Dedicated server

[jopassmore]

Hi

After the problems one of my sites was having yesterday, with being suspended due to sending out too much mail from their account, they have asked me to investigate the possibility of having a dedicated server for their site.

They have suggested 123reg as they have an option for £40 a month.

However I am a bit nervous of this, being a web designer/programmer and not a linux server expert! They say it is 'managed' but can anyone tell me how easy it is to get a site set up on a dedicated server? Do I, for example, have to do all the dns and mail settings? As I really wouldn't have a clue about that!

Thanks

Jo

 

[Games4Business]

Sent you a PM.

 

[red-team]

Hi Jo,

If its a managed server they will typically have the main services (dns, sendmail, ftp, ssh, apache) running. However, please remember to turn off unwanted services (ie, things you are not using) and put a service patch/update process in place from the start.

We see far too many self hosted and managed servers that contain lots of vulnerabilities, most of which could be prevented by having a robust process in place to keep core services updated.

If you need any help/advice on this, please PM or email me.

KR,
Dave

 

[wood1e2]

Hi,

I am no server expert. But in my opinion you would be daft to go with any company associated with Pipex. I was impressed with their server set up for one of my websites. Until I went to ftp the site, and some basic technical requirements were not included. They refused a refund!!!

I went to small claims, more to annoy them than any chance of getting my money back.

Heard nothing from them. Sent in a High Court baliff and got all my money and expenses back.

I would look for a smaller company, with good back up both technical and customer related. You may find that the big web hosting companies offer to much restriction on mail quantities. Where a smaller company could offer larger mailing facilities, so save some money on having to buy a dedicated server.

Hope this helps.
Rob

 

[RayB]

I'd PM CSN-Carl on the Forum for advice and a solution to this. I think you will find many others here would agree with that

 

How any provider can offer a managed dedicated server for £40 a month is beyond me, I cannot imagine the hardware you would get, the network it is hosted on or the support they would provide!

There is all different levels of management though...

 

[Games4Business]

These days you can buy a 1U dedicated server with 1 disk for about £500, which is probably spread over a 3 year payment plan. £480 p.a + a setup charge. You've bought your server, and made a profit.

How any provider can offer a managed dedicated server for £40 a month is beyond me, I cannot imagine the hardware you would get, the network it is hosted on or the support they would provide!

There is all different levels of management though...

 

[Subbynet]

These days you can buy a 1U dedicated server with 1 disk for about £500, which is probably spread over a 3 year payment plan. £480 p.a + a setup charge. You've bought your server, and made a profit.

This is when it becomes false economy, because spending more for things like redundancy is cheaper than hiring a bod to fix it double quick time - or on-site.

 

[Games4Business]

This is true. Paying for a totally managed service costing you alot more from a reputable/reliable server provider will give you peace of mind. If you find a good company like Carls (CSNM), where they go above and beyond the call of duty to provide support for their clients which is worth its weight in gold, you are onto a winner. Don't think you provide dedi's yet do you Carl?

This is when it becomes false economy, because spending more for things like redundancy is cheaper than hiring a bod to fix it double quick time - or on-site.

 

[jennyhwd]

A dedicated server may only cover your website, as often mail is run off a mail server.. You need to check
Jenny

 

[JamesM]

I have to agree, Pixel are just terrible. If their connectivity is anything to go by, I wouldn't expect a full service and awful support.

I think they use the same lines as Tiscali, nuff said.

 

[RedEvo]

Our box is with CWCS. A very helpful and successful/growing business. We pay about £220/month with daily backups but we will soon be upgrading and taking this up to about £300/month.

Buy cheap, buy twice

d

 

[brownie]

There is another option in the middle of shared hosting and dedicated, look at a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

For a hosted app that required root access I got one from ww.rapidvps.com and have had no problems.

As you are running in a virtual environment with other users on the same server, the amount of resources available is not as high as a dedicated server.

A lot of hosting companies now have upgrade paths from a VPS to dedicated.

If you're not Linux experienced pay the extra for CPanel and request CentOS which come with all services running out of the box.

 

[markc]

Disclaimer: i'm not commenting on 123, Fasthosts, 1und1 or any company in particular in this reply, i'm merely commenting on the business model many of the cheap providers follow.

Firstly.. steer clear of anyone offering "Unlimited Bandwidth", they always always have a "fair use" policy that will mean that you get hardly any bandwidth at all then get chucked off the server without recompense when you go over the "unlimited" limit. If they offer "unlimited bandwidth" and don't have a fair use policy then they are just stupid. Be sure to check the contract very very carefully before you sign up to any dedicated host, you absolutely must check the smallprint if you are going to sign up with them.

Another bandwidth marketing "trick" is the Fasthosts Unlimited data pipe... what they actually do is throttle the connection by stupid amounts. When you work it out what you get in detail, you'll actually find it's much cheaper to buy bandwidth from "normal" hosts that sell it using 95th percentile billings but with less of the downside.

Do yourself a favour and sign up with a host that does bandwidth billing using the 95th percentile billing method, it's the fairest method there is (once you understand how it works). 95th Percentile is actually the billing method almost all hosts get billing for themselves by the bandwidth companies. Unlimited bandwidth sounds attractive, but you'll normally shoot yourself in the foot if you are lured in to it. That afterall is what it is, merely a flashy marketing gimick designed to initially prize your wallet open and get you on the marketing list. Real ligitimate honest hosting companies don't do it - it's as simple as that.

As someone else mentioned what on earth would you get for 50 quid a month. In a decent London datacentre the price for colo will be much more than that... and thats the cost price of the space to put the server in. Which means your server will likely be located out in some backwater somewhere. 1and1 are classic for this.. buy a server from them and they stick you in some backwater in the middle of Germany somewhere. Middle of nowehere = cheaper for the space, but much much more expensive for the bandwidth for the host.

They've got to make their money somehow, so how are they making money from cheap dedicateds? There are a number of ways... take a look at the £50 setup fee with 123 for example. That isn't just a setup fee, it's a vital part of their revenue. eg, they buy a shed load of whitebox cheap **** servers which use crud desktop components. They probably pay £150 - £200 for the whole server. They then get people to pay £50 setup then £50 a month. As you can see if they can be in profit within 6 months if they host it in some nonsense datacentre somewhere. But, they don't stop there.... this is where the T&Cs normally come into it... they WANT you to break their T&Cs as they want another £50 setup fee from another poor sap. eg, they rely on a high turnover of clients as part of their business. A knock on effect of this is they don't need to work hard to keep their clients or keep them happy. At those prices there will always be a steady stream of punters.

Try also to think about how much they'll be able to pay their staff to look after you, how much of that £50 a mon would be allocated to support... about £5 a month? £5 a month would get a decent tech brain for oooh, 1 min a month absolute tops. Not even that i'd doubt. Economies of scale obviously have an effect... but still you might get 2 mins of a top techies time. More likely i'd doubt you'd get a top techs time.. you are not worth it; you simply don't pay them enough to employ any.

The old adage rings true in the dedicated server industry: You get what you pay for.

In any case, it sounds like you need a managed server and not just a dedicated server.. there is a VERY big difference. Make a mess of the dedi and the host will simply reinstall it at a cost. You'll lose everything on it unless you have made provisions of backups.

IMHO you should simply change your host from the one that is pushing you at a 40 - 50 quid dedi adn find a proper decent reseller host or VPS if you know someone that can configure it and manage it for you.

HTH. Cheers - Mark

 

[Cornish Steve]

How any provider can offer a managed dedicated server for £40 a month is beyond me

I'm guessing it's a Virtual Private Server. The quoted price is a little less than what we pay. Mind you, our package includes an application pinging our site every few minutes, frequent backup and recovery, immediate response in the event of failure, help with software installation, and so on. I'm guessing the quoted price is typical.

 

I'm guessing it's a Virtual Private Server. The quoted price is a little more than what we pay.

A managed VPS for under £40 a month is fine, although going by Jo's topic title it's a dedicated server, not a VPS.

 

[ken_uk]

Its a shame you cant get reasonably priced bandwidth for the home in the uk, would love to run a server from home, but broadband is not up to it.
Not to mention its probably against the t&c for a home account...
Perhaps one day, broadband upload speeds will be suitable for home servers....