UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming Web Hosting NEED INFO ASAP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I just bought the following server. My webhost was pushing me to buy a server and let him locate it in his office because of all the applications and whatnot running on my site and the rate of traffic increase bla bla bla.

Well, I just got off the phone with a friend of mine and he just said I bought a Ferrari that I'll only be able to drive like a Pinto. He said I had enough server to host freakin YAHOO! and the guy is trying to con me into buying a server so he can use it too w/o my knowlegde or something like that.

Then I said I would get T1 to my house then and he said that T1 would not be enough to host websites on.

Can anyone tell me about the server I just bought (and blindly configured) and give me advice on what I need to do?

Thanks. Below are the server specs:

Base: PowerEdge 2650, Intel® Xeon™ 2.4GHz w/512K Cache
Additional Processors: Dual Processor Intel® Xeon, 2.4GHz
w/512K Cache
Memory: 1.0GB DDR, 2X512 DIMMS
Keyboard: No Keyboard Option
Monitor: No Monitor Option
First Hard Drive: 50% OFF THE UPGRADE TO A 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Hard Drive
Primary Controller: PERC3-DI, 128MB Battery Backed Cache, 2 Internal Ch- Embedded RAID
Diskette Drive: 1.44MB Diskette Drive
OPERATING SYSTEM: No Factory Installed Operating System
Mouse: No Mouse Option
First Network Adapter: Broadcom NetXtreme 10/100/1000-Copper
CD ROM or DVD ROM: 24X IDE Internal CD ROM Drive
Bezel: Active Bezel Option for Dell PowerEdge 2650
Hard Drive Backplane: 5 Bay (1x5) Hot Plug SCSI Hard Drive Backplane
Documentation: Users Manual,Installation and Trouble Shooting Guide on CD
Second Hard Drive: 50% OFF THE UPGRADE TO A 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Hard Drive
Hard Drive Configuration: On-Board RAID 5, 3 to 5 drives connected to on-board RAID
Chassis Configuration: No Rail Option
Hardware Support Services: 3Yr BRONZE Support, Next Business Day Onsite
Installation Support Services: No Installation
Power Supplies: Non-Redundant AC Power (500 Watt Power Supply)
Third Hard Drive: 50% OFF THE UPGRADE TO A 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 160 SCSI Hard Drive

Let me know if I'm an idiot so I can cancel this order. I have 2 days to do so. Thanks for your info.

that is a mighty powerful server, and I would be weary if people are trying to tell you you NEED to locate it with them. Don't worry though, you can co-locate your server nearly anywhere that offers dedicated hosting. Basically what that means, is you own the server and ship it to them. Then install it at their datacenter and charge you for bandwidth.

You can do this for as cheap as about 30 dollars per month to upwards of a few hundred per month. All depending on how much bandwidth you'd need, how many units the server is in size, etc. And your friend is right, T1 is not really the way to go, it is way too expensive for home use and not fast enough for hosting really.

Some of the best co-location providers I've used and seen is www.fastservers.net

They have great prices, an excellent datacenter, and top notch support. Be careful though, you can co-locate in some datacenters that suck and you will most likely experience a lot of downtime and such.. If you need any more help or suggestions drop me a line

thanks for the suggestions. I just cancelled my Dell order this morning and am looking at dedicated hosting or buying a more cost efficient server and colocating.

That may be your best option if you don't need that much power.

[]thanks for the suggestions. I just cancelled my Dell order this morning and am looking at dedicated hosting or buying a more cost efficient server and colocating. [/]

I would suggest you check out Rackspace.com.

How much bandwidth do you typically use per month?

Just noticed the date on the thread I was replying to. Ooops

Brings new meaning to "ASAP" huh? LOL

I've always been quick on the draw.

Actually the ASAP!!! was what caught my eye and why I didn't look at the date. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Actually, I told them I didn't want it and cancelled.

Then, the other night I just said screw it and got one.

Dell, dual 2.6 processors. 3 36G hard drives, and 1.5G memory.

heheh, that's a nice server

Awaken ye old thread!!

This is mainly to Josh, since I know he uses dedicated hosting.

When should one start to look into dedicated hosting? How much bandwidth a month before I look into upgrading? Is bandwidth the big deciding factor? If not, what is? For March I have used 3.02GB so far with an estimated 3.9GB for the entire month. Is this a lot? A little?

For some server load stats, I just refreshed the cache on my IIP five times and the load times ranged from 3.216 to 4.839 seconds for 31 queries.

So yeah, I'm ignorant about this whole thing. How high should my bandwidth reach before I should start considering dedicated hosting? And how are my query times? I notice that here it usually takes about .3 of a second for 15 queries. So you would figure that would be .6 for 30?

And do you go about paying for dedicated hosting? It's not exactly cheap.

Help?

Okay, now it's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

We had Measurection on a shared server... and we were using about 30GB of bandwidth.

I don't know at what point you really need to go dedicated. When your host starts wanting to boot you off and keeps telling you that you need to go dedicated.... it's probably time.

They may be trying to sell you something, but in our case I think we were becoming high-demand on resources, as our forum got pretty active. And everytime that we complained about an issue they would say "you really need to go dedicated". Plus the cost for "overage" of bandwidth became prohibitive.

So we went over to Rackspace and have been pretty happy there. That site uses about ~80 GB of Bandwidth a month. Some slower months it's been as low as 50GB and we've spiked as high as 100GB.

The speed improvement of not sharing is great. But it does cost you. At rackspace you're looking at $300 or better for the server and usage. Our bill is routinely $300-$500/month.

Measurection is somewhat limited, as alot of hosts won't take "adult" content. If I could move it I might be willing to check out http://www.serverbeach.com

It was founded by the founder of Rackspace and their model is "standard off the shelf" servers, but they cost like $99/mo. They also charge for support tickets.... but probably cheaper in the long run.

Measurection pays for it with user donations and charging for access to photo galleries.

Although it would seem you'd be fine on shared hosting for a while.
Hope that helps.

Just to add on to what Josh said, as he is correct.

But if you are pushing only 3-5 gigs of bandwidth, I don't think you would be quite ready for a dedicated server yet. Unless somehow you were using a TON of CPU power yet not sending much data, that is definately within a shared server's limits for the most part.

My UBBT site was on a shared server for about a year before I was being hinted by my host I had to either upgrade or move. And at this time I was pushing 20 GB/month and had about 800 members with 30-40 online most of the time.

So off to dedicated.. or I guess semi-dedicated because I also hosted a few of my other low traffic sites on the server, and things did improve a bit as far as loading times are concerned.

But in your case, unless you have 50+ users online and are pushing 15+ GB/month traffic, I doubt you would benefit much from a dedicated server

Thanks for the tips fellas! Looks like I'll be staying with shared for a while longer. Although I'll make it a goal to have my site succesful enough to need dedicated.

It's difficult to raise money on my site, since the majority of my members are high school age. I've been tinkering with cafepress off and on for a while now, and just have to get off my rump to set up something useful. Drumlines having their own t-shirts is a big thing, so I'm hoping to bank off of that.

But anyway, I'm getting off-topic. Thanks again!

I know that this might sound like advertising but it is a personal experience.

I administer www.longhaircareforum.com which is a community of ladies that want to achieve long healthy hair. When I got involved in the site we moved from a host to aplushosting where we got their deluxe package (26Gb transfer a month). Since then (start of January) the site has nearly doubled in posts and rose a third in users. We saw a couple of problems with our database at the end of February that resulted in some data lost but we thought that that would be a one off.

Yesterday and without any warning the host shut down our site. After numerous emails they were not prepared to bring it up. They were telling me that the CPU is nearly maxing out and they could not figure out what was wrong. They shut down our MySQL and UBBT and they said that UBBT is really heavy on the server (there you go pigs fly across that ridge). Still with those two shut their CPU was still at 80% at which point I pointed out that there might be the web hits they get... It was indeed their web server (Zeus and not apache would you believe it).

Time was running short so I remembered Jeremy's (msula) hosting company. The replies to my email were within 10 minutes tops. The account was created within 15 minutes and in all I started transferring via FTP the data 45 minutes after my first email. Support was responding within 5 minutes and the whole move worked out only 2 hours.

I must say that I was gladly surprised and provided that all goes as we expect I don't see us moving hosts for a long time.

AKD96 - Choosing your host is a big decision and sometimes a costly one because a cheap host might not mean a reliable one. I really hope you achieve your goal of a dedicated host.

Thank you for your kind words Nikos

No problem Jeremy. I am not easily pleased but so far the service that I received is outstanding so kudos is in order.

[]JoshPet said:
So we went over to Rackspace and have been pretty happy there. That site uses about ~80 GB of Bandwidth a month. Some slower months it's been as low as 50GB and we've spiked as high as 100GB.
[/]

you MUST be easily impressed. rackspace is who we are LEAVING because it just isn't worth the money.

and believe me it is a LOT of money. oh, boy do they like to stick you for big bills. try $500 - $700 per month. for a lowly 1ghz athlon, 1 ata33 5400rpm 60gig drive and a 10meg half duplex ethernet that is THROTTLED and generates 4-8 collisions per second and we only use 130-150gig of bandwidth per month. we are leaving them as fast as we can.
[sarcasm]
sure, their support is "awesome".
unless you actually WANT the machine maintained!
the only patches that get applied are ones the bring the rev level up if their is a security problem. they do NOT necessarily bring you up to current levels. as an example, mysql 3.23.44 is as current as they will go without you PAYING them to upgrade it.
[/sarcasm]
buyer beware. HA! buyer be affraid!!!

Who are you using now?

I'm always looking if there are better deals. My downfall, when I find a better deal with someone I'd be willing to try, they won't take the adult content.... or if they do the rate gets multiplied by 3 at least.

Most hosting companies think "adult content = lots of money" and charge accordingly.