Direct Admin Dedicated Server Providers

[dazerrackers]

Does anyone know any good DA Dedicated Server companies? that offer 120GB/1000GB Bandwidth - min. Thanks!

[ProWebUK]

If you are looking for managed - optimum-servers.com (or PM me)

unmanaged - ev1servers.net + DA license.

Chris

[Bloory]

Any suggestions for "reasonable" UK based servers?

What's the minimum realistic server spec for production use?

Thanks :)

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by Bloory
Any suggestions for "reasonable" UK based servers?

With rented servers in the UK, you pay double the price, and get a fraction of the bandwidth (you can be paying £100 for a celeron with 30gb of bandwidth p/mo) in my opinion, to keep up with the general hosting industry, you have to take to the US for rented servers....


Originally posted by Bloory
What's the minimum realistic server spec for production use?

Impossible to say without some actual info - you could run 500 personal sites with 2 visits a day on a celeron, and probably struggle to host 1 very large site, if handle it all.

Chris

[Bloory]

I'm not sure the deals are as bad as that, the UK market is hotting up, just a matter of trying to sort the wheat from the chaff without wasting too much cash :)

[ProWebUK]

Was slightly off! but havnt looked in months... anyway, heres a price in the uk:

Intel Pentium 4 3.06
2GB RAM
120GB IDE HD
Plesk 7 ***100 domains***
50GB b/w p/mo

£99 / $180USD

the server is fairly nice spec... but the bandwidth just pulls the entire idea to the floor, especially when you can get 1700GB bandwidth and an identical server for the same price in the US.

The only way you may get a good price in the UK, is if you can get hold of a unmetered line in a DC.... but the costs may be way above what you expect.

Chris

[nobaloney]

There's bandwidth and then there's bandwidth.

I've been tempted over and over again by data centers that will give us more bandwidth so we can offer more data transit to our clients.

But when it comes right down to it, there's nothing better than space at a tier-one data center (centre, for those of us on the other side of the pond :) ) and bandwidth from a tier-one carrier.

You can look at numbers all you want, but the fact is that in the years we've been in business, none of our systems clients have ever gone over the 100 GB we offer every month.

Except for me one month, when I was offering a Linux distribution CD-ROM.

Of course we discuss the bandwidth and data transit issues with prospects in advance, and we advise certain prospects that they might be better off with less expensive data transit.

In general, you do get what you pay for.

Jeff

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by jlasman
There's bandwidth and then there's bandwidth.

I've been tempted over and over again by data centers that will give us more bandwidth so we can offer more data transit to our clients.

But when it comes right down to it, there's nothing better than space at a tier-one data center (centre, for those of us on the other side of the pond :) ) and bandwidth from a tier-one carrier.

You can look at numbers all you want, but the fact is that in the years we've been in business, none of our systems clients have ever gone over the 100 GB we offer every month.

Except for me one month, when I was offering a Linux distribution CD-ROM.

Of course we discuss the bandwidth and data transit issues with prospects in advance, and we advise certain prospects that they might be better off with less expensive data transit.

In general, you do get what you pay for.

Jeff

I'm certainly not going to disagree, but the cost of *ANY* bandwidth in the UK is expensive - the typical home broadband connection of 512mb on a contention ratio of 50:1 generally costs £28 - thats $51USD per month....

I have spoken to numerous people who have bandwidth at home in the US, and think that $30 is expensive.... if we had that we'd be jumping with joy!

Are you telling me you would pay $180USD for 50GB bandwidth, when you can get an equal if not better network, that is just as reliable, and provides 1700GB for the same price?

To a certain point I consider quality over quantity, but you have to place the line somewhere in the middle if you want a chance of holding your business.

As much as we are based in the UK also, we need to consider the fact that over half of our current/existing clients are/were based in the US - for them a US based DC would be in preference of a UK based DC.

Chris

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
I have spoken to numerous people who have bandwidth at home in the US, and think that $30 is expensive.... if we had that we'd be jumping with joy!
us$30 might be expensive for some users, but I pay us$75/month for my DSL connection to my home (instead of the lowest priced $26.95 being advertised here locally), and in the past I've paid as high as $130/month. Because I value service, uptime, and low MTTR (mean time to repair) highly.

Are you telling me you would pay $180USD for 50GB bandwidth, when you can get an equal if not better network, that is just as reliable, and provides 1700GB for the same price?
I'm not telling you that at all. What I'm saying is that 1700GB for us$180 per month is NOT the same quality bandwidth. At least not here in the U.S. It doesn't have the same latency, the same uptime, the same MTTR.

We charge our colo clients us$150/month for 1 U of space, and for 100GB of transit over a 10 mbps tier one connection from Level(3). And enough of them think that's good for them that we've almost run out of space in our second cabinet.

To a certain point I consider quality over quantity, but you have to place the line somewhere in the middle if you want a chance of holding your business.
Then that's your business model. And that's fine for you. Our business model is to offer the highest quality bandwidth and to not apologize for the price (though certainly to explain it as/when required).

As much as we are based in the UK also, we need to consider the fact that over half of our current/existing clients are/were based in the US - for them a US based DC would be in preference of a UK based DC.
There's certainly a lot of latency in an over-ocean (or more properly under-ocean) hop. And indeed, for your site visitors in the U.S., even a higher latency connection may seem to have less latency than a better connection in the UK.

But my response to the thread was simply a response to your mention of companies offering huge limits on (mostly Cogent) bandwidth when in fact most dedicated server users never need that bandwidth and would be better served by higher quality bandwidth.

We do the math all the time. And quality always comes out ahead for us.

And for our clients, most of whom are not first-time buyers, but rather expatriates from companies where they weren't satisfied.

Jeff

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by jlasman
What I'm saying is that 1700GB for us$180 per month is NOT the same quality bandwidth.

The same quality bandwidth in comparison to what?

50GB of UK B/W
50GB of US B/W

Both on the highest quality providers/networks you can find, I can guaranatee, for the same cost, you will get far better quality on the US than the UK.

In the UK, simply put, it would be virtually impossible to keep up with the US in terms of bandwidth, of course... hardware is another matter altogether.


Originally posted by jlasman
Our business model is to offer the highest quality bandwidth

What you are saying is there is no line splitting cost and quantity for you? meaning will pay *anything* (literally) for good quality bandwidth?

Even if that may be true, are your customers willing to pay *anything* for good quality bandwidth aswell?

I know theres a market for that, the likes of dell, m$ and other major companies... they will of course pay thousands upon thousands to ensure everything is perfect 100% of the time - even though they will do it themselves.

What im trying to say is, every "average" company will have a limit on the best they can get, they will need X quantity, and want the highest quality provider they can get, but they ALSO have a budget

If you dont put the line somewhere, then you need to have funds... we have funds, but not the funds to be perfect.

in 2003 I believe ev1 had 100% network uptime, aswell as power supply (even though they had a transformer explode!), I have personally never had a network problem with them, and never felt its extensively slow for any period of time, nor have we ever had any complaints from customers etc about the network/sites being slow.


Originally posted by jlasman
But my response to the thread was simply a response to your mention of companies offering huge limits on (mostly Cogent) bandwidth when in fact most dedicated server users never need that bandwidth and would be better served by higher quality bandwidth.

I'll guess that is an assumption? dc2 of ev1 has NO cogent, and 3 of its current 6 lines (in dc2) are Verio GigE

I'll be the first to say we dont use 1700GB on any of our limited systems, but i'll say we use a fair bit more than 50GB in one month.

Chris

[Bloory]

So, no recomendations then? I was thinking of Gyron.net for a "quality" brand and Poundhost for a "budget" brand.

I currently have several CPanel boxes (for my sins) with UKDedicated (UK) & Voxtreme (NAC,US). The boxes/network/bandwidth are great, but CPanel isn't - updating Apache was a nightmare. I do currently manage a DA box at Poundhost - an AMD 1800, 256 MB with almost 60 users on and going strong (I think!). Is that resonable?

[ProWebUK]

60 users could mean anything... but it sounds ok to me based on "average" - small websites.

Chris

[Bloory]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
60 users could mean anything... but it sounds ok to me based on "average" - small websites.

Chris

It's true, it could mean anything. It's a server hsoting free websites for UK Scout groups, so lots use nukes/cms/forums but many are "quiet".


Anyway, I guess the thing to do is to try out one or both of these (and maybe others) and then to let people know how I get on. Does £65.00 plus VAT sound like a lot for an owned DA licence? What's the OS of choice these days?

Thanks for your time :)

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by Bloory
Does £65.00 plus VAT sound like a lot for an owned DA licence?

A DA lifetime license is £163 with NO VAT, and the licenses cannot be resold (unless sold with a server) - where are you getting that price from?


Originally posted by Bloory
What's the OS of choice these days?

We use RHEL for all new servers, and a couple of our existing systems run redhat 7.3 / 9 and are kept updated with custom compiled rpms, together with progeny and fedora legacy updates.

Its all a matter of choice there :)

Chris

[Bloory]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
A DA lifetime license is £163 with NO VAT, and the licenses cannot be resold (unless sold with a server) - where are you getting that price from?


That's Gyron's DC pricing + profit I assume?



We use RHEL for all new servers, and a couple of our existing systems run redhat 7.3 / 9 and are kept updated with custom compiled rpms, together with progeny and fedora legacy updates.

Its all a matter of choice there :)

Chris

Thanks :)

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
The same quality bandwidth in comparison to what?
We buy bandwidth from tier one providers. We've never had downtime attributable to transit failures (though we've accidentally pulled the wrong plug once or twice before we switched to a coded system, and we have had router port failures twice).

And before you ask... I like the definition of tier one provider here (http://www.t1price.net/tier-1-tier-2-providers.html).

What you are saying is there is no line splitting cost and quantity for you? meaning will pay *anything* (literally) for good quality bandwidth?
Fortunately we've been able to get tier one quality bandwidth at very good pricing, in the Level(3) data center in Tustin, California.

Even if that may be true, are your customers willing to pay *anything* for good quality bandwidth aswell?
Forutunately, they are willing to pay the prices we charge. We don't think we're expensive at all. Our rental servers are reasonably priced for what we offer, and the fact that we continue to grow attests to that.

I know theres a market for that, the likes of dell, m$ and other major companies...
There's also a good market for it in smaller companies such as ours, as we give much better, and much more personalized service than do the big guys.

they will of course pay thousands upon thousands to ensure everything is perfect 100% of the time - even though they will do it themselves.
We pay thousands of dollars every month ourselves.

What im trying to say is, every "average" company will have a limit on the best they can get, they will need X quantity, and want the highest quality provider they can get, but they ALSO have a budget
We have a very tight budget ourselves and I certainly understand your point.

If you dont put the line somewhere, then you need to have funds... we have funds, but not the funds to be perfect.
We partner with others as necessary, and we've been profitable from the first day.

in 2003 I believe ev1 had 100% network uptime, aswell as power supply (even though they had a transformer explode!), I have personally never had a network problem with them, and never felt its extensively slow for any period of time, nor have we ever had any complaints from customers etc about the network/sites being slow.
That's good. That doesn't change the fact that someone using ev1 is getting that cheap bandwidth they're using (see here (http://www.ev1.net/english/about/network.asp)).

I'll guess that is an assumption? dc2 of ev1 has NO cogent, and 3 of its current 6 lines (in dc2) are Verio GigE
See the above link; they use plenty of cheap bandwidth from Cogent and Williams.

I'll be the first to say we dont use 1700GB on any of our limited systems, but i'll say we use a fair bit more than 50GB in one month.
As I mentioned above, none of our clients have gone above the 100GB we give everyone each month.

I think it's time for me to drop out of this thread; the fact that we keep growing proves we fill an important need and that there is a place for our model.

Jeff

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by jlasman
That's good. That doesn't change the fact that someone using ev1 is getting that cheap bandwidth they're using (see here (http://www.ev1.net/english/about/network.asp)).

See the above link; they use plenty of cheap bandwidth from Cogent and Williams.

Specifically pointed out DC2 in my message - the network info for that available here: http://www.ev1servers.net/english/aboutus/dc2networks.asp


Not forgetting the fact, that DC2 only opened recently. I was informed on the day DC2 opened there were 7 additional GigE lines on order and to be installled as the number of live systems in DC2 increases (to match supply)


Originally posted by jlasman
We partner with others as necessary, and we've been profitable from the first day.

quoting myself:


If you dont put the line somewhere, then you need to have funds... we have funds, but not the funds to be perfect.

We also "partner" and try to relate with companies where we feel it necessary or worthy, and we are certainly profitable, although the point remains.

I'll be the first to say, we have never had network, hardware, or power problems during our time with ev1 - the main cause of downtime for our systems and our customers systems, is a reboot for kernel upgrades, you of course get the occasional software unable to restart, besides that theres little that causes downtime after the initial system setup..

What I have never personally heard, is a customer of ours complain about the network or downtime in general (anything which makes the system/domains inaccessable or respond slowly)


Originally posted by jlasman
none of our clients have gone above the 100GB we give everyone each month.

That would be specific to your company. We offer rented servers managed for virtually anything that doesnt conflict with our tos - one of those being internet radio, using a dedicated 10mbps line - all I will say is it uses alot more than a 100gb.

Chris

[dazerrackers]

Thanks guys. I already have a server with ev1, im just going to get them to re-install linux. Then install DA as i am getting a lifetime license.