Linode
Purchase, Installation, Testing, and Configuration Tutorial
Linode is a U.S. VPS hosting provider, mainly offering Xen VPS. It has a pretty good reputation among users both overseas and in China, and the pricing is moderate. The most basic plan I purchased was Linode 360540 (currently Linode has upgraded) with 360540MB of memory, 16GB of storage, 200GB of traffic, for US$19.95Linode 1024MB memory, 24GB
SSD storage, 2TB traffic, US$10/month.
The Linode official website has changed several times, and the purchasing process and control panel have also been significantly adjusted. For the new ordering reference, see: https://www.vpser.net/coupons/linode-2014-july-coupon.html For the control panel usage tutorial, see: https://www.vpser.net/vps-cp/linode-linode-manager-beta.html
I. Purchase
1. Log in to linode, http://www.linode.com/
2. Choose the plan that suits you
I chose the linode 360540 plan. To complete the following purchase and payment, you need a credit card that supports U.S. dollar transactions; both VISA and MASTER Card are acceptable. Most domestic banks in China are fine, though it seems Agricultural Bank of China does not work. I used a China Merchants Bank credit card. (Hehe, if you don’t have one, you can ask me to purchase it for you. Linode does not currently support paypal.)
3. Fill in the basic information according to the prompts in the image. If you purchase for 12 months or more (including 12 months), you can use the promo code: storecrowd. After one month of use, US$10 will be refunded. (Linode very, very rarely has promo codes available; this promo code expires at the end of November.)
(Click the image to view the full-size version)
If you find this article useful, when making a purchase you can enter the following in the 8feb8d13729744f394433de7ede23efbbab1205a
4. After clicking “continue,” you will return to an information confirmation page. There is an agreement that needs to be confirmed; just click the small checkbox until a check mark appears. I forgot to take a screenshot of this part. Another thing to note is that it seems difficult to buy exactly one month. For example, I bought mine on the 26th, and I still had to pay for the remaining 5 days of that month. In fact, I paid for 1 month and 5 days, totaling: 23.82 USD. Afterward, here is a screenshot from the backend:
5. After confirming the previous step, your linode vps purchase is complete. I also received a credit card payment notification from China Merchants Bank on my phone, and my email received the order information and account activation information as well.
2. Create a VPS
Linode‘s vps is quite different from other providers’ vps. Their purchasing process and vps management system are all developed in-house. For example, you need to choose the data center and deploy the system yourself.
1. Log in to the backend
After purchase, your linode account takes effect immediately and you will be taken to the backend login page, where you can enter the account and password you created earlier.
2. Choose a data center
You can choose any one of our 4 data centers. When deciding which data center to choose, this download test is very useful for selecting the data center location that will provide better download performance for your users: http://www.linode.com/speedtest/index.cfm
| Facility | Hostname | Test Download |
| London, UK | london1.linode.com | 100MB-london.bin |
| Newark, NJ | newark1.linode.com | 100MB-newark.bin |
| Atlanta, GA | atlanta1.linode.com | 100MB-atlanta.bin |
| Dallas, TX | dallas1.linode.com | 100MB-dallas.bin |
| Fremont, CA | fremont1.linode.com | 100MB-fremont.bin |
EU users often find that the Newark data center provides the best ping times. In December, the London, GB, UK data center was added, while users in Asia/Australia often choose the Fremont data center. You can use the MTR reports for each host on the test page to determine which data center offers the best latency for your specific region.
I chose Hurricane Electric Fremont, CA, USA. After clicking it, click Place this Linode here to complete the data center selection.
3. Deploy the VPS system
After selecting the data center, go to
this panel, click the “Distro Wizard” link on the right and choose the Linux distribution version you need
We strongly recommend that you keep the default swap space size.
4. Start the VPS
After deploying the Linux distribution, click the “Boot” button on the panel to start the VPS system you just deployed, as shown below
The status bar below shows the VPS startup process, as shown below
Once startup is complete, the control panel will change to “reboot,” as shown below
2. VPS IP information
Click “network,” as shown below
3. Test the VPS
1. UnixBench: Testing Linux VPS Performance
2. Ping test
Test IP: 74.207.250.13
You can also post your test results in the comments on this article.
3. Download test
Linode 100M download test: http://linode.vpser.net/100M.iso
TheWorld download
Xunlei download
4. Web environment installation
Since it uses Debian Linux, I used my own one-click installation package for Nginx+MySQL+PHP+phpMyAdmin+Zend on Debian/Ubuntu, so I won’t repeat the installation steps here.
At this point, the purchase, installation, testing, and configuration of the Linode
VPS are complete. The remaining tasks are to create the database, upload the website, and debug it.