Usual question: Which dedicated for my needs...?

potiron · 02-08-2004, 06:21 AM

Hi,
I went through a couple of companies already and the biggest problem is the poor quality of the support... answering after 1 day even if urgent, not answering phone calls...etc.
I must add that I'm not a system admin, and to be honest I don't care about all the techi thing. I now roughly how to do the management but my main need is to be able to do the FTP, emails, having access to the logs, CRON, and of course PHP and mySQL (phpMyAdmin).

So in a nutshell, basic conf must include:
-PHP
-mySQL
-PHPmyAdmin
-FTP
-emails

So here are the questions:

: Do you recommend to have a managed hosting at the beginning (for example the first month?)

: I saw through the forum that you like ServerBeach. But they do not managed your server (in case for example you do not know how to create your CRON, or how to create an FTP account). But I read also things about ServerMatrix. Which one do you recommend for my needs?

: About the quality of the support line of the one recommended. Can you call them saying: I try a CRON job with wget and it doesn't work. What's wrong with my line?

: And eventually, you might have other recommendations... another webhosting?

:arrow: And I forgot to say: I'm in the UK... so I know it's the web has no boarders but is it a problem to take a US service?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Cheers

**fishfreek** · 02-08-2004, 06:49 AM

Why do you feel you need a dedicated box? Do you have gigs upon gigs of storage needs? Do you intend to transfer a couple hundred gigs of files every month? Do you get a couple thousand visitors a day?

The average site is perfectly at home in a shared hosting enviorment and infact everything you defined as what you needed can be provided by a shared host.

A dedicated box is something that you should not be looking into if you dont have the interest in admining the box. And paying someone to admin the box for you can be easily a couple hundred a month.

Good managed dedicated hosts are in a totally different price range as compaired to the unmanaged hosts.

potiron · 02-08-2004, 07:16 AM

3000 unique visitors a day growing by 10-20% every month...
Therefore a dedicated server is the solution... I'm currently with a Virtual Private Server.

schmeg007 · 02-09-2004, 03:30 PM

Unique's don't really matter all that much, it mostly depends on how much resources your web site is using up. But since you're posting, I'm guessing that it is very substantial and has become an issue for you.

As for a good managed host check out http://www.inetu.net
but yes, as fishfreek said it is much more expensive than an unmanaged server. If you were willing to dedicate the time you could get an unmanaged server and simply get all your questions answered online, for free. It's amazing how helpful and knowledgeable some forums can be. Though the response-time on getting those questions answered would not be as quick with a dedicated, paid for, customer suppor line.

Good luck!