Here at ElasticHosts, we offer a range of pre-installed images to make setting up a new server as easy as choosing a flavour of ice-cream. And recently, we’ve added some fresh new flavours and a neat new feature.
New feature: instant ssh!
Previously, when you chose a pre-installed image, you had to connect via VNC and set a root password before you could ssh in as root. We knew this was a bit of a pain, so we’ve improved the process. Now, you can ssh in straight away with the username toor, using the password we give you. You’ll still want to set up your own root password, but there’s no need to fiddle around with VNC to do so.
New flavours: CentOS and latest Debian/Ubuntu
Essentially, pre-installed images are like ice-cream flavours. You pick the server you want — Linux or Windows — and we serve it straight up to you, with a cherry on top. There’s no need to milk your own cow and churn your own ice-cream (or rather, crunch through the Linux install process). You just pick the server you want from a drop-down list, and there it is. This is supported by some neat behind-the-scenes technology — in particular, a disk setup script that automatically expands to fill the entire disk available. Anyhow, our flavours are now fresher than ever, for two reasons:
- CentOS 5.5 now available: We now offer the latest version of CentOS, the Red-Hat-based Linux distro.
- Latest versions of Debian and Ubuntu: We’ve upgraded to Debian 5 and Ubuntu 10.04, which means that you can too.
If there are any other images you’d like to use, please let us know.