Colo Server Management & Data Centers

[Young Teck 06]

I have been looking into leasing a server in the near future when I get my business going, and I have been looking into leasing a data center.

I have 2 questions, what would be your recommended data center for me to host my server in? I have looked at 3 right now and that's The Planet, Fast Servers, or Level3 (Baltimore, MD Gateway.)

I have some questions, and I was just wondering a few things. I am somewhat right now leaning to Fast Servers because of their Internap bandwidth and of course they have technical hours where I can send them software and use my hours that I get to have software installed on the server and the software be sent back afterwards. Does anybody know if Level3 and/or The Planet offers these?

I was also looking for a certain company out there, if there is any, that can manage my server for me. Can any of them data centers do so, like I don't know anything with a server and I know some offer managed "dedicated" servers, does anybody know if any of the above data centers offer managed "colo" services?

If I do get a colo server, which would be best to get on it, Linux or Windows? I have been looking into getting Plesk 7 for the control panel because of the sleek interface and the great management. But if Linux is my choice, I may choose cPanel, which is expensive.

Also, with a colo server, would it be best to add on a Remote Boot server option for this?

I may get me a dedicated server, but if I do, RECOMMENDATIONS PLEASE. lol, thanks again.

[Zachery]

You do understand that Colo, means that you build a server, and pay for most of its software and send it to them.

You would be best off renting/leasing a server, in all reality it is much cheeper and makes upgrades alot easier in most resepcts.

For OS choice, what do you work with most? Linux or windows, how much expirence do you have administering with either of them?

I would suggest a control panel software if you are not familiar with hosting itself, and if you decide linux and to rent from theplanet i would go with cpanel / RHE.

A sleek interface is nice, but its the actual opteration of the backend of the system that makes it worthwhile.

Plesk to me seems to be very cumbersom and you need to really go out of your way to do things.

Cpanel is only expensive if you buy the license outright, if you rent a server from theplanet it only costs 25 a month, which is signicantly less than buying a year license or owned license from cpanel itself :)

I would really recomend renting a server from theplanet, if you are going to host get a nice server, no celerons, nothing less than 1GB of memory in the server either.

[Young Teck 06]

I have been looking into leasing a server in the near future when I get my business going, and I have been looking into leasing a data center.

Its a clothing business, not hosting.

[Young Teck 06]

Alright, I am actually right now looking at the dedicated server that The Planet offers. It sounds great:

2.8GHz Processor
1GB of RAM
2 x 80GB HDD
Reboot Console
40GB NAS Storage (Don't Know What it Is)
Remote Server Management
2000GB of Bandwidth (Going to upgrade to 3000GB in the future)
11 IP Addresses (Upgradeable to 59)
Linux OS
cPanel and Urchin Web Analytics
MySQL 4.0 Database
My Selection - Titanium Manage Services (If its not too expensive)

Is that good enough Zachery?

[Zachery]

I don't think you really need the titanium managment services, you could proably squeek by with gold :) cpanel will handle 99% of everything, and if you need someone to setup a firewall let me know :)

[Dani]

DaniWeb is actually hosted with them guys :) In addition, we use Plesk and Red Hat Enterprise, because I find the Plesk interface much more intuitive than cPanel. There are some things I still would rather do via a terminal, though ;) But regardless, in a productive environment where uptime is everything, I would rather have the convenience of a control panel.

[Zachery]

I've found plesk to be rather cubmersom, ive tried using it in an enviroment for someones server and had nothing but problems.

[Dani]

To each his own. I don't like cPanel :)

[Young Teck 06]

I like both cPanel and Plesk, they both operate well, but I personally think that cPanel has more ...... experience over the Plesk control system. My ultimate idea I love about the server I am going to get is that it already has Cisco firewall and that the Remote Reboot, that way I won't need them to restart it for me, I can do it on my own.

Your right Zachery, Gold would be best as I do not need much service hours really. As a matter of fact, what the purpose of the service hours?

Whats the difference between the NAS storage and the HDD? I am still trying to figure that out really right now, makes me feel slow but I got to admit, dont know what it is.

I am actually going to upgrade to 3000GB of bandwidth in the future, do you think this is a good idea Zach and Dani? I am doing this because my main mission is to do some extensive advertising and marketing. With the extensive advertising, who knows how many people will come to my page, so always have to have backup. ;)

Also, you have got to love the 2.8GHz, not really fast, but good enough for a single user server. lol.

Lastly is the 11 IP Addresses, that should be good enough, ha ha, no upgrading for me unless necessary but I'll probably only use 1 of the 11, hmmmmm. Wonder what I could do with the rest?

Anyway, thanks for the help, and lets calm down you two ;) ** Gives both a drink to cool down** :D

[Zachery]

Service hours: they will install programs or do maitence outside of their normal agreeded apon contract. like you want a firewall installed, or cron backups configured.

NAS is I think Network Alication Storage or somthing close to that, its remote storage, great for backing up databases too.
You will probaly use 3-4 IP address
server's main ip + two name servers
and if you wanted main website can have its own dedicated ip if you need to install SSL for any reason

[Young Teck 06]

Alright, sounds great. So that means I'll have like, 3-5 left over of IP addresses. I want my Cisco firewall installed, yes. Not sure if anything else I will want done. Hmmm, thanks for the help there though Zachery.

[Zachery]

Not sure if you need a cisco firewall, but if you want go for it :D

And if you need some help after you've goten things setup go ahead and give me a ring ;)

[blud]

Personally, having dealt with cpanel and plesk on a daily basis, plesk is much more *stable* but you are right about it being more cumbersome, that is the price you pay for stability, the only time plesk will break is when you preform updates, cpanel, I see break every day for no good reason, *well there is always a reason, but far more frequent than plesk*. Granted, this is a conversation of 'to each their own' both will get the job done. The Service hours that the managed services plans come with are good for anything from making configuration changes such as changing the apache configuration to be more efficient, or installing additional software/modules.

*edit* Yes I realize this thread is almost a month old.:twisted: