Do you guys have a fully managed server with SoftLayer?
I have a large forum in need of a good server.........badly!
I need them to watch it 24/7 and make sure it's secure

If you can manage your own servers and have a really big board, go to webnx.com. Great hardware, great pricing. They do configs the others would not even talk about. They maybe a little slow on new setups and upgrades sometimes, but they are always there when needed for support.

Been with them for 22 months. No complaints whatsoever.

Just received our server from our old host - Bizwala (formerly Ilon, formerly Remarkable). This was a fully managed dedicated solution, we had two servers with them. A few years ago before they lost their lead tech they were great. Since then I've had one of their dedicated servers with 15 of our sites get hacked into and was unrecoverable due to an old version of php/mysql installed. Upon trying to ask questions to get the problem fixed I was copied on an email that I was not supposed to read and found that the lead tech had called me an "idiot". Being the nice guy that I am I didn't realize he was referring to me right away. Needless to say I made plans to jump ship and find a new host that was more professional. I read countless reviews and found that Liquidweb had the type of support I needed. 24/7 phone support and great email support. They also stay on top of critical software updates on their own so I don't have to worry about it.

The sad thing is I had been with the my old host for years. The owner is a good guy and they had gone above and beyond many times in the past. But he needs more help from some more professional people. It's a small operation and the support tends to show it more than it should. It wasn't always like that.

Anyway, I'm extremely happy with the choice of Liquidweb.

we are paying $425 with our current host for
AMD dual opt dual core 280
4 gigs of ram
5x 16o gig drives

and they threw in a free reseller account, so I can setup some small sites here and there easily.

We use our current host because they have AIM support though.

I purchased my owner server and here are the specs:

2x INTEL XEON 5345 2.33GHZ 8MB QUAD CORE, This is 8 cores
4x 2048MB Memory giving me a total of 8GB of memory
4x 250GB hard drive setup as raid 10 = 500GB total usage
1x 250GB as a backup drive
1x 250GB a spare drive

I did a colo with this server through colo4dallas. In my opinion if you are going to keep a big board up and running it is cheaper to buy your own server and colo it. Renting or leasing a server is putting money into someone else’s pocket. Over a period of one year with the price you pay for using someone else’s dedicated server you could have purchased your own server. I am paying ½ if not lower then what everyone else paying because I own my server. If you going to buy a server of your own get something expandable so it will grow with you.

Thanks for the info - we are currently at 1.25million posts - okay we only have a 100 or so online at anyone time, but I am thinking about moving the site away from the planet.

I had never heard of softlayer but will take a look :)

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just had a look shame they do not seem to do managed servers :( Any recommendations for a host that can manage servers?

I just moved to Softlayer from the Planet because I was migrating a site and the person migrating it suggested Softlayer. The Planet was alway good to me and I may even move back in a month or so because of data transfer rate issues with Softlayer.

Comment: For those of you thinking of a dedicated server, if you don't know how to set up and manage a server you'll probably be paying lots of $$ for server management. Server management can cost you as much as, or more, each month than the server costs, not to mention it is difficult to find a really good management company or person that you can trust.

This is a very true comment. You get what you pay for with someone else managing you server.

I went through two cheap server management companies that were recommended from posts I read on other web sites. Some server management companies know just enough to get by or have long response times. You want a company that knows servers and all the ins and outs. You also want one with quick response times. When you have a problem with your server you do not want to have to wait 12 to 24 hours for them to look at it. The company I have now I have been very happy with for $65 a month. Granted you can find cheaper ones but like I said you get what you pay for. As Smitty also said you can find some that also cost just as much as your dedicated server. But keep one thing in mind. If you have a good company set your server up for you and if it was done right you should never had to have them mess with your server again for you unless you want something changed or you mess something up. So why pay someone a lot of money monthly when they are doing nothing except scanning your server for viruses for you and a few other things

Yes. The main thing is patches and stuff like upgrades that come out. Other than that, if set up correctly a server should pretty much run its self.

At first reading this thread title, I am interested of knowing which host does you big boards guys use. But more and more I read, the post arent anymore related to the title. Why not the mods delete or move these unrelated post to other thread?