New VPS with betterhost.ca
I’ve just signed up for a new VPS with betterhost.ca. They’ve got some amazing deals on at the moment - see here - and it will be interesting to see if the can offer the support and stability to match the price. Seems unlikely but you never know!
I did have a few problems after setup. Initially after receiving the welcome e-mail I couldn’t ssh to (or even ping) the server. I contacted support and they said “we’ll delete that server and create you a new one”, a bit strange but fair enough I guess.
It didn’t take long for them to create the new server - I must have had a working VPS about an hour after my order was placed.
I’d asked for Ubuntu, my current favorite distro. It was installed with Dapper 6.06 and I had a go at upgrading to Feisty. I’d done this a few times on different VPS’s but ran into dependency problems and couldn’t get it to update cleanly. So, as there was a Ubuntu Feisty image listed in the control panel I decided to put that on. After re-imaging it turned out that the image didn’t even have sshd running. I managed to get that going via the control panel but still couldn’t connect. I tried to reboot but my VPS wouldn’t come up at all.
So, contact support and they rebuilt it again.
This time I decided to re-image it with CentOS and have a play with that. So I put the CentOS 5 image on there, rebooted and, you guessed it, my VPS would boot.
So, I’m guessing support are getting fed up with me now but they rebuild it again with CentOS 4 and I decide to stop playing with images now and just update CentOS 4 with Yum.
I’m not really sure why I had so many problems with trying to put different images on my VPS. It’s something I’ve done plenty of times with other providers so I know it’s possible. I’m not sure how long Betterhost have been offering VPS’s or how mature their OS templates are. They’ve taken the Ubuuntu 7.10 VPS template off their servers for now - they said Ubuntu 7.10 has a bug that prevents it working on a VPS. Hmmmmm……
This blog is now running on that VPS now I didn’t really have any problems setting Wordpress up. I’ve got another call in with support as it looks like the time is wrong on the host server. I normally hate placing support calls but, with a VPS, there are quite a few things that are out of your control.
If my VPS is stable for the price I’ve paid I’ll be more than happy. The VPS was built quickly and support have definitely been responding to my many tickets. Hopefully now things are setup I’ll leave them in peace a little 
I’ll post after a month or so to say how stable things have been.
Related posts:
- Setting up a vps with cheapvps.co.uk [part1]
- Trying to cancel your fusionxhost account!
- 10 steps to a Xen domU
3gpvid:
I have vps with them since 1st November 2007. Lately, support seems like does not exist anymore. I sent them email request for help (to sales, billing and nicholas) on 1st and 2nd Jan 2008. No one bothering to answer till today. I have to do manage my self even when I bought the vps it come with managed. Don’t know what is happening with them. Next month, I maybe go somewhere else.
9 January 2008, 5:04 ammatt:
I must say they’ve not been too bad for me although I get the impression there’s not many people there that really know how things are setup. The front line support can’t help with very much as far as the VPS’s but it’s never taken too long to talk to someone that does.
I’ve tried a few different VPS providers so far and my favorite has definitely been http://www.slicehost.com
9 January 2008, 8:23 amwalterbyrd:
I have two VPS accounts with betterhost.ca, both are down hard, and have been for hours. I can not even ping my sites by name or IP address.
Although betterhost.ca advertises 24/7 phone support, it does not seem to be available. There is no phone number that I can find.
I would like to know what is going on, and what I can expect. But all I can do is ineffectively submit helpdesk tickets.
14 March 2008, 1:48 pm