Dedicated servers feedback

[Indrit]

Hello,

Can everyone bring to the table their experience about dedicated servers. I am tired of running around from one hosting company to another. One is telling me "Not allowed to stream video in here" the other one is forcing me to delete all my mp3 files in there. I am tired to the bone!!!

Anyone can show me some dedicated servers with reasonable prices?


Best regards,
Indrit

[andy77]

Liquidweb, definitely #1

[Indrit]

It looks tempting.

Has anyone ever though about buying a server and keeping it at home. Probably in a nice room. Maintaining, from there. I always thought that would be a challenging. This way we can always keep our website from there and keep whatever files. folders, and media we want with no limits.

I mean is it doable?

Rgds,
Indrit

[boccio]

Why would you keep it at home? Purchase a server (a rack) and take it to nearest data center with good backbone... Unless you have 1 Tb upload from your home ;)

[mailpk]

you could also try softlayer or theplanet for deidcated servers...

i have used softlayer before and they are excellent...

[damic]

Liquidweb, definitely #1

I have to second this. I've been with Liquidweb now for over 7-8 years. Great service and support and they will work with you to fix any problems. Definately worth talking with them before making any huge decisions. PM me and I can give you references if you'd like.

[RichII]

Third for Liquid Web. We have one of their Webmaster series (https://www.liquidweb.com/cart/content/dedicated/Webmaster/Plan1) for our LAMP sites and they've been great. We used to be with Rochen and they were a good service as well but more expensive than LW. If you call LW ask them if they have any sales going on, we got the following deal which was nice because our budget was $150 a month.

? Processor: Intel E4500 DUAL CORE
? Memory: 2GB DDR SDRAM
? Hd1: 120GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
? Hd2: 120GB 7200RPM SATA / 8MB Cache
? OS: Linux - CentOS 5 (+32 Bit)
? ControlPanel: CPanel /Web Host Manager (+ServerSecure) (+Fantastico/XController)
? SetupFee: $0 Setup Fee
? Bandwidth: 2000GB Monthly Transfer (1000in + 1000 out)
? FREE migration
? $149 Per Month (Save $90)


We used to collocate our own servers in a facility but had a lot of problems getting good hands-on support. Since the facility was hours away we couldn't get there ourselves in a timely manner so it was a problem when a hdd failed or a stick of RAM got overcooked. Plus if you use the collocation guys for the hands-on stuff you have to have enough parts stocked there to fix any problem - twice. That means extra mainboards, power supplies, HDDs, RAM, cables, raid cards, case fans, etc... basically everything but the case. Unless you have a real strong urge to buy and maintain your own server I'd suggest renting one.


Has anyone done any hosting on the Mac Xserve 8 core?



Rich
________
Honda Rincon (http://www.honda-wiki.org/wiki/Honda_Rincon)

[damic]

Good points Richll. I had forgotten about the "extras" of collocation - the "extra" parts to keep up. Things like that can really make costs soar.

On the Liquidweb topic - I actually started out with them on a regular "shared" setup - then moved to a virtual dedicated system (VDS) shortly thereafter. Back then, their "VDS" was different than the "VPS" that they offer now - a bit more powerful with greater power and bandwidth avail. The VDS setup worked great for a couple of years for me.

As an example of the service... that VDS eventually started to fail. A few days before Christmas 4 years ago - that VDS really started to dump on everything, and the techs at Liquidweb were doing everything they could to save it. It got to the point that they called me to let me know that they were not going to be able to save that box - and that they were going to help me move into another system.

At that time, they had no more VDS systems since they moved into offering the VPS systems. However, the VPS system was actually less powerful than my original VDS, so I would have been going backwards. So, based on a series of calls with techs there, I opted to move into a dedicated situation - which was actually going to cost me just under $40 extra a month - but give me triple the bandwidth, space and power. They even tossed in some extras in the system for me.

Mind you - that process took about 2 days total to get resolved, but the guys at Liquidweb worked their butts off to keep all of the sites I had online the entire time through mirrors and temp locations until the full dedicated box was configured and setup properly. All of this happening during the holidays while I was on the road fighting through airports and rental cars with little to no internet access at all. They did not let my system, my sites or my client sites fail in critical times - and made sure I knew when and where any down time would happen and what they would do to get around it. Since I was on the road, they handled moving everything over and dealing with any database issues.

And just like Richll mentioned - they do have "phone only" type of deals on both main system and any upgrades you may ever want/need. I was paying $209/month for my setup there. I actually called them some time back about something else, and they basically gave me a "permanent discount" to $159/month with no change to my service or system.

Mind you – there will always be some issues with any server situation, and occasional down time. No server location can guarantee 100% uptime 24/7/365. However, it’s not about down time or issues – it’s about how your server company responds to those issues. I highly do recommend Liquidweb for the way they address situations like that and helped save my butt on numerous occasions.

An no – I don’t work there or anything :) Just like to give props to those that deserve it.