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Kahuna
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I was wondering what is the thing that makes everyone choose a particular webhost.

Of course I do not include reliability cause it comes without saying

Some opt for price, some from bandwidth and some for disk space.

What is most important to you and why?

Thanks for all in advance for the replies.

Warm regards

Nikos


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Support and honesty.

I have been with countless hosts where they offer something, and never deliver. Or it takes 3 days to get a support ticket answered, etc. I want a company who is willing to stand behind their service and work with customers on a personal level.

I guess that is why I started my own hosting company, because I got sick of all the runnaround you I got from other hosts. Plus there are so many hackjob resellers out there that aren't even running a legit business and you are SOL when they fold.

Plus I want a company who knows their stuff. I've been with some people who can't even answer my support questions, or if I find a problem or security flaw on their machine, they don't believe me, etc.

So to me, it is honesty and good support. I like a company who gets involved with their customers and makes it their goal to ensure their site is working properly.

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I type Like navaho
I type Like navaho
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I use Rackspace and their support can't be beat.

I can call an 800 number, any time, day or night (24x7) and they will walk me through how to do something. Or if I submit a ticket online... it's usually resolved and/or answered in like 20 minutes.

I like "instant" response.

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Absolutely no doubt that Rackspace is the best out there. I have never dealt with a company in any business matters that treats their clients as good as they do. The times I've called them for any questions it's like the people are happy to hear from you. I'm not sure how they achieve this but never once have I ever had a bad phone call with them. When I was new at having a dedicated server and didn't have a clue I called them 8 times one day. 3 times about the same thing...Adding domains.......hehe Well..... I told the guy.... Man, I'm sorry for having to keep calling and you could hear the smile on the phone line and he told me..... What are ya kidding?? We appreciate your business and love helping you! I was like.....ummmmm huh?? Am I in the twilight zone? Ok.... enough of that..... No need to even mention the machines and uptime.... I've been using them for a little over a year and still have yet to have any downtime.... Enough said.... Get Rackspace.....


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Kahuna
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Gosh! I wish I had such opportunities to get to a decent host.

Of course my site is nowhere near the level of traffic that yours are (in plural) but still I have to do all on my own. Mine runs from my own box at home, utilizing a 512/256 ADSL line.

You will also find though that the US is far superior than the UK in this matter. Although I have not used rackspace.co.uk, the ISP's that I have used in the past were all really bad.

Storm, you mention that the guy on the phone was laughing - and trully making you feel as if you really meant something to them (your business I mean). I will tell you that I have emailed the sales office of my isp early October. Still no reply after three emails.

Also the pricing plans are rediculous. They do not only charge you for webspace but for bandwidth as well, plus I even heard one charges for the support calls you make. Still there is an initiative from the government to move businesses to less developed parts of the UK -> Wales. I found an ISP there that is dead cheap (55GBP per year) with unlimited space and 3Gb bandwidth per month. The only problem is that I have my doubts of the support that I am going to get....

I am trying very hard to get some more traffic on my site and get some investments in to support the site - it's a non profit one with no ads. How can I possibly ensure that I have a 99.9% up time if the support I get is totally bad!!

I wish I will be able to make a move in 6 months from now to a more decent ISP.

Oh well! C' est la vie.

Thanks for all your responses guys

Warm regards

Nikos


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I've got two Rackshack servers. They're a decent price, they stay up, and I have plenty of bandwidth. What more is there?

Support? I wouldn't suggest someone without a Linux background venture into this world. If you do, be prepared and take your time making changes. The support people will try to help you but it really is a big boy's game. I've found many times more information available on RackShack's support forum.

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Rackspace in the UK are a waste of space I have requested info 3 times in the last 4 months, and had no reply True I have not called them, but I prefer to deal via email - but not a sausage in response.

Clearly the UK & US verions of RackSpace must be run with different goals.


Fans Focus - Focusing on Fans of Sport

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Do they have a different website addy for the UK site Canvey???


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rackspace.co.uk

Ian


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Yep, that's them.... I'm going to write them here and inform them of this problem.... Too weird.....


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It is a sahme as I would have probably have used them - but if they can't be bothered to respond to 3 seperate requests for information, one wonders how good they will be with problems


Fans Focus - Focusing on Fans of Sport

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I don't blame you at all. You can't even get on their site and look at plans without a salesperson jumping into chat with you here...... Sounds like management needs to kick someone's butt there.....


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I type Like navaho
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[]Support? I wouldn't suggest someone without a Linux background venture into this world.[/]

RackSpace is too good to me. I went into the dedicated server concept without having a clue. But anytime I get stuck trying to do something, I just call em up. They either walk me through it step by step, or do it for me.

Never had to pay for advanced support, although they do offer it. never had a ticket take more than 2 hours to resolve either.

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Finally rackspace have replied - yippeeee - just been emailed by the MD (CEO) from the UK

However a little concerned that they only use AMD, and navahoo said in another post, go for Intel.

However they use 4 different flavours of redhat (6.2, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3) - which one should I look at? Is there much of a difference? Not sure why they do not offer version 8 - is it too new?

Thoughts & comments are very welome....

Ian




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RH 8 for intensive purposes is not ready for a mission critical hosting environment. A lot of little bugs and oddities that could cause trouble. I have seen some servers running it without a problem, but others have also had nightmares due to little bugs with php and such.

I use 7.3 on my servers, and most other places I have hosted used 7.2 or 7.3. You really aren't going to notice a difference, but I tend to stick with 7.3.

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That 70's Guy
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I believe it's not so much the AMD cpu but the motherboard being used. RackSpace has had great success using AMD platforms.

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the board i manage is at RackSpace.
yes, they are more than willing to help you.
however, they rarely understand the technical aspects of what is being asked to them.
the machine we have 1ghz athlon, 1.5gig ram has a SERIOUS problem with its ethernet connection.
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:B3:9A:41:C7
inet addr:207.71.8.29 Bcast:207.71.8.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:24160939 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28099087 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1183259
collisions:1375861 txqueuelen:100


this is a SERIOUS problem with carrier and collisions, yet they care less. at one point, the machine was averaging 27,000 collisions per hour. for 95 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

not only that, but their "free" upgrades only pertain to a version level that does not have any security issues. for instance, they will only upgrade php to 4.1.2. if i want 4.3.0, i have to do it myself or pay them. HA! mysql is only upgraded to 3.23.44. if i want .54a, i have do it myself. you would think for the $700 a month we are paying that would include a subscription to the Red Hat Network. no, it doesn't. that is $60 we will have to spend if we want it. and it might void them of ever touching the machine again. trying to find that out now. fyi, RHN says support for 7.1 goes away in december. i just called them.
the harddrive is a ATA33. yep, about as slow as you can buy today.

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SUnruh, you aren't alone with RackSpace woes. I tend to keep quiet about it because I know there are many very satisfied RS customers. But at the same time, there are MANY unhappy customers mainly due to like you said, using very old hardware, only providing support to some people and not others, etc.

And honestly, that ATA33 drive, I would be so pissed I'd want to sue them. I pay about a quarter of the price you are for your server, it has dual ATA133 drives, 1.2ghz P3, PHP 4.2.3, the latest MySQL with the security patch, etc.. and it isn't even listed as a managed server, yet any time I have even the most complex or technical question, it could be 3am on a holiday and 10 minutes they have it fixed.

They even fixed a problem I had on christmas day

I don't know, that is just my opinion. With RS I think when they are good, they are excellent. But when they are bad, they can be really bad. Sounds like you kinda got the bad end of the stick

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Thanks for the replies - I had a quote sent from the US - and then one from the UK - sadly the UK one was getting on for twice the US one for the same kit.

Mind you - msula seems to have a bargain at under $200 for that kit.

SUnruh - what is to stop you from getting a new server with them, moving all your sites over and then quitting the old one?

I think I will ask them for the techinical spec HDD type, software versions etc....









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[]
Mind you - msula seems to have a bargain at under $200 for that kit.
[/]

Well, with only one HD and no control panel it would be under 200, but adding a secondary backup drive and control panel and a small RAM upgrade it will cost you 250 or slightly more for a P3 setup.

But I still see no excuse for throwing in a 6 year old hard drive into a webserver.. they are pulling a fast one there, and hard telling what else they are shorting you on.

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yeah like why the heck is the cisco switch i'm on only a 10meg and why is the Intel Ethernet Pro 100 constantly fighting it?

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Okay - sorted out a good deal - would I (and my sites) benefit from going from 1GB of DDR Ram to 1.5GB of memory, which is the maximum the board can take.





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if you are going to have a busy site, get all the ram you can stuff into it.

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More ram is always better, but to a point it won't help much either. A lot of it will depend on your disks, IDE vs. SCSI? Or RAID vs. non-RAID? if you have other bottlenecks in your system the extra RAM over a gig won't be very noticable at all.

One great thing about RAM is you can start out small, and if you see you need more just add it in later. Could save you a lot of money.. also, I have noticed my boards on a server with 2 gigs of ram to now on a server with 1 gig of ram and its actually faster on the current machine due to the hard disks and partition structure. So evaluate your needs carefully before spending the money on something that may not really help in your situation

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Hey Msula..... Who do ya use if you don't mind me asking??


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Generally 1.2GHZ or so P3's, a gig of ram, and IDE raid. These work great for a ton of smaller sites, or a fair number of medium to large sites.

I'm getting a few more servers next month, dual P4's and SCSI RAID, etc.

If you are looking to go dedicated for your threads site, I wouldn't see buying a dual P4 with top of the line everything else unless you have a few hundred members online at all times and and you are seeing a few thousand posts per day. I tested my site out on two different servers before I made my final decision, and with 50 or so users always on and 1000 or so posts per day, the cheaper P3 with IDE provided about the same page generation times as a test dual P4 system with SCSI. And that system was over $200 more per month.

So the best idea is to really analize your needs. Project how much growth you are expecting to get, etc. Sure it would be nice to jump right into a top of the line server so you wouldn't have to upgrade for a few years, but when you think about the extra few hundred dollars per month compared to a completely fine less powerful server it could cost you much more in the long run

Threads is very efficient, so take advantage of it and don't bust your wallet


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