Web hosting to VPS hosting

I've been wanting to swtich from web hosting to a VPS hosting but cost was always an issue. Well, these days, VPS hosting is pretty cheap and it seems it averages around $50 dollars to entry point level (typically 256MB memory with 5GB diskspace and several hundred data transfer per month).

Web hosting is so cheap (I was paying about $10/m) so I wan't sure if it is worth moving to VPS hosting. Then I found this service at VPSLAND.COM (I don't work for them) which offer the bare minimum option at $20/m. It comes with 256MB and 5GB disk with 100GB monthly transfer. Another attractive thing about this provider was their "incremental" upgrade options. Other places had coarse upgrade increments: in order to move to the next grade, you go up to $80 bucks or sometimes over $100. VPSLAND gives half-dozen steps with $5 dollar increments. My plan is to start with the bare minimum, and then gradually step up according to the actual pain I experience. That makes more economical sense.

I signed up for VSPLAND last night at 10PM, and rigth now (at 11AM next day) I received all information I needed to migrate to the their hosting environmenet. I just had a successfull initial "hello" test using index.htm (using IP, not domain name yet)

For the existing web hosting service, I just had a live chat with a sale rep and he canceled it for me. It was a good provider for web hosting. They just didn't have a VSP hosting option that I was looking for.

The new provider sent me DNS nameserver information. My registar is domainbank, so I went there and updated two NDS nameserver info.

Next, DNSLAND sent me IP and login instruction. I started RemoteDesktop and logged in successfully. Great to be able to log into my own server. Now I can do all kinds of fun stuff on this server.

RemoteDesktop experience is slow, but acceptable. Considering it only has 256MB of dedicated memory, it was not completely unusable. All IIS related services were stopped, so I created a dummy default website folder, and had IIS Default Web to point to it. Then I put a test file there. Accessing from outside worked. Good.

The next thing was to put an ASP.NET page. I then realized that it only had .NET 1.1 Framework. That wont fly. I need 2.0 environment.

I haven't migrated to Visual Studio 2008 yet, but plan to do so soon at work. I also need a Visual Studio but can't afford a developer edition, so decided to go with Express edition.

Downloading Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition took me a while... Why Microsoft makes simple download experience so complicated? I just need a file downloaded and start runing it. It was partly due to the additional security measures in Windows 2003 Server and IE 7. You just have to configure it right to get it passed (but without completely negating the usefulness of these security features).

I thought about installing Visual C# but I decided to wait. I will start with Web Developer, keeping all business logic in App_Code folder for now (I now it is not the best practice).

.NET framework 2.0, 3.5, Visual Web Developer, and SQL 2005 Express will take up 1.5 GB of disk space. I have only 5GB so I need to be conservative. If I want more, then I need to move to a option which is at $30/m. The one at $25 does not give me more diskspace, but doubles the memory.

By the way, VSPLAND didn't charge any setup fee, which is good thing too.

I will post any positive/negative experience with this new hosting provider, but for now, it tooks great.