A New Host

I've been hosted on webhost4life for about 2 years now, and I was starting to see the pain with shared hosting.  It starts out with a tempting $5/month, but then you want SQL Server 2005, and you want to point many domains to non-root folders and in the end it just isn't that cheap.

It's also really slow and I don't have full control of the box.  Doing a reverse ip check at http://yougetsignal.com (awesome site, hilarious name) i could see hundreds of sites that are on my same server.  I'd rather not be sharing bandwidth and hardware resources with so many.

So I've made the switch to a VPS plan at VPSLand.  VPS is Virtual Private Server, so basically they take a beefy server (8-core cpu, gobs of ram) and then run Virtual Server on it.  They sell a limited amount of virtual machines per actual server, so you are sharing with far less people. VPS plans are a bit more expensive, but they are worth it.  Why you ask?

• Remote Desktop into your box (no more crappy cpanel interfaces)
  
• Install whatever-the-hell-you-want software (provided it's legal)
• Run your sites in .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 6.0, whatever (ASP.NET MVC sites here I come)
• Run ASP.NET, Rails, PHP all on the same server (if you want)
  
• No more Medium Trust nonsense
• control your own DNS (if you want)
• run your own mail server (I use GAFYD however)
• point as many domains to whatever folders you want

The downside:

• I have to track my bandwidth now.  I have 200gb/month, which is good enough for now, but it could get expensive if I go over.
• I only have 5gb of storage space.  The base install takes 2gb.  Yikes!  I plan on making this 10gb sometime soon.
• a little more expensive.

Ultimately, I'm paying about $10/month more than shared hosting, and I think it's totally worth it.  VPSLand's support is stellar so far.

Oh, and I have a question for you all:  I plan on tinkering with rails, and I've read the long steps to get rails to work in IIS but should I?  Or should I just install apache or Lighttpd and run it on port 81?