Linode.com Forum

[harmone]

Can you please start a sister company somewhere in Europe that could continue to operate in case the Linode company in USA goes bankrupt?

And also offer linodes running in datacenters located in Europe.

The reason I ask is because the dollar keeps getting less and less worth compared to other currencies which feels good in the short term since I get your service cheaper and cheaper for each month. But it in the long term it worries me that your country may enter a depression. And what happens to my linodes then?

I'm more of a geek than I am a historian/politician. So I may be overreacting. But I would pay up to 50% extra for being allowed to host my linodes in a financially stable European country's datacenter just to feel safer. Ideally I could host my linodes in a cheaper US datacenter paying with dollars instead of euros with the possibility of making weekly backups to a "sleeper" European linode. Then if something really happens to USA I could simply press a button on the European Dashboard to "wake" the sleeping linode and start getting my bills in euro.

The reason I am getting worried is because I read that some oil producing country stopped wanting to get paid in dollars and Ron Paul says that your war on terror costs you more than you can really afford and that the way you afford it is by printing more dollars. IIRC from my history lessons in high school ~10 years ago (Yes yes, I know I only got a 2/5 grade in history) the teacher said that the reason Germany got bankrupt was because they caused a huge inflation making everyones money worthless by financing their wars by printing more money. And that the reason the Roman empire fell was because they kept occupying too many countries than they could handle.

If you choose to not start a company according to above; would it be simple for me to install UML on my local computer at home and download my linode image and boot it? Or are the linodes I have created using Dashboard "special" in any way? Would it be possible for me to simply upload a linode disk image to a European UML provider or would I have to make (m)any changes?

Don't take me wrong. I like your services and will remain your customer as long as you stay online. I just want backups in case of a country-crash. And as with all backups, I cross my fingers to never need them.

[Deckert]

Okay, I'll bite.

harmone wrote: Can you please start a sister company somewhere in Europe that could continue to operate in case the Linode company in USA goes bankrupt?

Erm, dude, if the US "goes bankrupt" you'll have to worry about a lot more than just keeping your VPS running. And by then you'll probably be paying for your hosting solution in Yuan, not Euro :-)

US policy aside, regions like the US, EU, China (and even lesser countries) remain massive cogs in the global economy machine. If one goes missing, the entire system will have to re-balance. And that won't be a pretty period for humanity.

harmone wrote: Don't take me wrong. I like your services and will remain your customer as long as you stay online. I just want backups in case of a country-crash. And as with all backups, I cross my fingers to never need them.

You should always have backups if your services are really important to you. Take a tarball of your root fs, or backup the important datafiles for your distro. Then, if anything *ever* happens to Linode, you can redeploy in under an hour at several European VPS providers.

But trust me, if Linode can no longer run because of problems in the US, you better have other plans ready that don't have anything to do with the IT world.

IMHO, of course.

--deckert

[FyberOptic]

While I agree entirely with Deckert's point about there being a lot bigger problems for everyone than server hosting if the US's economy fell down the crapper, there's something else important to remember. Linode is a US-based company, and I'm willing to bet that a large majority of their customers are also from the US. Meaning, even if they did have a European branch, any massive fluctuation in American customers or dollar value would likely take the entire company out of business regardless, since I would bet there aren't enough customers outside the US to sustain it.

That's just my assumption of course, there could be more people than I realize from other places, but for most companies, this is indeed the case.

Besides, I think the economy here will smooth out eventually. Particularly since we only have a year left of Bush.

[schmichael]

I'd just like to point out this is ridiculous paranoia.

This is a web hosting company. There's millions of them. If something happens to Linode (it won't), just upload your last backup (you do have backups right?!) to one of the millions other hosting companies.

In fact, instead of paying 50% more like you offered, if all you're hosting is e-mail & web sites, get one of those $5/mo. shared web hosting providers to switch to in case the US suddenly explodes.


In closing: don't worry. Linode is not going away. You can host here with confidence. :)

[OverlordQ]

And if Linode USA folds (which it wont), why wouldn't it's European Division not? Unless you're suggesting they setup a completely seperate business which would entail a whole mess of fun stuff which really wouldn't be worth the trouble.

[Ciaran]

harmone wrote: The reason I ask is because the dollar keeps getting less and less worth compared to other currencies which feels good in the short term since I get your service cheaper and cheaper for each month. But it in the long term it worries me that your country may enter a depression. And what happens to my linodes then?

For the record, I've been watching how USD has been doing against GBP recently and it's doing better than it was a few months back.

[cherring]

What if the US enters recession they suddenly ban VPS services?

[mikek]

OverlordQ wrote: And if Linode USA folds (which it wont), why wouldn't it's European Division not? Unless you're suggesting they setup a completely seperate business which would entail a whole mess of fun stuff which really wouldn't be worth the trouble.

I, for one, welcome our European overlords.

[mwalling]

cherring wrote: What if the US enters recession they suddenly ban VPS services?

um... what?

[pclissold]

What if a huge asteroid hits the Earth? Maybe Linode should open a data center on Mars. The ping times won't be that good, but our servers will still be running after all human life has been wiped out. Oh, wait…

[cherring]

mwalling wrote: cherring wrote: What if the US enters recession they suddenly ban VPS services?

um... what?

Sorry my punctutation was poor. I was wondering why this guy thinks that if the USA goes into a recession that VPS hosting will suddenly be a thing of the past? But if you red the whole thread you may have understood I suppose .... :roll:

[scotty]

cherring wrote: What if the US enters recession they suddenly ban VPS services?

Quite the opposite really.

If US enters recession, it might makes companies from all sectors to reconsider their IT infrastructure and how it costs them, and think about server consolidation by replacing those old aging dedicated servers with VPS -- Linode might even profit from that!

But then again, (1) I am usually optimistic (2) I am not in US :)

[cherring]

I realise this. My post post was to point out that the entire point of this thread may just be a little alarmist and just a bit silly ....