Deth

Fitness and everything else

Trying A New Host And New Software Things

I recently switched my internet hosting providers to try out a different one. I used ReliableSite for a while and I have absolutely zero complains about it and no downtime at all. The only reason that I moved away from them is the fact that a dedicated server is overkill for what I need.

They did provide a great service and I would recommend them to anyone who has the need for a dedicated server. The only time that I needed to contact customer support was to request an IPV6 address. That only took a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon, so I’d consider support to be great.

With it being Black Friday last week, I thought that was the perfect time to see if I saw any good deals on a VPS. I wanted to try out a new to me provider that I haven’t used in the past. I settled on one with a yearly payment that will cost just a few bucks more than I was paying for my old dedicated server for two months.

The provider that I am trying out is SmartHost. I have been wanting to check them out for a while now. When I first saw them a few years ago, some things that really are unrelated made me feel a little uneasy. I have read good reviews, so I thought now was the time to try them out. So far, things have been good, but I can’t give an honest opinion on them in just a few days. The response that I got from failing a fraud check was friendly and fast. That was the first time that’s happened to me. I suspect that it was because I accidentally made two orders.

I didn’t intend to switch until that day. It was a very spontaneous decision. Like I seem to do with switching between providers so often. This is a hobby for me, and I like testing and trying different services and setups. I think it helps me learn more stuff.

While installing FreeBSD from the ISO I at first clicked on the default UFS at first then I thought Why the Hell not try out ZFS. I’ve been wanting to check it out for quite a while, but just haven’t gotten around to it. From what I read, the send feature could be very useful when switching to a new server. The whole idea of seeing if it’s better or even just transparent for my needs is what intrigues me about it. Of course, I will enjoy learning new ideas and things about how to tweak it.

The other thing different that I am giving a try is the PF firewall. I have been using IPFW, and it’s worked well for me. For some reason, when I needed to edit the rules, I had to keep looking at them to figure out where I need to place it. When recently saw a post about PF the rules looked much more readable at a glance, and they are now that I have it set up. The rules are less of a script and more human-readable, I think. Whether I stick with it or not time will tell, but now I have my rules ready and in configuration files for both programs. Options are always a positive thing.