One year ago I changed the server where Pintant is hosted. Previously it was hosted in a domestic ADSL server, now it’s in a Gandi VPS server.
The server handles Pintant, some other Webs for my family, email, etc. Nothing very exciting and the email bit is the important one.
Before it was in the domestic ADSL because a proper server (in a datacenter), 10 years ago, was very expensive. Nowadays, and thanks to new technologies like Xen and more powerful and cheaper hardware, it’s possible to find quite cheap servers.
Also electricity price is increasing. And years ago the only way to share big files between computers in the office was to have a server. Now there are network hard disks which can do it easily.
I wanted a server that I could administer myself – mainly just for fun and to practice. I have a couple of specific mail configurations that could be difficult to do in some standard server but I’m sure that I could have found a client side workarounds.
At the same time, I didn’t want a physical server: I didn’t want to take care of administrating hardware failures, hardware updates, etc.
A VPS (Xen instance) is a very sweet spot for what I wanted.
I registered my first domain in Gandi in 2001, I like their “No bullshit” policy, I also like that they support some free software projects. I haven’t had any problems with Gandi (fingers crossed!).
I considered to use Amazon S3. The price is similar (I don’t remember now the exact figures). But I’m afraid that Amazon will become (if it is not already) too huge: they want me to do all shopping there, to have all my data there… these are nice business goals and must be exciting to work there. But I preferred to have my small tiny server somewhere else.
Now I’ve been in Gandi VPS and so far I haven’t had any problem. Peace of mind! Before, when the server was connected to the ADSL I was worried “what if the ADSL line fails?” or “what if there is a hardware problem?”. I had to ask my family more than once to restart the server or the ADSL router (yes, I know, I could have had something that does this automatically).
I trust that Gandi takes care of the network and servers, and I handle the server in my way. They offer Debian images indeed.
It’s also nice to have easy contact with them in #gandi-vps channel, on the freenode.net IRC network.
It costs some money per month, but I think that if I count the headaches, worries, hardware investment (computer, UPS, etc.) it’s worth using Gandi.
So far: very happy with Gandi VPS (and Gandi domain names). As always… fingers crossed that this will not change!
Leave a Reply