Know Linux? Need Linux? Linode may be your option
February 25, 2021
Know Linux? Need Linux? Linode may be your option
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Linode
All company infrastructure is cloud based, but for some particular developments and testing stages for some projects we required a "self managed server" in which we could install, test, deploy or manage every context of our web applications.
In that sense Linode is a perfect match, Linux servers, custom configuration, self managed, and a very attractive price tier. It does requiere some advanced command line Linux user expertise, but it worths every penny.
In that sense Linode is a perfect match, Linux servers, custom configuration, self managed, and a very attractive price tier. It does requiere some advanced command line Linux user expertise, but it worths every penny.
- Very attractive price tier
- Simple startup configuration
- Excellent documentation
- Impressive official support channel response timing
- Extensive community
- Backed up by open source solutions
- Application deployment ala big vendor style
- A Linode cli command line application would be mindblowing
- Single click apps are not enough
- Integration with Cloudflare DNS could be simpler
- Positive: App deployments are faster than on our current Cloud Provider
- Positive: Debugging or hot fixing issues on deployed apps is faster than deploying the app (Warning: Don't do this at home)
- Positive: Install what you need, the limit is the available space (vs limited space for some cloud deployments)
- Negative: Requires some Linux expertise, or at least the ability of following a tutorial and reversing steps (in case of mistakes or errors)
- Negative: Management areas in the organization may require time to consider Linode trustworthy enough (this happens when the management is not directly related with IT)
Digital Ocean offers similar services that include self managed Linux instances. Their price tier is similar to Linode, but Linode has a new user 100 USD credit that makes the first steps more appealing.
In Chile, Hostnet offers a Linux instance service on a comparable price tier. The problem is that the server management is handled by Hostnet, and that was a powerful reason for not considering it over Linode.
In Chile, Hostnet offers a Linux instance service on a comparable price tier. The problem is that the server management is handled by Hostnet, and that was a powerful reason for not considering it over Linode.
Thinking in our single instance apps, Linode deployed apps outperform our own cloud deployed apps, just because every optimization done over the operating system, the available RAM and disk space. Even better, it can match the performance of a 3 instance app deployed on the cloud. But again, considering our organization's use cases, not all applications require a self managed solution, and not all applications are thought to be deployed on the cloud. Linode answers the "no cloud deployment" requirement at it's best.
Our "no cloud deployment" apps are not mission critical, so they don't require a critical uptime. This doesn't mean Linode can't handle mission critical applications, but I'm sticking to our organization's reality, and your mileage can vary. In comparison with our current cloud provider, which has failed miserably several times since last year, Linode's downtimes can be managed, solved and prevented, as the full access to the server allows it. Most cloud providers, and specially our current one (which I DO NOT LOVE), lack the capability of a post-mortem analysis which would at least give some light about the cause of the downtime, providing the resources to prevent that same issues. During the time we've been using Linode (about 2 years) we haven't had any downtimes that mean damage to our business.