I'm entering into Virtual Hosting. Many of the pages and services I've run out of spare gear at FSG are now moved or moving to a virtual host. I chose VPSLink for their $7/mo tiny server, then while moving my domain name pointers discovered that Gandi.net is starting a virtual hosting business with more RAM and disk for about the same price.
Living in a tiny slice of a virtual host is certainly different from living in a leftover 2GHz/1GB/500GB PC, fortunately I remember when 64M of RAM was huge so I think I'll get by just fine.
- postfix/dovecot in TLS, lighttpd+fastcgi+php5 all fits nicely.
- TLS incurs a fair bit of RAM use.
- CPU use is odd. I don't have visibility to know if I am CPU bound. I don't think I am, but I can't see from inside my Xen box.
- The machine is noticeably sluggish at things like an initial rsync backup offsite. Slow disk? Slow network? I'm not sure.
- The total annual bill will cost less than the electricity to keep a PC powered up. Happy Earth Day!
I guess if you find the site gone and just this at archive.org you'll know I've had a virtual hosting disaster. I don't foresee a problem. I don't know what the hosting company does if a machine fails, but I keep a full backup every night in my closet so I'll be ok.