[nylug-talk] Mail servers on dynamic IP addresses soon to be shunned nearly everywhere.

[Michael B Allen]

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:42:29 -0500
Ron Guerin <ron at vnetworx.net> wrote:

> Michael B Allen wrote:
> > If you care that much about your email, get a VPS with root and a fixed
> > IP for $20/mo.
> 
> That's good advice in general, for those who can afford it at least.

With a few people sharing a Linode VPS, you get one year of service for
the cost of dinner for two at a not-so-fancy resturant.

Let's review VPS pros and cons:

PROS:

o Good uptime. If the power in your house goes out you don't drop off
  the face of the earth.

o Huge bandwidth. Cable modem upload speed is a fraction of download speed
  (downloading from a cable modem is uploading).

o Very low chance of data loss since all drives are RAID mirrored. If
  they loose a drive, they just pop a new one in and you probably never
  know it.

o No hardware or network maintainence. The VPS provider keeps the
  machines running, kernels patched, debugs network problems. You only
  need to worry about DNS, domain registration and updating packages.

o Got root? Yup, install whatever you want.

o Choose your distro. Linode has about a dozen or so UML images to
  choose from.

o Not shared hosting. Someone can't hack your website by doing tricks
  from within. You are secured in your own VM (unless there is a kernel
  vulnerbility but that doesn't happen too frequently and the Linode guys
  are responsible for fixing stuff like that).

o IMAP server + SquirrelMail provides centralized but transparent email
  solution. No downloading mail to a specific machine and it's accessible
  anywhere with access to the Internet.

o Linode has a very active member community.

CONS:

o Not massive diskspace. The $20 Linode is 4 GB.

o Can't load kernel modules.

Mike

PS: I have no affiliation with Linode other than being a satisfied
customer.