I hate web hosting. I really do. I think that hosting is one of the most annoying parts of having web apps. It is hard to do. it is hard to manage. It is always more expensive that it needs to be. And it is constantly breaking in ways that severely damage whatever app is hosted on it. However, I have been lucky.

Since 2001, I have had boxes hosted in a collocation environment at OSU. They have held 4 boxes for me and have enabled me to bring countless boxes to life. For the longest time, I would read about peoples experiences with dreamhost and mediatemple and just laugh. I didn’t have any of the problems they did. I didn’t have to pay for bandwidth, I didn’t have to pay for a rack. There was no overages of any kind. It was all one lump sum a month and I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to do with that.

It allowed me to create a couple websites that I would not be able to host anywhere due to the insane bandwidth usage of the sites. I was able to create a repository of 9/11 media. And then run about 90g a day in bandwidth hosting that media. I was able to be slashdotted and dugg without noticing or having my box be effected. I was able to learn and experiment with new technologies and what not. It was awesome. I even made money every once and awhile.

However, I was paying an assload of money for all this - and I needed to cut some costs. So I decided to drop a box and find another host.

So I found Mosso. Mosso is awesome. Well, I guess I should say that they seem like they are awesome. They offer a dream of a hosting solution: 100 bucks - 80g of space, 2000mb of transfer. perfect. I can place all my smaller sites on one account and rock it out. It was cheaper than my colo box and it had more space. And the customer service was amazing. Plus it was rackspace backed - whom I love. So I was in like flynn. However, they sucked. Seriously. My sites have been down. Then email is slow. You should see the message boards. People are not happy. I will point you over to Derek who is totally fed up and has detailed a bit more of the issues. It is annoying - cuz they seem like a perfect solution.

So this bring me to this week. On Monday, I received word that the colo I have been with since 2001 is closing. They are shutting their doors for bigger and better things. It is rather sad. almost 6 full years hosted there. A lot of money and a lot of memories. I have gotten many a job and many a gig based off my work in that environment. I am scared to leave that flexibility. But I have to.

And since Mosso sucks and is dying, I don’t have that to fall back on.

So what do I do. I am thinking about seeing looking to rackspace and seeing if I could afford a single box with their managed server division. or maybe splitting a bigger single box with Derek. I am not sure. All I know is that I can’t afford the money that real collocation costs and I can’t afford the inflexibility that shared hosting costs. Maybe in the time that I find a solution Mosso will solve all their problems.

[tags]mosso, rackspace, collocation, hosting, oar.net[/tags]