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[MedO]

Sooo, today I did some researchy things and found out that we can get a server for the same price as on HE from DE.Punkt, and they have newer Ubuntus too: https://www.de-punkt.de/vserver.html

We could have one for significantly cheaper from them (9 Eur instead of 13) if we only take 1GiB of RAM though, which might be worth considering. I also like that they apparently don't bind you for a year at a time, but on the other hand I find it difficult to get in-depth information about their offers (e.g. what this "Fair Flat" traffic option actually means... Host Europe defines the limits very clearly (and generously).

On the HostEurope side of things, it is very probable that we can get one of the new servers with 2GiB of RAM for the same price once we switch to a new OS, and maybe they'll switch us over sooner, too (they did that once before). I searched around a bit for information on when they will have Ubuntu 12.04 available, and they tentatively say Q1 2013, so there is hope yet. It's still weird that it would take them so long, though.

Next offer: Hetzner. http://www.hetzner.de/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserver-produktmatrix
They look much more professional than DE.Punkt, but also more expensive. Our customary 13 Eur/Month would buy us 1GiB of RAM and 40GiB of HD space and a 2TB traffic limit, though after the 2TB we'd still not pay more and only get throttled to 10MBit/s. There doesn't seem to be any automatic backup included (you can buy it for 5 Eur/Month extra).

Digital Ocean... They look interesting. Their website is too big-soft-button-y for my taste, but the prices look good and they do include backups in the deal. The 99.99% uptime guarantee is nice, but I'm not sure how realistic it is - and the only thing you get if they don't uphold it is a refund for the hourly hosting cost if I understand correctly, so if they don't manage to keep below the one hour per year downtime and keep us down for an entire day instead, they'd refund us 36 cents (on the smaller package). Anyway, I might set up an account with them for testing.

Edit: Oh yes, I should mention: Currently I'm leaning toward staying with Host Europe, but looking into Digital Ocean as well.

[ajf]

Next offer: Hetzner. http://www.hetzner.de/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserver-produktmatrix
They look much more professional than DE.Punkt, but also more expensive. Our customary 13 Eur/Month would buy us 1GiB of RAM and 40GiB of HD space and a 2TB traffic limit, though after the 2TB we'd still not pay more and only get throttled to 10MBit/s. There doesn't seem to be any automatic backup included (you can buy it for 5 Eur/Month extra).

I used Hetzner once, they didn't like my debit card and I ended up having to send the funds by wire to pay invoice.

[MedO]

After due consideration, I've decided to stay with Host Europe. The server will be reinstalled once they have Ubuntu 12.04 available, and at that time we'll also switch to another forum software - possibly SMF 2, but I'm not sure yet.

[ajf]

SMF 2 is a safe bet.

[MedO]

Things have been a bit wild on the server front: As many of you probably noticed we had four downtimes over the last week. Also, Host Europe decided to push back the availability of Ubuntu 12.04 until at least Q3 2013, so we won't be able to migrate from 8.04 straight to 12.04 because 8.04 won't receive security fixes anymore in a few weeks. The problem is that we already passed the point where I could have cancelled the contract with Host Europe for the next year, so we're probably stuck with giving them our money (150 euros for the year). On the other hand, switching *twice* (8.04 to 10.04, then 10.04 to 12.04) is significant extra work, so I'm still considering to take our ship elsewhere anyway.

I'm ruling out Digital Ocean now because their TOS seem overly restrictive. Hetzner is my current favorite.

[MedO]

We can haz virtual server at Hetzner nao: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_vserver/vq19

A bit more expensive than our current one (20 Eur / month), but it can be cancelled monthly and there is no setup fee, so I can just try it out for now. Also my brother might pay part of the fee and use it for his own nefarious purposes. If we decide to move over, we might still have the Host Europe server around for another year, but we don't need to let it run empty... might set up some game servers there or something

In any case, this would solve the Ubuntu problem, and since the new VS is actually a fully virtualized root server (no paravirtualization as Host Europe use), we can actually update our OS ourselves from now on, without wiping everything. Also we won't be limited in the number of TCP sockets anymore, which will be handy if we're ever stormed by tf2blog again.