Guest Captain Bags Posted August 13, 2006 Share Posted August 13, 2006 We've all been thorugh the grind of picking over the tar pit that is 'which web host to choose?'. I have never moved beyond the world of $7/mth shared hosting but now I am seriously considering it. Something I've been mulling over for a while is grouping together with like-minded and trustworthy individuals to share a dedicated server - which of course makes it no longer truly dedicated, but should be a better, safer and more robust home for my sites, while sharing the significant cost of such a beast. The prices quoted by the major specialists in dedicated server hosting scare the pants off me, plus I am not competent to manage a Unix server. Perhaps virtual servers are close to this concept - I do not understand enough to judge. In any case, there must me more to the quality of service from a web site than the server it's hosted on. I'm not a techie, although I am involved with IT. I do not fully appreciate what can impact the smooth operation of a web site. Things like: Bandwidth of the feed to the Internet backbone Reliability of the indepenent suppliers of these backbone facilities ISPs that connect my users' browsers to the Internet Quality of the infrastructure at the data centre where the server is housed (firewalls, UPSs etc.) Security systems and their deployment by the data centre managment I would like to undertstand more about this. If you were designing a spec for your ideal hosting environment, what factors would you consider important? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roban Posted August 13, 2006 Share Posted August 13, 2006 1. Availability of tech support. I would call at various hours of the day to see what the wait times are. 2. Actual downtimes against what is reported. Calling current customers or visiting their forums. Since my domains and my client's domains number about 24 I would have to choose a situation that allowed to host all of those as subs. I would not consider joining a group to share a dedicated server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest vrakas Posted August 13, 2006 Share Posted August 13, 2006 You need to know what is hosted on the server, so by sharing it means that anyone can put anything on it and loose any kind of performance A major factor is the timezone, if you are in the UK and the server is in the US then that is a major problem. Tryed that a long time ago and it didnt work out There are always good solutions to use and not have a headache */* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest EverythingWeb Posted August 13, 2006 Share Posted August 13, 2006 What I would say in response to your idea of sharing a dedicated, is that if one of those people actually does have the competence and knowledge of running a server, then they will probably already be doing it, otherwise the person who is responsible may not acutally have much of an idea and could leave the box open to all sorts of attacks :rolly: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Captain Bags Posted August 14, 2006 Share Posted August 14, 2006 Hmmm, seems there is no obvious answer. I guess that would have been wishful thinking. OK, we will leave it at that unless/until new developments deliver an innovative solution. Thanks for your input, guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest vrakas Posted August 14, 2006 Share Posted August 14, 2006 A direct answer you will never get, as we are in no position to know, the traffic of your site/sites, the people you might share with, the company you wish to join and get the server from, the quality of their service, the location of the server and many more factors that are unknown to us and even you at this time. I would suggest, get a hosting package from a reliable server that has a good support. :huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 I just moved all my sites from my collocated server to a dedicated server. I spend $279 US a month for a KILLER machine with tons of bandwidth. But I've been doing Linux/Unix server administration for years now. I'm a command line junkie from way back. I even administrate servers for some others who don't really know the CLI side of things. I do have some hosting customers, but they're only people who I take 100% care of. They use me and my services because of my expertise. They don't upload stuff without talking to me about it because they trust my judgement and advice. I don't scalp them on their monthly service, but I'm not the cheapest on the planet either. Of course I'm also available to them any time they have questions. So see, there are all forms of hosting out there depending on what you need. :huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerseyjoe Posted August 15, 2006 Share Posted August 15, 2006 I just moved all my sites from my collocated server to a dedicated server. I spend $279 US a month for a KILLER machine with tons of bandwidth.That's similar to my experience for the past few years. I am not really much of a server guy, so I need bulletproof tech support. I have a few large clients who have their own dedicated and managed servers that I supply as a reseller for a big server farm - and I have a dedicated managed server, similar to that asked about with almost 80 small-footprint, low-traffic sites who pay $20 a month annually in advance. Works fine. Everyone's happy. The defining issue is traffic. I get a laugh out all these loudly touted offers of 500 gigs of space and a Tetrabyte of bandwidth for $7 per month (OK, I'm exaggerating the specs a bit). Most of their clients have web sites that don't need 10mb of space and have 10 visitors per day (and now I'm *not* exaggerating.) To the person raising the question, nothing you've described says you can't do that. Unless you are speaking of larger, busier sites than what I see are the majority of sites, there are dedicated managed servers starting at $99 per month and up to the figure mentioned by Sir William, and no contract, that will do a good job for you. The worst that can happen is after 60 days or so you don't like the performance and either upgrade or cancel. You'll probably lose a one-time setup fee and some time, but not much more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bennyuk Posted August 16, 2006 Share Posted August 16, 2006 I have a few dedicated servers, 1 for me, some for clients. I pay around £2k per year for mine, as I, like Sir William, get right into the heart of the thing. My clients who NEED a dedicated server, but are not up to manageing it themselves can get a good managed service for around £5k per year. (once you add on the monthly extras of daily backups, hardware firewalls, system monitoring, management/patching etc it all adds up.) The main thing for me is the availability and flexibility of the tech support. Each month I have a question that is a tricky one, and I always seem to need to discuss it at the strangest hours. Some hosting companies have good out of hours support, and some do not. I've been involved in servers for years, and each month I say that I'm going to stop it, outsource it. But I still find myself doing it. My advise if you're thinking about it is don't do it unless you got plenty of time and money, and if you have the money, then pay someone else to do it. However, if you got 200 CC customers together, you could provide a viable hosting service on a dedicated server, and have it setup nicely for CC and all the usual tools that CC customers like. 200 x £50 per year = £10k, enough to get a good managed server with all the frills, plus a wedge of reward for the clever (poor) sole that set's it up and has to somehow vet all the users. of course xxxxxxxxxxxx.com probably has the same idea..... Hang on, the voices in my head are talking again...oh yes,, hosting,,, forget it, nothing but a pain in the butt.... but, as jersyjoe says, if you really want to you can give it a go for a few months and see how it goes. (edit - reading back I think I've gone off thread here a bit...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Brookbanks Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 It really is the 65 million dollar question. Since I got a dedicated server I've never looked back. I know there is no other account on this server which will cause problems with outdated scripts etc. Research throughly. $7 hosting is often oversold and abused. There are many good host who offer packages which don't at first appear to be good value but infact are FAR better value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest vrakas Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I guess its all about the budget and knowledge at the end :sourcerer: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Captain Bags Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 Yes indeed, Vrakas, budget and knowledge - neither of which I possess at the moment Thanks for those excellent observations, guys. It was something of an eye opener to hear Bennyuk quoting £5k/$10k per annum for a decent managed server, which is the option Jersey Joe utilizes. While I do have a handful of clients, they are static brochure sites mostly. Anyway, that's not my line of business. Let's hope I can build my online businesses to the level where this option becomes feasible. Like Al said, it's all yours then - no other users to compromise security. Seems like Benny and Sir William pay around £2k/$4k for a self-managed server. Great if you have the know-how but as I am a week away from my 50th birthday, I can think of more enjoyable and more stress-free ways to spend the next 40 years Interestingly, the forum I run is hosted at Mysitesonline - one of the other Admins chose that last year. The support response time is very good and knowledgeable but the accessibility has gone steadily downhill. What visitors experience is your site up time - that's the single most important attribute of any service IMO. This thread has been valuable in educating me on what can be done and for how much. There are many good hosts who offer packages which don't at first appear to be good value but in fact are FAR better value. This is the best fit for me at the moment. I am trialing a few smaller, less-hyped services where I believe the owners take pride in the quality of their product. Bye bye "unlimited bandwidth" and "unlimited databases" and 1Tb of disk space! Hello a web site that is available 99.99% of the time, hopefully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest EverythingWeb Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 If anyone finds a supplier of those "unlimited hard drives" please make sure I know, and I'll order 3! Gald you got something sorted, and I am sure that whatever choice you make, you will evaluate the pro's & con's of each. :zorro: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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