It just goes to show you don’t always get what you pay for…

Ionos appeared to have a good price for the processing power on their VPS but there were hidden charges for additional features (that would be necessary), the network was more limited, and the OS a representative assured me of was not available. When it took more than half an hour to suspend the machine, to see if I could access it from a rescue console, I tried calling customer service and was put on hold indefinitely. And the AI chat bot that is supposed to help gets a lot of things wrong. Surprisingly, cancelling the contract with a 30-day money back guarantee was very easy. So, it was back to research and I took a few steps up on the learning curve – and finally, I found a VPS that rocks. There are several feasible options out there, but looking at the fine print it’s easy to see that the quality of services and the range of prices are not directly proportional.

So, I finally settled on OVH for many reasons. Choice of data center lets me have a server in Hillsboro, a couple of hours from my house, and it’s also one of the most secure data centers in the world because they’re at the end of a submarine cable that connects the US and Asia. Great account security, too – everything was doubly verified before an account was granted. 2Gbps unmetered bandwidth beats every other service out there. Fast AMD, fast SSD – and 16 cores with 16GB of memory is a huge upgrade from 2 cores and 4GB… plus, it turns out there’s a hidden discount for a longer monthly contract, no hidden charges. The result is that I’m getting more than 8 times the processor power, 4 times the RAM, and twice the storage capacity for $38.25 a month. I pay $24 a month now.

This server will be offline while I attempt to clone a 60GB root filesystem starting later this evening or early in the morning. After that, if all goes well, DNS will be updated and the Linode server can be shut down. Then, skysurfer.media should have plenty of resources for expansion. Although it would not appear so from the public view, a lot has been done behind the scenes and everything should come together soon.

Also – I don’t really think anyone reads this or cares, but it’s a personal blog and I’m journaling, anyway. Things will be more interesting when I add pictures and start streaming with a drone… stay tuned.