I reckon the logo on Linode Wiki needs a change. Via Linode’s latest blog post, it is now possible to roll your own operating system with Linode’s pv-grub support. There’s even a tutorial on wiki on how to install NetBSD, although it’s far from “click and deploy” like its Linux Xen VPS offerings.

Besides a few earlier failed attempts to install FreeBSD and a few years of experience with Mac OS X, I am completely clueless on getting a xBSD box up and running. I’ll probably go for something like RootBSD’s Xen-based FreeBSD 7.0 VPS (which I presume will be much easier to set up than Linode’s) if I ever want to get into the daemon land.

(Note: This is a review of VPS hosting services provided by Web24 and Linode, and a migration of one of my sites from one to the other at the end of March 2008. Web24 may have improved their service since but I have no way nor intend to verify it.)

Web24 — Virtuozzo VPS in Australia

Back in early this year I talked about writing a review on Web24.com.au, which I used to replace a VPS I got from GPLHost, which I terminated last December as I was using too much bandwidth (and was too cheap to pay :) The VPS I got from Web24 was their Silver package, a Virtuzzo Linux VPS running Ubuntu Linux, with 384MB guaranteed memory, over 6+GB of privvmpages (burstable memory), 50GB/month data transfer, and was located in Fujitsu data centre in Melbourne (see their profile on VPSAU). All these for under AUD$50/month — very affordable for my little sites.

When I first went shopping around for VPS hosting back in early 2006, Linode was high on my list. There were only a few Linux VPS providers back then but I knew Linode has been in the VPS/VDS hosting business for years, way before the flood of HyperVM/OpenVZ hosts that I have observed in the recent months. However I did not go with them in the end (but went with Unixshell instead) because (1) they were a bit more expensive (2) I heard User Mode Linux (virtualisation used by Linode) was not as fast as Xen.

Fast forward 2 years.

A few days past Christmas, Thomas from Linode offered me a VPS account to review, and I emailed back asking for a Linode 360 in their Fremont California rack. 2 hours later my account has been set up, and I was already inside their Linode Platform Manager configuring up my VPS. So far so good.