VPSLink Plan Advisor

[DanL@VPSLink]

We released the Plan Advisor Questionnaire yesterday and we would like to hear what you have to think about it before we finish integrating it into the VPSLink site.

If you have a few spare moments and you would like to give it a try, visit the Plan Advisor or click the "Questionnaire" link from any page which displays our hosting plan table and post back to this thread with your thoughts.

[chriss]

Email VPSLink support - Incorrect - bwahahahahaha (Must be the sanitized revision

What an enjoyable 5 minute diversion. And the suggested plans were a reasonable match for my choices. The only negative I can comment on is the question used to determine the distribution. It is a little convoluted. Since I know the question's intent, I could understand it after a little deliberation, however I think it will floor someone that has no prior knowledge of the various distro's. Maybe something along the lines of:
Which aspect of linux administration is most important to you:
I need a point and click interface
I need extensive help from a friendly user community
I need a highly stable operating system

Let it fly.

[DanL@VPSLink]

RE: Technical skill questions - there are actually about ten different questions and one will be randomly assigned when you pick your skill level, so it may be interesting to return to the first question and try a different random question, too.

Originally Posted by chriss

Maybe something along the lines of:
Which aspect of linux administration is most important to you:
I need a point and click interface
I need extensive help from a friendly user community
I need a highly stable operating system

Good point - I like the example answers which you've provided, though we're not forcing anyone to select WHM / cPanel so the first answer may need a bit of rethinking for our purposes. I'll take a look at a revision to question #3.

Update: Done.

[FastEddie]

It picked the exact plan I am on (5). I like the questions and can imagine this really helping myself 4 years ago. Nice work!
-Ed

[chriss]

Originally Posted by DanL@VPSLink

RE: Technical skill questions - there are actually about ten different questions and one will be randomly assigned when you pick your skill level, so it may be interesting to return to the first question and try a different random question, too.

Ah, ok. My comment will need some clarification then. The one I was referring to was the openvpn one, the correct answer to which is naturally to rtfm. For fun I tried to see if emailing support would be a useful alternative and received the response that I posted. I felt it was quite humourous, although suspected the first revision (if the author shared my sense of humour) contained a few more choice words of wisdom, that would not pass censorship.

[DanL@VPSLink]

Heheheh... yes, that question in particular did not see much editing - only one question/answer combination didn't make the cut.

Branch: "Select the statement below which is closest to the truth:" / "I have never used Linux before." -> "How much time will you have to learn Linux systems administration so you may successfully administer your VPS?" / "No time / not enough" (The response for that selection was, similarly, "Incorrect")

While there is every reason to encourage new Linux users to learn on a VPS here at VPSLink, actively discouraging those who aren't interested in learning enough to do it right probably does fall outside the realm of our plan advisor (the remaining answers are "Enough to do it right" and "I will pay someone else to handle administration").

[chriss]

Originally Posted by DanL@VPSLink

... though we're not forcing anyone to select WHM / cPanel so the first answer may need a bit of rethinking for our purposes.

I had the same thought at the time, hence my choice of 'point'n click', which would cover webmin, ebox (ubuntu, so maybe not?), HIB etc. If this answer is chosen, it also implies 'webserver required, so ram++'.

[chriss]

Originally Posted by DanL@VPSLink

Branch: "Select the statement below which is closest to the truth:" / "I have never used Linux before." -> "How much time will you have to learn Linux systems administration so you may successfully administer your VPS?" / "No time / not enough" (The response for that selection was, similarly, "Incorrect")

Hmm, what was that old pearl of wisdom again? Ah, yes, "The truth hurts." Or that one about kitchens and heat may equally apply.

But yes, kidding aside, only the ninja's were born with the skill. The rest of us mere mortals also knew nothing before acquiring it.

[DanL@VPSLink]

Originally Posted by chriss

If this answer is chosen, it also implies 'webserver required, so ram++'.

True - at this point all of the RAM calculations are performed on question #5 (where cPanel and webserver software remain choices - selecting cPanel automatically selects Database, DNS, FTP, and the webserver options - all a part of the default cPanel configuration).

My goal is to establish the questionnaire for subscribers who are new to Linux or are moving from shared hosting and eventually establish two more similar Plan Advisor options: a second which would allow a subscriber who is familiar with his project's typical memory use, disk space utilization, etc to enter ranges and quickly find the right VPSLink plan and a third which allows a visitor to drag-and-drop applications and components to determine which plan is best suited to their deployment.

Originally Posted by chriss

But yes, kidding aside, only the ninja's were born with the skill. The rest of us mere mortals also knew nothing before acquiring it.

This is true - though, if you have learned the secret of the ninja, I would respectfully request that you ... allow others to learn of it at their own pace.

Some are not ready for such power.

[GuyPatterson]

DanL,

Questionnaire is great. Recommended exactly what I already have (Link4 w/Debian). One issue, though..

Originally Posted by Question2

You find a malicious script running on your VPS under the "nobody" user account and you need to stop the service which was most likely exploited. What do you do?

Rather than stopping the exploited service, I'd make an effort to kill nobody's scripts, first. Hinder functionality of the exploited service (down for maint. 503 error), identify the weakness, patch or mitigate the point/method of entry, and finally, restore the service. However, the primary objective should always remain; avoid being exploited in the first place :]

Ok, ok, I'll admit it. Took me three attempts to land on the correct answer, which I thought was total bs. This should be the correct answer:

Originally Posted by CodeNoWrapy

for i in `pgrep -u nobody`; do kill -9 $i; done; mv /var/www/html/* /root/forensics4later/; echo "Back in a byte!" > /var/www/html/index.html; /etc/init.d/httpd restart;

Only because my l33t cmd is > 'apachectl stop' and apache is so 1990's...

The advisor rocks - props to whomever came up with the idea. Should help with sales & referrals h0h0h0!