VPSLink Winter Forecast Calls For Sale

The winter forecast is often glumly predictable: clouds, rain, snow, sleet, and – inevitably – plenty of time spent to indoors to avoid the weather. We decided (perhaps in response to the gloomy weather or being cooped up indoors for too long) that it was time to brighten things up with a winter sale.

We’ve reduced the pricing on our most popular VPS hosting plans, with savings of up to 25% on the Link-3.

What does this mean for you?

• You can host your next LAMP or Ruby on Rails project on your own virtual private server for less than $20 per month with a Link-3
• WHM / cPanel VPS hosting for resellers on the Link-4 plan just became even more affordable at VPSLink at less than $30 per month before licensing fees on the Link-4 when you prepay for one year
• Our sale pricing (cumulative with any existing – *ahem* referral program *ahem* – discounts) offers the best pricing you’ll find at any reputable VPS hosting provider

If nothing else, we are hoping that this sale will brighten your day and give you something to stave off winter boredom and cabin fever (it may already be too late for us) when you sign up for a new virtual private server or upgrade your existing service’s plan or billing cycle to take advantage of our winning prices.

Compare VPS plans to find the hosting bargain that’s right for you, but don’t sweat it if you would like to take your time deciding – like most forecasts ours isn’t set in stone, but you can count on these sale prices through March 31st April!

Why the change?

Spry’s focus has always centered on providing top-quality shared web hosting and reseller VPS hosting with strong support. All of our hosting offerings – including our cPanel shared hosting, cPanel VPS hosting, and Plesk VPS hosting plans – cater to the needs of individuals and businesses who need website hosting (as conveniently, securely, and quickly as possible).

We’ve found that Webmin VPS users were right at home with Spry hosting, though they rarely needed the added benefit of a 24/7 support department and were often quite comfortable installing, upgrading, and tweaking Webmin on their own. Webmin’s flexibility allowed it to be used for a variety of applications aside from web hosting (which, in turn, inspired us to offer some new hosting options for advanced Linux users).

Enter VPSLink – the new addition to Spry’s brand – with unmanaged VPS hosting that fits the bill for Webmin installations with an even greater variety of popular Linux operating systems.

Over the last two years we have watched interest in the Webmin VPS at Spry shift towards the VPSLink service, and we would like to take this opportunity to give Webmin users the fully-configurable virtual private servers they’ve been looking for at VPSLink while re-dedicating the Spry brand to website hosting and web hosting reseller VPS solutions and the support you’ve come to expect from our diligent support team of technicians.

Please see the Debian and Debian-based Distribution Security Notice posted on the VPSLink forums and the SSL Keys entry at the Debian Wiki for more information regarding this vulnerability and recommended actions to address the potential security issues which may result from weak SSL keys.

We have dedicated ourselves to our simple goal, thousands of Linux users have signed on and put our service to the test, and we are looking forward to celebrating the anniversary of our service for years to come.

Celebrate with us: use coupon code ANNIVERSARY2 to claim a free year of VPSLink service on any plan when you select the 24-month billing cycle – see our VPS Hosting Plans to get started.

Hardy Heron stands out among recent Ubuntu releases because it is a Long-Term Support release: this version promises the stability you would expect from a Debian-based distribution, and it will be supported with security fixes until 2011.

The default Ubuntu 8.04 VPS template and pre-configured LAMP template are ready (and waiting) for installation on both the OpenVZ and Xen platforms.

Gaston will be remembered by history as the man who set the world’s first land speed record: on December 18th, 1898, he reached the speed of 39.24 miles per hour in his electric Jeantaud Duc.

The present land speed record stands at a scorching, sound-barrier-breaking 766 miles per hour over a one mile stretch – about twenty times the original record.

While Gaston’s record has been surpassed many times over, we felt that he deserved a mention while we’re doing some record setting of our own.

We would like to announce a new virtual private server hosting plan which doubles the impressive allocation our Link-6 plan offers:

The Link-7

• Disk space: 160 GB
• Bandwidth: 5000 GB
• Dedicated RAM: 4096 MB

Yes, that’s five terabytes of bandwidth and four gigabytes of RAM – we’re keeping a standard unit of measurement because the Link-1 would feel a bit left out if we started representing its allocation in decimals.

Every new Link-7 OpenVZ or Xen VPS will be provisioned instantly to quality Dell hardware in our fortified datacenter, backed by our 24/7 network uptime support, and ready to roll-out with your choice from our selection of thirty-three Linux operating system templates.

Have a record in mind? Now is the time to break it. The Link-7 is here to help.

Visit LinuxFest Northwest’s
Official Site >>

Do you live in the Pacific Northwest?
Do you love Linux?
Join us at LinuxFest Northwest 2008!

You will be in good company if you can make it to this formidable gathering: there will be a wide variety of presentations geared toward developers and Linux enthusiasts, and it’s likely that there will be about one thousand attendees, including Lyle (our Support Manager and resident Linux wizard) and myself.

We will be manning the Spry/VPSLink booth, distributing all manner of free stuff, and waiting to meet and greet any Spry/VPSLink customers who can stop in for the event.

If you needed any more convincing to make the trip, check out some accounts of others’ LinuxFest experiences.

We hope to see you there!

We are pleased to announce a 10% lifetime discount coupon for new orders at VPSLink.

Want in on this deal? Pick a plan and enter VPS0308 when prompted for a coupon code to get started (this offer is good for OpenVZ or Xen VPS hosting, any plan, any billing cycle).

If you have been considering the VPSLink (or if you’ve been thinking about starting up a new project on our unmanaged VPS hosting), this is a great time to sign up and enjoy the great prices and variety of options available at VPSLink:

• Full Root Access – Install what you want, when you want it
• Server Control Center – Manage every aspect of your VPS with instant provisioning and no hassle
• Operating System Choices – Choose from more than thirty operating system template across eight flavors of Linux
• Web Hosting Reseller Control Panels – Licensing for WHM / cPanel, DirectAdmin, and ServerCP+ is available (or check out HostInABox / LXAdmin – a free alternative)

We have plans for both Spry and VPSLink which will be coming to fruition in the near future… Subscribe to this blog and check back often – you’ll be glad that you did.

The release of this Gentoo template sheds some light on the Gentoo Foundation’s leadership controversy, which is chronicled throughout Daniel’s blog and spurs incisive comments from Anant Narayanan (a Gentoo contributor) in a blog post on Gentoo Politics.

Daniel describes the foundation he once presided over (and is still president of – on paper) as a disjointed and troubled organization which may have lost its way:

… there is a huge disconnect between Gentoo developers and the rest of the universe – by “universe” I mean Gentoo users, outside Gentoo-based projects, organizations using Gentoo Linux and the Open Source/Free Software community as a whole.

If you ask a typical Gentoo developer and a typical Gentoo user to explain the reason for this disconnect, you may find yourself getting two completely different answers.
The larger Gentoo community tends to view the Gentoo project as a cathedral of sorts. There is a priesthood of developers who control the direction of the project. There is very little communication coming out from the cathedral to inform users about what is going on.

- A tale of two cultures (Tuesday, January 15, 2008)

Daniel’s take on the present gap between the Gentoo development community and the Gentoo user community is reinforced by some of the snide comments which surface in Anant’s post:

To the users: things are beginning to settle down, I believe all the important paperwork has been filed and the foundation will regain its legal status soon (and as a bonus, as if it were never revoked). Things are fine, there’s no need for “drastic changes”. Don’t believe us? Too bad for you then, go use Debian.

- Gentoo Politics (Tuesday, January 22, 2008)

While Anant does not represent the Gentoo development community as a whole, one has to wonder whether or not his views are commonly held. One has less to wonder about upon seeing A Gentoo Developer’s Reply to Daniel’s offer to assist the Gentoo Foundation:

We have quite a number of developers who have been Gentoo developers longer than even you were, please allow those folks to continue to run the distribution. Like it or not, Gentoo keeps running and moving forward without your vision or interference. We’ve gotten by just fine for the past 4 years without you, we’ll be just fine. kthxbuhbye. - A Gentoo Developer

Not quite the level of respect you’d expect from a developer toward a distribution’s founder.

We will have to wait until the dust settles to know whether or not Gentoo’s business entity can live on without Daniel’s assistance. (… and whether or not users will grudgingly make the switch to Debian..?)

In the meantime, we would like to thank Daniel for releasing a new OpenVZ template that the Gentoo community at VPSLink will certainly appreciate. We’re planning to have the template ready for use with our instant provisioning system within a week.

We would like to show our thanks to Daniel Robbins by offering him free (as in “for life”) VPS hosting at VPSLink – we hope he’ll take us up on the offer.

We have updated the VPSLink.com site to reflect some of our newest offerings (including the Rails v2.0.1 stack) and improve usability by showing which VPS hosting plans are compatible with different options (like our LAMP stack OS templates and the WHM / cPanel reseller control panel).

We’ve also added a new section to the site which will compare key options like VPS platforms (OpenVZ vs. Xen) and Linux Operating Systems – check back soon for Linux OS template benchmarks.

What do you think of the new features? Have suggestions for content? We’d like to hear what you think!