So, I finally jumped into the wonderful world of blogging. Blogging is something I have been wanting to do for a while now, however, I was unable to because of my hosting provider. I am happy to say I have found a new hosting provider, Linode, and I am in LOVE with them. Linode specializes in linux Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and are reasonably priced. For those of you who are unfamiliar with a VPS, it is basically a really fast server that several virtual machines share time on. Most collocated servers are underutilized and VPS take advantage of this by sharing one server with several people. This reduces the total cost of having your own server tremendously. You can also do anything you want to do on a VPS that you would on a collocated system.

A VPS will scale to your needs. I started with Linode’s bottom line package called ‘Linode 360′ for $19.95 / Month. If I find I need more space, it is really easy to increase my VPS’s resources, such as Memory and Disk Space, to what I need from within Linode’s control panel. I imagine the upgrade will only take a couple of minutes to setup, instead of hours if this were a collocated server.

The ‘Linode 360′ Package Includes:
* 350 MB Memory
* 10 GB Disk Space
* 200 GB Transfer / Month
* $19.95 / Month

Linode also gives you a control panel which lets you control how your VPS is setup and control it. You can reboot your VPS at any time, add memory, and add more disk space. This makes a VPS a very scalable solution that should be able to grow to fit any infrastructure needs in the future.

Screenshot of Linode’s Control Panel