What VPS/Dedicated hosting solution is right for me?

I've spent days searching the web for the right hosting solution for me. First let me give you some background. I'm a software engineer that can get his way around centOS fairly well. I'm not a systems or operations person though. So when it comes to the managed vs unmanaged question, I'm really not sure what would be best. I would obviously need any hardware issues to be fixed immediately, but OS/software issues can probably be handled by myself.

Next, I am looking at a max of $50/mo. I would prefer the $25 - $40 range if possible. I would be willing to go over the $50 if something seemed worth it.

Now for what is important to me (scale 1 (least) - 10 (most):
- USA East Coast data center 10
- Reliability/Uptime: 10
- Customer Support: 10
- Price: 7
- RAID 10 (8)
- Ability to scale up system quickly 9
- Extras (free domain, adwords, etc...) 7

I'd be looking for about 1-2 GHz, 512MB - 1GB RAM, and at least 500 GB bandwidth (although more would be better). I will be hosting a series of sites most of which will be LAMP with memcached and symfony 1.4.

Some solutions I've looked into:
- KnownHost VPS
- MyHosting VPS
- HostV VPS
- HostGator VPS
- GoDaddy VPS (although I've heard support/uptime is horrible)
- LiNode VPS (highly recommended from several people but bare bones)
- 1&1 Dedicated, Cloud or VPS (This seems to be the best now, but I'm not sure about support and uptime)

Does anyone have some suggestions for me? If there is any other info that could help you better suggest something, please let me know.

Personally I use and recommend http://www.tektonic.net/. I've had a small VPS with them for the past 4+ years. Reliability and support have both been very satisfying. It looks like they have RAID 10, and offer Dallas and Atlanta datacenters (you might need to contact them to choose your DC, but I'm sure they'll be willing to let you choose). Price is the original reason that I chose them, and it still looks like they offer very reasonable pricing. I don't know about scaling (never had to do it) and can't remember the extras (been too long since I signed up).

I also have a shared hosting account with HostGator with which I've been satisfied. I would certainly be willing to try a VPS from them if I ever stop using Tektonic. I can also say that HostGator offers very reasonable "unlimited" quantities of data transfer and space on their shared hosting packages. I know from experience that "unlimited" is at least several hundred gigabytes of space and several terabytes of data transfer per month (I've never hit the real limit). This isn't directly relevant to a VPS, but it does increase my trust of them as a company.

I have a GoDaddy shared hosting account as well, and I would not recommend them. Although my experience has only been with their shared hosting and not with their VPS hosting, I haven't been very impressed. A few weeks ago, the FTP server was down for several days, which I personally view as unacceptable. Based on feedback from Twitter I am 100% certain that the issue affected far more people than just me. Also, for some reason it takes them up to 30 minutes to create a new FTP account... something CPanel can do in seconds (on HostGator).

Thanks. TekTonic looks solid. I'll add that to my lit of possibilities. Have you ever needed support from them? It says 15 min. are free. I'm assuming that they charge you after that and was wondering if you've ever had to do that.

And do you do the VPS or cloud VPS?

Actually looked at some reviews of TekTonic. Fairly poorly reviewed on webhostingstuff.com as well as some other sites. Seems like the best reviewed ones in my list now are

- linode
- knownhost
- wooservers (hella cheap too)
- hostgator

I've now gotten recommendations from people for all of these. Has anyone had any good luck with wooservers (VPS or dedicated)? The prices almost seem to good to be true, but I've seen them recommended on a few forums as well as some decent reviews on webhostingstuff.com

I know you mentioned it's off your list, but just to be complete -

The only support I've needed recently was an OS reload (to a newer version of the OS), which they did for free. I'm assuming the 15-minute policy is in place to prevent people from abusing support for unmanaged servers. I'm fairly experienced with server administration though, so the only time I ever need support from my web host is when I don't have the access level I need to do what needs to be done.

I use the plain old fashioned VPS. The "cloud" didn't exist back when I signed up.

Thanks. I went with wooservers because they were so cheap and fairly well reviewed as well. Support has been very nice and pretty good so far, but both page loads and shell access are fairly slow. I'm guessing it's an I/O issue as that's when I see the slowness. I'll give them a month or two and see how it goes. If it doesn't improve by then, I'll probably go with knownhost or hostgator. They seem to be the most reputable.