Are you talking about scaling from 1/10 of a server to 1 server, or from 1 to 10 servers, or from 10 to 1000 servers?

I was turned off by 3Tera/TheGridLayer because their sites are all marketing, no tech. But I just discovered the docs (http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic2/WebHome.html), so now it's possible to size up their system without some salesperson sizing up my wallet first.

TGL's prices for individual VPSes do not look competitive and the starting price of $4000/month for a virtual datacenter is pretty spicy.

Previous VPS discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43949 Most providers do not mention scalability or upgrades on their sites, so maybe it is worth paying more to MT for scalability.

I'm talking about starting with 1 small server and scaling it up with ram and cpu, then possibly needing to add a db server. That's about as far into the future as I'd like to look.

I decided to host one of my applications, a live chat service for 'replicated' websites on GoDaddy.com of all places, before you laugh it has really worked out better then I would have imagined. I already had the code working well under load with stored procedures and everything else optimized. It is not under active development so the terrible mssql interface didn't bother me too much. I have 2000 paying customers and no problems. I pay $5 a month for the best shared hosting ever.

I would totally avoid any special "grid" crap. That stuff is snake oil. I'd also avoid VPS too, since the price of fully dedicated servers is so low these days. Less than $100/mo for a machine you can call your own.

I think ServerBeach has a better deal than all the other sites mentioned here. I've been super happy with them (and a couple friends who signed up have as well). They do offer cPanel and Plesk and I think give you Webmin by default. I don't use that stuff myself though.

(If you sign up for Serverbeach you can use my referral # 7XYHDMBU8A for $100 credit and I so get credit too http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?... )

I've been analyzing slicehost and they look great, but it looks like I'll have to do too much of the server admin myself, including security. Plus, they are currently back ordered unless you prepay. Says alot for them though that they refuse customers due to server loads.

MediaTemple's dv offering seems to be 'dedicated light' in that apache, php, mysql etc are preinstalled. Also MT has a security update option where they updated tested versions of apps as they come out.

Looks like that could take alot of server admin work off my hands, which is what I'm looking for.

Anyone else have an easier option?

Can't claim to have actually used them, but I have kept an eye on slicehost ... might be worth a look anyway.

I'm using slicehost and I'm loving it! :)

http://slicehost.com

Those guys are cheap. Kinda scares me a bit that they say they've built everything themselves. How is the control panel? Is there any way to view the real time statistics (cpu, database connections, etc) on your server?

I'm also very happy with SliceHost. But you have to understand the limitations of their offering. They're offering you a blank canvas -- an empty box with a standard Linux distribution installed. It does not have any user-friendly administration tools installed, beyond what comes with the distribution. Instead, they assume that their customers know how to manage servers themselves. If you want more of a GUI, you can install any control panel you want, but you have to install it yourself.

As such, the SliceHost control panel is very minimal. It will display some instantaneous statistics about CPU time, memory usage and network traffic. It also lets you reboot your server and restore from backups or from a standard distribution template. That's about all that it does.

That said, the control panel is very nicely done -- just minimal.

This isn't for everyone, but my personal feeling is that if you're in the market for a VPS, you should be familiar with how to configure it yourself. If you're not already comfortable with Linux system administration and the Unix command line, then I think you're better off with fully managed hosting. I wouldn't want to try and keep a VPS alive and secure without being a proficient Linux sysadmin.

Thanks for the great reply. I'm comfortable setting up cron jobs and some minor aspects of server management. I am looking to take the next step so I have more flexibility but I want to avoid all the work it'll take to customize a 'blank canvas'.

You can get a dedicated box from Layered Tech for about the same price. Same deal though - you run everything yourself.

Not even close to slice's price actually. They start at 99$ for a VPS, which is what we are talking about. Slice starts at 20$.

Yeah, $20 for a way underpowered (256megs?!) system with little storage. I guess that could work if you have a system that you want to scale up little by little, but I'm suspicious of VPS's after having had a few blow up on me and generally perform badly.

When comparing apples to apples, you want to look at LT's specials:

https://order.layeredtech.com/ConfigureServer.lt?method=disp...

Which is $20 setup and $70 a month, which is the same price as the slice system, only with double the storage and your own, real computer.