I love Linode, and use them for just about everything, but storage is the one place they fall behind on. I wouldn't mind low amounts of storage on instances if they had some sort of internal "cloud" storage like Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files (ie I'd still have to pay, but there are no bandwidth charges associated with moving data around).
That said, only having one complaint is a great vote of confidence, and a boost in drive space is always welcome!
This seems like a business opportunity. You could create a third-party linode storage service, and proxy through nodes inside their network so that your clients don't have to pay for the bandwidth. You could just store the files on S3 but be able to offer competitive rates since you'd be getting a volume discount at amazon.
This seems like a good strategy for Linode - rather than decrease their prices as their running costs get cheaper, they offer more for the same price. This keeps them competitive on price, but keeps their revenue high. It reminds me of the way that car manufacturers tend to make their smallest car get bigger with each new iteration, and then introduce another smallest model. People stick with the model they like but are now paying for the second smallest car, at a higher price.
It's especially good since storage can be overallocated. The odds that upon hearing the announcement everyone fills up the new space is slim, so adding 20% more storage doesn't add 20% more costs.
Disk space is particularly cheap. It's probably almost a natural process as they swap out older failed drives with newer ones of the same price but higher capacity.
They've upgraded RAM in the past too, but they're still not offering great value on those terms compared to Hetzner or other German hosts. CPU performance isn't particularly impressive either. What Linode does have are great customer service, a good web interface, and good choice of datacenter locations.
Apparently this is the second time they've increased storage on their systems since I've been with them. I have a Linode 512 plan and I had 8GB of more storage to add to my existing disks (they only added 4GB today to my plan level).
I also have to say, it was painless to upgrade the storage. Click Shutdown in the UI, resize partition, boot back up, and you're done.
I really like using Linode. More than the size, space, and cost (which I do value), I appreciate their straightforward and detailed documentation library for administering. That, mixed with their tools, makes using Linode quite enjoyable.
I agree; I setup a new Linode with Ubuntu a couple of days ago and the whole process was smooth and enjoyable. The documentation is well laid out and super easy to follow.
I enjoy the hardware, the administration not so much. Their control panel seems to log you out if you don't do anything for longer than a minute, and the graphs have failed to show up on multiple occasions. The whole thing is steeped in early 2000s web UI. First time I encountered their monthly data volume billing I was baffled (hint: over-use costs as much as pre-paying for extra, there's no need to do it as far as I know). Customer support's been friendly though.
Linode has been working very well for our company as we roll out lots of servers all around the globe. We find the service pretty robust. Only wish they increased the bandwidth quota more.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] threadThat said, only having one complaint is a great vote of confidence, and a boost in drive space is always welcome!
Thanks, guys.
They've upgraded RAM in the past too, but they're still not offering great value on those terms compared to Hetzner or other German hosts. CPU performance isn't particularly impressive either. What Linode does have are great customer service, a good web interface, and good choice of datacenter locations.
I also have to say, it was painless to upgrade the storage. Click Shutdown in the UI, resize partition, boot back up, and you're done.