<blog:entry xmlns:xh="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:blog="http://www.adamretter.org.uk/blog" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.adamretter.org.uk/blog http://www.adamretter.org.uk/blog/entry.xsd" status="published" id="d08a3bce-6e95-4af3-b706-d28fc00b99d3">
    <blog:article timestamp="2010-11-22T16:39:00.000+01:00" author="Adam Retter" last-updated="2010-11-22T22:16:39.000+01:00">
        <blog:title>Open Indiana Web Hosting</blog:title>
        <blog:sub-title>My entic.net Virtual Private Server Migration</blog:sub-title>
        <blog:article-content>
            <xh:p>I have been hosting my own websites for a couple of years now with a company called <xh:a href="http://www.entic.net">Entic.net</xh:a>. Entic.net offer Solaris hosting, by providing full VPS's (Virtual Private Server's) via <xh:a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/containers/index.html">Solaris Zones</xh:a> technology, they are a great little company with excellent personal support. I am so happy with their service and assistance over the last couple of years, that I really feel I have to sing their praises in public!</xh:p>
            <xh:p>I originally started out with Entic.net in mid 2008, when I was looking for affordable Solaris 10 hosting after doing some benchmarking with an <xh:a href="http://exist-db.org">eXist-db</xh:a> application and discovering that the best performance was achieved when running atop Solaris 10. Entic.net were at that time able to provide me with a Sun Solaris 10 VPS (curd.entic.net) for just $20 USD/month. Whilst it was located in their US San Jose data center and I am in the UK, I decided that the geographical location did not really matter to me, after all we are both connected to the web!</xh:p>
            <xh:p>In June 2009 they assisted me (at no charge!) in migrating to an <xh:a href="http://www.opensolaris.org">Open Solaris</xh:a> VPS (well.entic.net) again still at $20 USD/month, for someone who also spends a lot of time in Linux, the move to Open Solaris made server admin much easier - due to the integration of more GNU tools when compared to its predecessor.</xh:p>
            <xh:p>As I am an incurable technology junkie, and had been wondering about where to go from Open Solaris now that Oracle have taken over, I contacted Entic.net and enquired about their plans. To my joy I found out that they were already operating some <xh:a href="http://www.openindiana.org">Open Indiana</xh:a> servers and would be more than happy to help me migrate (again at no charge!) if I so wished. I also learnt that Entic.net had expanded and now also have a London data center, and that I could choose to have VPS's located in either.</xh:p>
            <xh:p>I jumped at the chance, so Entic.net (well actually, I did it via their self-service web dashboard) setup a new Open Indiana VPS (rama.entic.net), in parallel to my existing VPS and allowed me to migrate in my own time. <xh:img class="left" src="blog/images/entic-vps-dashboard.jpg" alt="Entic.net VPS dashboard" title="Entic.net VPS dashboard"/>I decided to locate my new VPS in London, im not sure why, but it felt right. I also took the opportunity to increase the memory available to my VPS, taking the cost from $20/month USD to $31 USD/month total, but thats still cheap! Increasing the memory is again completely automated via their self-service web dashboard, changes take effect within minutes, and without needing to reboot the VPS!</xh:p>
            <xh:p>So... I now have my shiny new Open Indiana Web Server up and running, I am of course running eXist-db and <xh:a href="http://www.nginx.org">Nginx</xh:a> on <xh:a href="http://www.adamretter.org.uk/blog/entries/open-indiana-web-hosting.xml">here</xh:a>, and so far it all seems fast and stable. I may consider a follow up article detailing the steps to setup eXist-db and Nginx on Open Indiana if there is enough interest.</xh:p>
            <xh:p>...and, a big thank you to everyone at Entic.net for your excellent service and support, Cheers!</xh:p>
        </blog:article-content>
    </blog:article>
    <blog:tags>
        <blog:tag>Open Indiana</blog:tag>
        <blog:tag>Open Solaris</blog:tag>
        <blog:tag>Solaris</blog:tag>
        <blog:tag>entic.net</blog:tag>
        <blog:tag>web</blog:tag>
        <blog:tag>hosting</blog:tag>
    </blog:tags>
</blog:entry>