Chicago VPS 2048MB Ram 2TB Bandwidth 50GB Diskspace $30 year

Stupid question. Let's say I own coolstuff.com. When I sign up, it asks me for a server name. Does it matter what I put in there? What is that server name used for? I assume if I choose something like chuk.coolstuff.com, I just create an A name for www in my DNS?

you eventually need a server to actually host "coolstuff.com", which is what this would be for - they would likely give you a static IP address such as 12.34.56.78, and from there you could have a web server like apache running on their box 24/7 and backed up by them

Right, I understand what a VPS is, etc. I'm wondering what is the significance of the actual server name that I choose when signing up. It asks you the domain name (coolstuff.com), but then it asks you for a server name. That server name then shows up under your account. (chuk.coolstuff.com). What is the server name portion for?

Also, can you easily change your server type after the fact? (like from centos to ubuntu, etc)

... you don't buy your hosting based on pricing alone.

Good deal for the 2GB of memory. Kinda lame they don't have Ubuntu 12.04/12.10 as an available OS.

if you want to host stuff online( eg website, ftp/file server, VPS/VPN tunneling), this works

don't host anything super-critical on these though...

I had one to host a memory-intensive ruby site, worked fine they got hacked and lost a lot of customer's stuff. Then I over to amazon ec2 because I wanted more flexibility and easier backup of data (of course, whil epaying more for that privilege)

http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/5686/chicagovps-hacked-bunch-of-vps-customers-offline

If you host from your home, you're probably going to end up using something like dyndns for domain name resolution. More over, some ISPs won't allow you to use your connection for things like hosting sites and such suchary. The likely hood that they'll find out is low (or that they'll care), so it isn't much of an issue.

Here's something else to think about though.. Over the course of a year, keeping a machine powered on will probably cost you a decent amount in electricity. Also, you won't really have a failover, so if something happens and your power goes out, your server goes off-line.

The datacenters have redundancy set up for those types of situations, and are more equipped to handle the minutia of DNS and web hosting.

dead?