For a few months I have been us­ing an un­man­aged vir­tu­al pri­vate serv­er from Tek­ton­ic, and I love it.

What's that? Let's take it one word at a time, and then some more.

1. It's a serv­er: which means it's a ful­l-ish lin­ux in­­stal­la­­tion. So it is ca­­pa­ble of do­ing lots of things. I can run all sorts of weird python thin­­gies in it if I wan­t. IMAPS and SSMT­P? No prob­le­­mo.

2. It's pri­­vate: which means I am root on it. I have the shel­l. I choose what to in­­stal­l.

3. It's vir­­tu­al: it's a Vir­­tuoz­­zo par­ti­­tion in a re­al serv­er. That means no cus­­tom ker­nel mod­­ules, and that since al­­most ev­ery­thing is shared with oth­­er in­­s­tances, 5GB of disk and 128MB of RAM go a long way.

4. It's un­­man­aged: which means I man­age it. Which is just the way I pre­fer it, since that's my job.

5. It's cheap. I start­ed on a 8 dol­lars a month plan (which does­n't seem to be there any­­more, the cur­rent cheap­­est is a 15 dol­lars plan).

6. It's a throw­­away. I want to host some client as a favour? I just put it there. I could even rent an­oth­er of these servers for a while, use it, then close it. Back­­up­s? Click­­ing on a we­b­­page saves the im­age! Oth­­er than that... I back it.

7. Fixed IP­s. All you want (for ex­­tra coin­s).

8. A home away from home. All my stuff is there. I need it, I get it. With­­out both­­er­ing about hav­ing my own serv­er at home via no-ip or some­­such (which of course I still have too ;-)

9. It works. It hard­­ly ev­er break­s. And hav­ing sur­­vived ex­pen­­sive, man­aged server­s, this ba­­by is work­ing just as well.

10. It's a nice gift. Sup­­pose you have a con­nec­­tion to a free soft­­ware pro­­jec­t/LUG/­­fam­i­­ly/what­ev­er, and they need a place on the in­­ter­net. Why not spon­­sor them with some­thing like this? I of­fered one to PyAr (which did­n't take it, but it's the thought that counts ;-)

11. The ul­ti­­mate learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence: you can re­­s­tore the sys­tem in 2 min­utes. Want to play/learn sysad­min­ing? Do it on the re­al vir­­tu­al thing! Much cheap­­er than hos­ing your own box ;-)

12. They of­fer a good ser­vice. So, peo­­ple should know about it. And of course... if you know a sim­i­lar, but even bet­ter deal... I'm all ears!