Dedicated server recommendations?

[philhancox]

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After a devastating incident earlier today where one of my main websites was completely eradicated and left open to abuse because Heart Internet disabled the database due to "a spike in server load" without warning, I'm now seriously considering a) getting a dedicated server and b) potentially leaving Heart.
I will obviously be attempting to optimise the database and website (WordPress really is a pain sometimes) but I was very shocked and upset to see this happen particularly with PPC campaigns running, trying to improve rankings etc.
Do many affiliates use a dedicated server or do you happily get on with shared/reseller? I'm not massively experienced in web hosting; can anyone recommend decent dedicated server hosts, things to watch out for etc?

[webhostuk]

Hello,

If your website requirements are high then surely you should go for Dedicated server. Managed dedicated server will be a great help for you... also regarding optimization of site or database on dedicated server you get root access to perform maintenance of your site.

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PM me if you have any more question or you can also email us at sales (@) webhost.uk.net

[pipeten]

The main reasons to go for a dedicated server are if your site is quite heavy on bandwidth or disk space as you tend to get a lot more with a dedicated server, even if you chose a host offering a "supposed" unlimited amount of resources on a shared/reseller package. Also if the scripts on your site require a lot of processing power or RAM then your host would probably want you to move to a dedicated server. But ultimately you are always open to the possibility of experiencing some downtime when you are sharing a server with other people who could abuse a server's resources, so if it costs you more from having downtime on Heart's shared servers than it would to pay for a dedicated server then that is probably the way to go.

It is probably worth looking at a VPS first though as that would give you the stability of a dedicated server but without committing such a large investment. With the recent developments in virtual technology over the past couple of years they are more popular than ever.

[confuscius]

My advice would be to go for a scalable vps with/without management as you need it. Take a look at the offerings at clustered.net - google for reviews and see if you can find a bad one. I have 3 cpanel vps's but recently decided to try a directadmin vps at clustered and it beats the pants off the others. The clustered solution is highly scalable and I will probably migrate my other vps's at contract end.

I have also tried some of the 'cloud' solutions but these require more technical knowledge and ALL of the cloud solutions that I have tried have been beset with 'technical issues'.

[tomj]

avoid webfusion/123reg dedicated hosting...

Dedipower have in my experience provided me the most awesome customer support...altho they are not cheap.

[daveh]

I believe Heart Internet offer unlimited everything and I suspect that you are the unfortunate one to have action taken against you for being at the top of the list for usage that period. It stands to reason that the more usage there is the more you're pushing the server to it's limit, this tends to blow a hole in the 'unlimited everything' hosting model.

Every webhost, myself included, will experience server load spikes and no doubt handle things differently. I personally work with the client to resolve the issues but initially have to take action to regain control of the server load and this may include restrictions or suspensions being put in place. This may only be for a few minutes but it all depends on the circumstance. Heart Internet took whatever action it felt necessary at the time, I'm not saying it was right or wrong but one way to look at this is, why should the server load spike affect everyone else on that server when they aren't the cause of it?

[philhancox]

Heart Internet took whatever action it felt necessary at the time, I'm not saying it was right or wrong but one way to look at this is, why should the server load spike affect everyone else on that server when they aren't the cause of it?

Absolutely; I agree noone should have to suffer if someone else's website is causing a spike but my situation was bizarre as the website in question receives a very low amount of traffic and (according to Heart) was consistent. I didn't receive any warning, any apology and the site wasn't reenabled for well over 14 hours.
Whilst I may be in the wrong, I'm still in the dark as to why my low-traffic site caused such a spike as to be shut down without warning and now feel as if my sites are being held almost at ransom.
I've now optimised my database and website to use less queries, but it worries me that if traffic increases substantially or I don't regularly optimise the database, it could be shut down again without warning.

[daveh]

Even a genuine culprit should have been treated better than that, from what you're saying they appear to have picked out the wrong user without studying the usage logs correctly.

Well you have my sympathy, it can't be nice, and I hope you find your better place soon.

[thelittledude]

To be honest unless you are willing to pay a comparative significant amount (a few hundred pounds a year or so base) you really cannot depend or be sure of any real reliability even with a dedicated server (network issues etc).

The higher priced providers such as Rackspace offer a significant service in this regard (with a stringent SLA) but a base server with them is in the region of £350 in my experience (Dual XEON/2GB/73GB).

I did have my own Dell 1U Servers (1650's/1750's) in a UK Datacentre and that worked out about £200 month for 2 servers (but these were fairly low power consumption). If you are going to do this a server at quadruple the base cost but half the power requirements would (and does) pay for itself in months.

Decent providers are not cheap however worth it for peace of mind if you scale big.

I don't think you are considering that yet but bear it in mind for the future

[davesearle]

Why not try cloud computing? I have a dedicated windows server on Amazon EC2, pretty cheap, comes in at about £70 a month (.NET 3.5 with SQL Server Express installed). Allows me to run background services, as many sites as is possible and scale up really quickly if I need to. Additionally, if the server goes down, I can get it back up in about 30 mins as you can image the system drive (once you've set it up) and all data runs off amazon ebs, which is a mountable drive and can be backed up onto amazon s3 (i don't work for amazon by the way! )

[CouponFreaks]

I would say Rackspace all day long, expensive but support is amazing! If your serious go to Rackspace, if you just need decent cheap hosting go to someone like Hostgator

[AzamMarketing]

Hi,

UK2.Net is actually running a Buy One Get One Free offer on dedicated servers - you can find out more
here . The offer ends on Friday 23 April 2010.

Highlights include:
• New! Unmetered servers*
• New! Massive 24GB DDR3 RAM server
• New! Faster processors with the latest technology
• New! Superfast SAS drives as standard in Enterprise Servers

All Dedicated Servers come with UK2's 100% Power Uptime & 99.9% Network Uptime Service Level Guarantee, 24/7 specialist support, 10TB minimum bandwidth /month with 100Mb connectivity, and unlimited FREE SSL certificates!

Please feel free to PM me if you require any further information.

Thanks!
Sinead

[FEAR]

Get an account at HostGator, they are by far the best shared host around so your blog should run great on there.

If however you decide you need a dedicated server then you should check out Kumsufi.co.uk, they are part of OVH network located in France and offer very reasonably priced servers with good specs.

[jonsimmonds]

How much b/w does your site pull a month? what scripts do you use? how many visitors do you get during your peak periods?

[Adavid]

Rackspace all the way!! We have dedicated servers with them, and have had for the last 4 or so years. They are, as coupon freaks mentions, quite a bit more expensive than most hosting co's but what you're paying for is the support, which is amazing. If the proverbial ever does hit the fan and you need to speak to a tech, there are no queues or automated messages, and what's best is the tech support guys actually sound like they give a monkeys. And before you ask or think it, no, i dont work for them!