Post by Peter Cooper on June 15th, 2007
BrightBox: Finally a Rails-focused VPS in the UK?
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Brightbox is a soon-to-launch Rails-focused VPS hosting provider in the UK. I've whined about the gap in this market a few times before, so it was literally guaranteed I'd e-mail about the first attempt I was told about. They're going to be offering Ubuntu Dapper based VPSes with an optimized Rails stack (using Apache 2.2 and Mongrel cluster) along with a mirror MySQL cluster and mirrored RAID storage. They seem set to launch on July 1st. There's an e-mail mailing list available on the site for those who want a reminder.
In the meantime, Jeremy Jarvis of Brightbox is looking for beta testers of the service. They'll provide a free "Brightbox" for testing purposes initially, and later on will offer a "nice discount" (don't ask me how much!) and support perks for any beta testers. Their criteria are developers who use Rails almost exclusively for new projects, who currently host (or are looking to host) a Rails-powered app, who have experience of deploying Rails apps, and who has a Ruby or Rails related blog. If this interests you, drop them a mail at beta-req@brightbox.co.uk.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
£50 a month is a lot. For the same price (plus VAT), you can get a 64bit Athlon 3500+ cpu, 1Gb of RAM, 2x160Gb Raid 1 HDDs, a free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth with a 100mbit connection to the net (I've transferred 1.5Tb of data in a month before), 160Gb backup FTP space, an *external hardware firewall*, up to 8 IP addresses and a serial interface. Check out the dedicated servers at 1and1.co.uk. It's without a doubt the best service available. Only £50 setup fee too. I've had my server for over a year now and never had any problems at all.
Why get a virtual server when you can get a dedicated one with a ton more features for the same price?
June 15th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I definitely agree to a certain extent, although I personally like all my hosting to be in the US (otherwise Americans claim your site is slow ;-)) I think it's good /someone/ is doing something here though. I guess what you gain is the Rails stack which.. isn't that hard to rig up yourself, but there's definitely a lot of people who are very unconfident about doing it and would rather pay.
Look at the prices of things like SliceHost, EngineYard, and so forth compared to unmanaged dedicated hosting in the US.. it's a massive price difference, but these companies do well none-the-less, so perhaps BrightBox will get a similar clientele here.
January 27th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
[...] “UK’s first” Ruby on Rails Focused VPS HostingFour months ago I posted “BrightBox: Finally a Rails-focused VPS in the UK?” and now BrightBox’s project has come to fruition. BrightBox is a UK based VPS host [...]