Do you have a dedicated server?

[davert]

Liquidweb for years and years, $400/month but I use it for more than forums. I pay a LOT more for the reliability and service. They have been excellent on both counts for years. It has a RAID 10 setup with SSDs and 32 GB of RAM, regular backups, CPanel, and a boatload of cores. However, improvements to Apache mean I will be downsizing fairly soon, because PHP-FPM has dramatically reduced processor load.

 

[Joeychgo]

I'm in the process of getting new colo servers and moving my stuff to an entirely new host. I've been with ASO for about 14 years, ever since Tim Dorr started it. I have wanted to move ever since EIG acquired ASO.... I haven't moved yet because being that I colo, moving isn't so simple as just copying sites over, I have to also figure out how to move the physical servers.

So my decision to move included getting new servers.

Supermicro X9 V2 Motherboard
2x Intel Xeon E5-2660 V2+
64GB DDR3 ECC RDIMM (expandable to 256GB)
(3) Intel Enterprise 800GB SSD (expandable to 6 drives) (Raid 5)
LSI 2108 Hardware RAID Controller
2x Intel Dual Gigabit NIC
Onboard IPMI Management
Expandable with (1) 8x PCI-E card

Lots of space, lots of expandability.
What's great is this new company is warrantying the parts of these new servers for 4 years.

Also, my servers will be in the Kansas City datacenter, which is actually built undergound


The new company is https://www.netfire.net/

What's also great is that the guys that own the company I am moving to have worked at ASO for many years, so I know these guys. They have built their own datacenter operation now and that's why I'm moving. I have no doubt these 2 guys will give EXCELLENT service. (ie - I have both their cel phone numbers to reach out if I have an issue, not some BS chat or ticket system)

If anyone is interested in talking to these guys - let me know I'll connect you with the top guys directly. They don't do shared hosting, they are focusing on high quality managed dedicated and colo servers.

 

[rwill76]

So my decision to move included getting new servers.

Supermicro X9 V2 Motherboard
2x Intel Xeon E5-2660 V2+
64GB DDR3 ECC RDIMM (expandable to 256GB)
(3) Intel Enterprise 800GB SSD (expandable to 6 drives) (Raid 5)
LSI 2108 Hardware RAID Controller
2x Intel Dual Gigabit NIC
Onboard IPMI Management
Expandable with (1) 8x PCI-E card


Lots of space, lots of expandability.
What's great is this new company is warrantying the parts of these new servers for 4 years.

Also, my servers will be in the Kansas City datacenter, which is actually built undergound

2660v2 is anything but new...this was part of the Ivy Bridge family of processors, some years back. Also, Kansas City is not the ideal data center location. You may want to supplement this location with other locations for your busier sites. KC is not home to much dark fiber.

 

[Joeychgo]

Also, Kansas City is not the ideal data center location. You may want to supplement this location with other locations for your busier sites. KC is not home to much dark fiber.

AT&T, Century Link, Consolidated, COX, Level 3, Time Warner Business Class, and Unite Private Networks provide underground fiber that enter from completely separate routes. Total redundancy of SONET-based services, including fiber path loop protection and Telco Central Office diversity are available.

2660v2 is anything but new...this was part of the Ivy Bridge family of processors, some years back

its a considerable upgrade from what I had and my sites are running fine.

 

[mysiteguy]

its a considerable upgrade from what I had and my sites are running fine.

It'll be plenty fast. I hosted a 6 million post *1.5million monthly visitor forum on considerably less 10 years ago and it was very fast. All it takes is proper optimization. I'd put any properly optimized server against a non-optimized server using "twice as fast" hardware any day. Too often the thought is "throw more hardware at it" rather than addressing underlying issues with a setup, lol.

 

[Joeychgo]

It'll be plenty fast. I hosted a 6 million post 1.5million monthly visitor forum on considerably less 10 years ago and it was very fast. All it takes is proper optimization. I'd put any properly optimized server against a non-optimized server using "twice as fast" hardware any day. Too often the thought is "throw more hardware at it" rather than addressing the fundamental problem, lol.

Yup, I agree. I had 3 different server techs I trust put the systems together and optimize them. Sure, I would have liked to get newer processors, but these are just fine for my needs and budget.

 

[vikvaliant]

Over the years I've moved from shared hosting to colocation to dedicated, and now VPS (kvm). Currently have...

1 production server with Linode - $40/month (+$10/month snapshot capability)
1 test server with Linode - $20/month
1 monitoring server with Linode - $20/month
1 backup server with Ramnode - $9/month
1 mailserver server with Ramode - $10/month
1 VMware server at home for testing - $0/month + electricity to run it

 

[Dan18]

1 monitoring server with Linode

May I ask, What monitoring script you're using?

 

[vikvaliant]

May I ask, What monitoring script you're using?

Zabbix - free to use open source version

 

[vbgamer45]

Colocated is the way to go if you are big enough. One time fee for the hardware. And gives your more control over your setup. Some places you can colocate a single server or get a portion of cabinet if you don't need all the space. Their is remote hands options. But I like being able to be near my setup in case something is needed. I do suggest you have dual power supplies, spare parts such power supplies, raid controller cards in case they fail.

 

[Paul M]

Zabbix - free to use open source version

Yep, I also run a Zabbix server (on Vultr) to monitor all my other systems.

I much prefer 2.2.x though, I think the visual display in the later 3.x versions is awful.

 

[vikvaliant]

I much prefer 2.2.x though, I think the visual display in the later 3.x versions is awful.

Every now and then procrastination pays off. I'm on 2.4 and I've been too lazy to upgrade to 3.x. Especially since I have no problems with 2.4.

Previous to this I had an account with Pingdom (before they were purchased by SolarWinds) but realized I could monitor more metrics cheaper with a VPS and open source script.

 

[vikvaliant]

My employer started using opensource Prometheus | Grafana for monitoring, reporting, and dashboards. It's very customizable and nice looking. They've compelled me to learn it so I'll try it out on my own stuff and let you all know how it goes.

 

[ripptech]

I guess I'm the big spender here. ~$160/mo for a 32GB 3.5Ghz 8 core SSD Ubuntu 18.04 box hosted in Dallas. I get backups, serial/net console, and techs who (I think) know what's up. I run all my stuff off that box, most on apache (but the big forum off ngnix), mail, wordpress, etc. I did colo for a while early on, but the box I built quickly got obsolete and I wound up paying about the same in the long run. What I have is overpowered but I'm an OS guy so I don't mind having room to play.

I was with a much cheaper provider in KC, but I had to switch after they had 3 near-day-long outages within 4 days over 4th of July weekend. I was like ok fine I'll pony up, I can't be down like that again.

You do get what you pay for, mainly in terms up uptime and network quality and reputation. Having to unblock your server's IP space from nearly every major ISP's e-mail black lists (b/c your new IP's used to be spam centers) is no fun.

 

[mysiteguy]

I guess I'm the big spender here. ~$160/mo for a 32GB 3.5Ghz 8 core SSD Ubuntu 18.04 box hosted in Dallas. I get backups, serial/net console, and techs who (I think) know what's up. I run all my stuff off that box, most on apache (but the big forum off ngnix), mail, wordpress, etc. I did colo for a while early on, but the box I built quickly got obsolete and I wound up paying about the same in the long run. What I have is overpowered but I'm an OS guy so I don't mind having room to play.

I was with a much cheaper provider in KC, but I had to switch after they had 3 near-day-long outages within 4 days over 4th of July weekend. I was like ok fine I'll pony up, I can't be down like that again.

You do get what you pay for, mainly in terms up uptime and network quality and reputation. Having to unblock your server's IP space from nearly every major ISP's e-mail black lists (b/c your new IP's used to be spam centers) is no fun.

Dallas leaves a lot of different companies on the table. Is it hostwinds?

 

[ripptech]

Dallas leaves a lot of different companies on the table. Is it hostwinds?

Yep. That exactly.

 

[mysiteguy]

Yep. That exactly.

I assume by your post you're very happy with them. How has uptime been, latency, and response time to support issues (if any)?

 

[ripptech]

I assume by your post you're very happy with them. How has uptime been, latency, and response time to support issues (if any)?

Everything so far is great. The box was up mere hours after putting in the order. I only had to get off one IP black list (yay) and haven't had any downtime, save for one reboot that the machine stuck on, but the techs were right on it.

 

[mysiteguy]

Okay, thanks. I'm considering another dedicated server, in a different city from where I host now (Atlanta). Basically so I can have another backup server in a different location in case of natural disaster or regional outage. I'll check into them.

 

[ripptech]

Everything so far is great. The box was up mere hours after putting in the order. I only had to get off one IP black list (yay) and haven't had any downtime, save for one reboot that the machine stuck on, but the techs were right on it.

I'm about to rescind this statement. The ram in the server took a major dump yesterday about 2pm. I'm still down, only HALF WAY through a ram test. "Oh we have to run the test you know." I'm currently in full-on "I've done this **** for 20 years" mode and pressing them for answers as to what we're going to learn from this that we don't already know. Swap out the freaking ram already and lets move on.