Web hosting in NZ for RoR

Maruis Marais

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Jul 26, 2006, 7:39:26 PM7/26/06

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Hi guys,

Appart from the three web hosts listed on http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts in nz.

Which web host do you use for hosting your rails apps? And how much does it cost?

I’m interested in getting a RoR blog up somewhere and wanted to know where the best place would be….

Cheers,

Maruis Marais

image001.gif

Jim Cheetham

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Jul 26, 2006, 7:44:24 PM7/26/06

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RimuHosting seem to be very well regarded.

I'm in the process of organising a server to fit the "best-efforts-only" support model; the use of that would therefore be cheaper than others. But it'll probably take me a month or two. I'm hoping to hand out Xen virtual machines within that.

-jim

John-Daniel Trask

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Jul 26, 2006, 9:15:24 PM7/26/06

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To be honest, I'm not sure what the fixation is with NZ based hosting - our
data costs so much that usually if you're getting a great deal the "NZ" host
is actually doing their hosting in data centers over seas.

My host is icdsoft and I've been with them for about 5 years now with
several accounts. They added RoR hosting recently and I've found them really
helpful with that. I had an issue getting a RoR application working and
their helpdesk guys asked for permission to edit the files and made the
change for me (it was a mild config issue I'd missed in having it hosted in
a subdirectory) and sent me details about what they did. All this within 4
minutes of me making the helpdesk request, which highlights another
fantastic thing about them - I have never submitted a help desk job and had
more than a 6 minute turn-around. No matter what the time.

They have 75,000+ hosting accounts, host out of the US or HK (started in HK)
and are quite professional. Their rates are low (~100 NZ for a year, few GB
of space, MySQL, PHP, ROR, 15GB traffic, domain name etc) but they seem to
be growing hugely.

I can't sing their praises more (I have also used some NZ hosts before
them).

http://www.icdsoft.com/?aff=bluecog.NavBanner (note: this is an affliate
link, drop the bit after the .com if you don't want to hook me up with some
free bling ;))

- JD

>From: "Maruis Marais" <mar...@orbiz.biz>
>Reply-To: WellR...@googlegroups.com
>To: <WellR...@googlegroups.com>
>Subject: Web hosting in NZ for RoR
>Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:39:26 +1200
>
>Hi guys,
>
>
>
>Appart from the three web hosts listed on
>http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts in nz.
>
>
>
>Which web host do you use for hosting your rails apps? And how much does
>it cost?
>
>
>
>I'm interested in getting a RoR blog up somewhere and wanted to know

>where the best place would be....
>
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>Maruis Marais
>
>
>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/Exceptionz>
>
>
>
>
>
>><< image001.gif >>

_________________________________________________________________
Become a fitness fanatic @ http://xtramsn.co.nz/health

Maruis Marais

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Jul 26, 2006, 9:17:27 PM7/26/06

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Sounds good.

What are the benefits of having your own virtual machines compared to the other web hosts options of unlimited MySQL databases, etc.?

Web hosting is not something I get in contact with a lot. Any pointers?

Cheers.

Maruis Marais

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Jul 26, 2006, 9:23:12 PM7/26/06

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That the other thing.

Should I just look at an international host?

There are US hosting companies that will give you great plans for around
$6.50 a month.

Thanx JD, I'll check out icdsoft.com

-----Original Message-----
From: WellR...@googlegroups.com [mailto:WellR...@googlegroups.com]

Jim Cheetham

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Jul 26, 2006, 10:01:53 PM7/26/06

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Should I just look at an international host?

Who is the target audience?
"Anybody"? ; host in the US where it's cheap and good
"NZ for large files"? ; host in NZ (i.e. local photographer galleries)

As JD says, the non-NZness of the hosting company isn't a downside from your perspective, management is just as good no matter where you are.

Tomek Piatek

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Jul 27, 2006, 2:43:13 AM7/27/06

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You should check out http://dreamhost.com/

-t

<image001.gif>

Nahum Wild

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Jul 27, 2006, 5:52:02 AM7/27/06

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Don't go with TextDrive. We have had nothing but trouble with our share server going down all the time.

Nahum.

-t

www.esdao.net/blog

barnacle

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Jul 27, 2006, 6:20:31 AM7/27/06

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I just signed up with them last weekend. After a few false starts (they
blocked my IP address from ssh as it looked dodgy) it is all up and
running now. It hosts your svn repositories, mysql, email, etc. and it
gives you one free domain name. Also if you do use them use the promo
code 'mddr' and sign up for the 2 year basic option if you don't need
more than 20GB/month traffic. It only cost me $165NZD.

I wouldn't give it a thumbs up yet since it is pretty early in the
piece but if you do go with them I can give a few pointers in what to
look out for setting up your access, etc.

Glen

Tomek Piatek wrote:
> You should check out http://dreamhost.com/
>
> -t
>
> On 27/07/2006, at 11:39 AM, Maruis Marais wrote:
>
> > Hi guys,
> >
> >
> >
> > Appart from the three web hosts listed on http://
> > wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts in nz.
> >
> >
> >
> > Which web host do you use for hosting your rails apps? And how much
> > does it cost?
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm interested in getting a RoR blog up somewhere and wanted to

> > know where the best place would be....
> >
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Maruis Marais
> >
> >
> >
> > <image001.gif>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
>
>
> --Apple-Mail-3--418265865
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> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> X-Google-AttachSize: 6010
>
> <HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">You should check out <A href="http://dreamhost.com">http://dreamhost.com</A>/<DIV> </DIV><DIV>-t<DIV> <DIV><DIV><DIV>On 27/07/2006, at 11:39 AM, Maruis Marais wrote:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><O:SMARTTAGTYPE namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PersonName"><DIV class="Section1">Hi guys,<O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "></O:P><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "> </O:P>Appart from the three web hosts listed on <A href="http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts">http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts</A> in nz.<O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "></O:P><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "> </O:P>Which web host do you use for hosting your rails apps? And how much does it cost?<O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "></O:P><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "> </O:P>I'm interested in getting a RoR blog up somewhere and wanted to know where the best place would be....<O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "></O:P><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "> </O:P>Cheers,<O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; "></O:P><ST1:PERSONNAME tabindex="0" style="BACKGROUND-POSITION: left bottom; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: url(res://ietag.dll/#34/#1001); BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat-x; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; " w:st="on">Maruis Marais</ST1:PERSONNAME><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; "></O:P><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; "> </O:P><A href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Exceptionz"><DIV><image001.gif></DIV></A><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; "></O:P><O:P style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; "> </O:P></DIV>

Keith Bauer

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Jul 27, 2006, 6:40:22 AM7/27/06

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> Tomek Piatek wrote:
>> You should check out http://dreamhost.com/

I'm with these guys. I can't speak for their rails hosting (except
that it's not perfectly straightforward, since they like to kill off
fastcgi processes).

The price is right, though, the service is good, and having ssh
access is great.

-Keith

Nik Wakelin

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Jul 27, 2006, 10:39:12 PM7/27/06

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A third for DreamHost - thus far brilliant for me (about 1 year)

--
[ munkywrench development ]
http://munkywrench.co.nz
munky...@gmail.com
(027) 424 5433

Nigel Ramsay

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Jul 28, 2006, 4:52:25 AM7/28/06

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We're using dreamhost too. They have a rather clunky yet functional
control panel.

Nigel
http://www.abletech.co.nz

Rik Wade

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Jul 28, 2006, 6:54:33 AM7/28/06

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On 27/07/06, Maruis Marais <mar...@orbiz.biz> wrote:

> What are the benefits of having your own virtual machines compared to the
> other web hosts options of unlimited MySQL databases, etc.?

I've been using Linux virtual servers for a few years after starting
to run Websites on shared hosting platforms in the mid 90's. A virtual
server is really good if you're very comfortable running your own
Linux system and like (or need) to get 'under the hood'. If you're not
bothered about the operating system itself and don't want to worry
about security patching etc. then don't bother. Go for shared hosting.

I'm personally very interested in a NZ-based Xen (or similar) host.
I'm with Rimuhosting in the US and Bytemark in the UK. Both have been
very good. I would, however, like a virtual host in NZ for personal
email/Website use in order to bring the latency down from around 300ms
to the US, to sub 80ms within NZ. This just makes a difference when
doing shell work, or doing file/email manipulation.

I'd also be interested to hear about good prices on co-location in NZ
as I'm happy to co-locate a physical box.
--
rik

Henry Maddocks

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Mar 3, 2007, 5:15:01 PM3/3/07

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http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/287/dreamhosts-super-lame-no-i-mean-really-super-lame-apology

Tim Haines

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Mar 3, 2007, 6:49:20 PM3/3/07

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I'd have to give Dream Host a thumbs down too. The one click installs they offer are awesome, but their reliability is pretty bad. Over the course of three months they went down at least twice a month. Normally short outages, but still long enough to be noticed by those that need to use the websites.

Tim.

On 04/03/07, Henry Maddocks <henry.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/287/dreamhosts-super-lame-no-i-mean-really-super-lame-apology

ben wiseley

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Mar 4, 2007, 1:45:03 AM3/4/07

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If your budget is a bit higher go with Rimu Hosting http://rimuhosting.com/ - their support is ridiculously good and they support Rails (although no one-click install that I know of yet). I'm in Seattle, WA and I'd have to say that this New Zealand hosting company is better than anything I've found anywhere - including the very over priced http://www.rackspace.com/index.php which one company I work with uses for production.

-ben

Nigel

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Mar 4, 2007, 3:38:11 PM3/4/07

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One of the things I appreciate about Dream Host is their honesty. They
publish all of the faults and outages on their status page:

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

I suspect they are no worse than other hosting providers - it's just
that everyone is more aware of when faults do occur.

Compare this with TelstraClear's network status page that never seems
to change:

http://networkstatus.telstraclear.co.nz/

On Mar 4, 12:49 pm, "Tim Haines" <tmhai...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd have to give Dream Host a thumbs down too. The one click installs they
> offer are awesome, but their reliability is pretty bad. Over the course of
> three months they went down at least twice a month. Normally short outages,
> but still long enough to be noticed by those that need to use the websites.
>
> Tim.
>

> On 04/03/07, Henry Maddocks <henry.maddo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/287/dreamhosts-super-lame-no-i-mean-r...

Andrew Hedges

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Mar 5, 2007, 10:32:03 AM3/5/07

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Hi, first time posting, soon to be Kiwi :^)

I haven't used Dreamhost myself, but I have friends who are ready to
ditch them. Their reliability is, in fact, worse than other hosts.
Here's a great source of hard data on uptimes, outages, failure rates,
etc.:

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?tn=february_2007

Personally, I use pair Networks. I've been on them since 1997 and have
had outstanding reliability and service. They promise to start
supporting RoR on shared hosting and their "QuickServe" managed
servers starting sometime this month. They're not the cheapest around,
but they may just be the best.

No, I don't work for them, but I do get a kickback if you use my
referral link! :^)