Feb 122011
 

NOTE: I did this WITHOUT any serious numbers, though I have some numbers, and it was the test for specific areas, so if you disagree with me, it’s fine and I’d like to see your opinions here.

Environment: Godaddy Virtual Dedicate Server Economy Linux CentOS vs. Linode 512 plan (hosting in Fremont), I’m not sure where Godaddy is hosting my service and I cannot choose.

Network quality – I cannot tell who’s better as it needs more research and I used to be a junior ops so I don’t think I can do it. I tested latency and packet lost rate with mtr (running for about 30 minutes), from China Telecom in Shanghai with 2M DSL:

  • Godaddy: 184ms / 2.6% / 55KBps
  • Linode: 146ms / 4.9% / 240KBps (I think I reach the limit of my 2M DSL)

and from China Unicom in Beijing with a hosting service’s colocation:

  • Godaddy: 224ms / 0.5% / 3MBps
  • Linode: 190ms / 0.5% / 4MBps

actually the download speed from Chine Unicom is quite unstable, both numbers are peak, while Linode can stay @ about 3MBps, and Godaddy is actually around 1.5MBps.

My site is not bandwidth sensitive (no much traffic) so download speed doesn’t make too much sense to me, while latency and packet lost rate is sort of important since I do prefer stable and fast SSH connection while doing maintenance and VPN – both have acceptable quality to me.

For customer service, both Godaddy and Linode are doing great job, especially in mail response. Godaddy’s online chat feature is cool, but everytime I have to wait way too long to get someone responding me.

Now comes the best part from Linode – it is Xen based virtual server so I can run VPN server on it (PPTP), while Godaddy can do nothing, either PPTP or OpenVPN. Also, Linode supports more recent Linux Distros like Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 14, and it can be easily re-imaged. Godaddy is running OpenVZ, so …

Anyway, I would like to test longer to check stability, last time my hosting with Godaddy went down for about 3 hours (I guess it was network problem but haven’t heard any official explanation from them), that’s the reason I started testing Linode.

I will comment here in a week or two after I get some basic idea with stability, for now, I’d like to suggest Linode.

  One Response to “Godaddy vs Linode”

  1. BTW, Linode offers self-reboot and console access, which is great – waiting godaddy people boot your machine is kind of pain.

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