Wow, pretty good Eric.. Long way from back in the late 90's.. I am/was a member back in 99, I think, though I forgot my PW and no longer have that email address to recover with. (Sniper151?)
I can actually thank you / GT for getting me back into the forum/BBS world.. When I decided to open up a couple forums, I studied GT a fair amount.. Glad to see you got away from those T-1's and doing it at home.. I know that must have been painful at times..
Sorry I did not mean this to turn into a debate. I was simply suggesting to one person that it is cheaper in the long run to purchase your own server rather then rent or lease a server and that is a fact. I am not going to debate this anymore.
I never noticed your response, however what happens when it comes to catastrophic server failure? Ram goes bad? HardDisk Crashes? You've got to drop ship new hardware to the colo facility, wait downtime, etc.
I never noticed your response, however what happens when it comes to catastrophic server failure? Ram goes bad? HardDisk Crashes? You've got to drop ship new hardware to the colo facility, wait downtime, etc.
As Amcd said this is an endless debate but to answer your question, you need to research your colo ahead of time and to make sure they have these types of spare parts onhand and will install them. I would never use a colo that does not have spare parts onhand.
I never noticed your response, however what happens when it comes to catastrophic server failure? Ram goes bad? HardDisk Crashes? You've got to drop ship new hardware to the colo facility, wait downtime, etc.
I never deal with less then 3 servers. If you only have one server, ya... in a way you are right if you don't have a collocation center near your house. But still, why pay $250/month when you can get it for $70?
This is a good technique: Buy another server, keep it at home and sync data on it from the live server. You will have 2 possibilities:
1. Your site gets busier, so you can use that server as worker... with all data already synced on it. Then you buy a third server and do the same.
2. Your server is getting defective. It takes me 10min to drive to my data center and another 5 to replace the faulty server. Then I get it serviced by a Dell technician who replaces the defective hardware. In one day, my server is up and running again. If you are afraid that your server will blow and you do not want to ship the server, simply have it hooked in their data center as sync server, so you can switch to it any time.
In other words, you save every year at least $2,000 if you do not rent. You can buy a new machine every year with the money saved. Now, please tell me it is better to rent.
I only buy Dell machines (1950's more exactly). Their servers are very solid and I never had any problems with their service... ultra fast. I stick with Dell because of the great prices you get for the equipment.
If you tell me that Dell is crap, you know nothing about their servers.
They are one of the best on the market, Supermicro quality without the price.
i was with the planet, moved on to fdcservers for now, they have been great. tho you need have some *nix knowledge since they don't provide free support x_x