I have been planning to do some enhancement on my server. I used Laravel Forge to provision my server, but one of the problem when using Laravel Forge provision server is there is no server stat you can monitor.

When I am looking for a solution, suddenly I recall that Linode is coming with a free tool call “Longview“. Although the free version only keep track of 12 hours of historical data, it should be enough, and it is only one button click to upgrade if there is a need.

I going to show you step by step how to install Longview on your server, the following instructions assume that you have a Laravel Forge provisioned server and own a Linode account.

1. First login your Linode Manager, navigate to Longview section and click on “Add Client”, there should be a pop-up show.

2. Now login your server through SSH and follow the instruction do the “curl -s xxx xxx | sudo bash” command, you will see lots of text running after you key in the command.

3. Once everything has been download and configure, there will be a popup asking to autoconfigure status page, choose No

4. Once it done, create a conf file under /etc/nginx/conf.d/ , you can done it with simple command

sudo vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/longview.conf

insert the content for this conf file

server {
    listen 127.0.0.1:80;
    server_name 127.0.0.1;
    location /nginx_status {
        stub_status on;
        allow 127.0.0.1;
        deny all;
    }
}

5. Restart the Nginx server through the Laravel Forge interface.

6. By now checking on the Longview interface on Linode, you should be start seeing the server stat.

P/S Linode has just expanded to Singapore, you can now launch your instance in Singapore DC !

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Coming soon: Singapore and Frankfurt, Germany datacenters! http://t.co/smKGU5vfMD

— Linode (@linode) January 16, 2015

I been a long time Linode user and I love using Linode , but 70% of my monthly charge are going to Digital Ocean for one reason , Digital Ocean have Singapore data center. Most of my clients are based in Singapore and some of my client are target on Malaysia, so that’s pretty much explain my choice of Digital Ocean.

Soon both will be available for Singapore data center, let’s do a feature comparison between Linode vs Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean

• no billing bandwidth currently  – https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/are-we-billed-for-bandwidth-usage
• one button install app , the one button install Gitlab is my favourite – https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-gitlab-one-click-install-image-to-manage-git-repositories
• can pay by paypal
• SSH key deploy when launch new node

Linode

• better value if you want instance that more than 2GB ram
• the SSD performance is way better on Linode
• various interesting add-on like node balancer and longview – https://www.linode.com/addons.
• Although there is bandwidth limit for each for your instance, but you are allowed to share the bandwidth between your instances.

I will be migrate all my DO production droplet over to Linode, once Linode start to offer Singapore as a choice, so that I can consolidate all my hosting under one roof. There is another interesting company call Vultr  , just wonder will they expand to Singapore too.

If you plan to signup any of these service, please use my referral link

for Linode – link

for DO – link

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It’s clearly the pressure from Digital Ocean on both pricing and SSD, when Linode previously upgrade everyone has been asking what about the SSD ? today finally Linode has migrated as a SSD VPS provider and it seem like the SSD they using is datacenter-grade, so far lots of performance report has show that SSD performance is way better then DO.

Other then SSD, there are some other feature upgrade, like using better processor ,40Gbps network and hourly billing, compare the $20 category for both DO and Linode, you can find that Linode is giving better deal now, don’t forget what Linode provided is far greater then DO , for example the managed service , long view, node balancer.

I m a long time Linode supporter , but iI just cancel it last month,  If I know that they going to have this upgrade, I won’t cancel my pla. I just cancel it and move it to dnssimple since I use it more for dns purpose, but I guess I will be back to Linode very soon.

so my advice

if you want to have stable VPS which is above $20 category please choose Linode

if you need a budget VPS which is below $20 and you need it be at Singapore Data center , please choose Digital Ocean.

If you don’t want a VPS , just want to have nice dedicated share hosting, please choose Webfaction.

The post Linode Strike Back appeared first on I'm Knight.

I still remember the old day where Linode vs Slicehost , then Slicehost been acquired by rackspace and people start moving to Linode,  but for the past 1 year Linode seem like a bit quiet , just when everyone think that Linode is no longer being competitive , They release the 3 major update since last month.

1. The Network – increase the outbound transfer by 1000%
2. The Hardware – changing the CPU to 8 core.
3. The RAM – upgrade ram for 100%

the price for all these improvement ? just the 0.05 cent to round-up their current plan, don’t forget their praised support and well collection of library.

some user are compare Digital Ocean with Linode , if purely compare just the pricing, Linode is more expensive than DO for the same setup, but I believe Linode is more mature to handle your production , I won’t mind putting some test project on DO. If you need an developer friendly VPS  take Linode , if you need a developer friendly shared hosting take webfaction.

The post NextGen Linode appeared first on I'm Knight.

I been struggle on hosting recently , I need to some hosting which is low ping to me and cater for Singapore and Malaysia user, but I can’t really find any suitable host here, most of the host are full with useless feature for developer, the only choice I have is to leverage on Singapore Amazon AWS , but the funny thing is different ISP from Malaysia getting very different ping result for Singapore AWS.

Recently VPS.Net release the beta test of their JP DC, it’s quite smooth for ping test result but I don’t really like their interface , maybe I been pamper by Linode interface already or their ease of use features, I just find that VPS.net don’t really cut in for my need. I was thinking if only Linode have DC in Asia, so I fire a support ticket and ask and it seem like the Support just keep their mouth shut on this new release !

You might asking what so good about Linode ? Imagine for my case , I already have an US Linode running, added with this new JP Linode, I can ..

• Bandwidth Pooling – share the Outgoing between my US and JP Linode , since incoming traffic has become free. My US Linode might be using some of the bandwidth only but my JP Linode can have bigger share of traffic without extra cost.
• Internal Transfer is Free – transfer data between different instance of Linodes is not calculated as bandwidth usage.

If you want to give Linode a try , please use my referral code , this will give me a bit of token to fund my project. Don’t forget Linode billing is daily based , you can remove it any time to get back the credit of unused time , but if you want to refund there is a $5.00 refund processing fee.

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So what happen is Linode update their product line today, their entry level VPS now is starting from 512MB in stead of 360MB, which mean now you can get a 512MB unmanaged VPS for $19.95 ! This deal is not coming from some oversell VPS provider, you actually get a XEN VPS 512MB for just $19.95 plus you getting some great support from Linode and developer focus community.

Personally I feel that Linode is doing a great  job this time, if they can handle the mass request from the market and getting everything under control, this might be really bring in tons of reputation and customer for them.But other this, maybe Linode should start to work with some other Partner to provide more VPS or developer related service ? example like VPS.net , they been work with some partner and provide free control panel and code hosting account.

If you feel like give Linode a try , please use my referral code : 918fd8bfbc25162ecfbe1235ad8c83e5499ec29f or visit Linode by the clicking on the image below.

Click me to try out one of the best VPS Hosting

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I m highly recommend VPS Bible to all the VPS noob/VPS beginner , What you can getting from this membership ?

• the step by step articles is great to learn all the basic of setup a VPS
• the latest release stackscripts will do most of the jobs by itself
• useful and current information ,example like  comparison between different FCGI and release of stackscripts that setup a Linode box on Lucid 10.04 , Lucid is only release some time ago.

I have learned a lot from VPS Bible’s Articles , now I can even change the WordPress Stack to suit my need. For just $15 a year , I would say this is really a great deal.

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Since they are so great , why am I leaving ?

• My pingdom monitor did report some short down time which i believe it happen due to memory issue, this blog seem like consume quite a lot of memory.
• I always want to get my hand dirty on VPS.
• I going to spend more $$ on VPS , cancel this account can reduce my hosting spending.

Now this blog is live on Linode VPS and it seem like it using less memory and having better performance, but the first few day of the server configuration nearly knock me down, I almost want to move back to Webfaction at some point in time, in the end i manage to resolve the memory issue.

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How to easily setup LEMP on Linode? I just make use of Linode’s StackScripts feature

1. Select the Deploying using StackScripts links when you deploy your new Linode, select LEMP StackScripts and filling some of the fields, it will auto deploy your VPS.
2. Once the VPS deployment done, the StackScripts will start running , it should take about 20~30 min , just wait for your VPS displaying nginx welcome message means the setup is done.
3. You will find that the nginx init script seem like broken, you can’t really issue restart or stop command, just follow this article to create a new nginx init script .
4. One important thing to take note is the path for Daemon, it shall be DAEMON=/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx
5. The final step is changing of socket by following this article.
6. Don’t forget to change the date time in your /usr/local/lib/php/php.ini to avoid date time error in your php log.

Some reference , there are different way to setup PHP with nginx

• php build in FastCGI server
• spawn-fcgi – setup article on Linode’s Library
• php fpm – setup article on Interface Lab

Base on my research it seem like  PHP-FPM is winning in term of performance and it will be integrate into PHP core, that’s why it should be the first choice if you try to setup a LEMP box , but since you need to manually compile PHP, it will be quite troublesome to do upgrade.

If you find it this post is helpful and planning to get a Linode box , please use my referral code , this will help me fund my box, thanks.

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I mention this before documentation / help file will be useful for developer friendly host , in fact some time it become one of the benchmark for hosting, Linode have some nice VPS offer , what they lack of are these help file and documentation, although there are not many contents yet compare to slicehost’s articles , but i believe this is a great start for Linode, kudos to the Linode Team.

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