont just got unlucky. Every DC is going likely to experience some form of major outage throughout its lifetime. If you're running anything serious you should have redundancy in another DC so it doesn't matter if your primary fails anyhow (your primary will fail - don't ever assume it won't just because you picked a "good" DC).

bengtan
My situation is a bit different. I'm in Australia. It differs as follows:

I chose Fremont in the past because it's the lowest latency to me.

Now, however, I have a website that I want to place in a separate data center from Fremont. All the other data centers in North America are about the same latency to me. So latency doesn't really enter into the equation _for_my_this_particular_case_. I figured I'd just choose a data center based on perceived reliability, and perhaps proximity to the 'center of gravity' of the Internet (whereever that is).

But ...

I wanted to make the poll general so it's more useful for future readers. Hence the resultant wording.

mnordhoff
It's really a toss-up. Dallas is the second-closest, obviously. London might give you a westward route across Eurasia instead of eastward through the US. I think I'd probably do Newark or London, avoiding Dallas in case most of North America falls into the ocean, and avoiding Atlanta in case something changes with the port blocking.
tasaro
The best choice is the one that provides you and your users the lowest latency: http://www.linode.com/speedtest/

On a side note, all facilities (and not just Linode's) will experience issues from time to time. You want to evaluate the manner in which it was resolved and the frequency. Don't move because of one outage in the last several years and degrade the experience for your customers. If an outage is going to damage your business then you should investigate high availability and/or quick deployment strategies.

All of that being said, if your users are mostly US based you probably won't notice the latency between any of the US based locations.