Dedicated server recommendations?

[Jeff]

One of my dedicated servers has been infiltrated by hackers. The first time on that server, but I've had three other servers compromised in the past.
It seems no matter how quickly I apply the latest software updates there's always a chance someone will exploit holes before I can patch them.

Rather than just do a clean install on this server, I'm considering getting something newer, and in the UK rather than the US.


So can anyone recommend a decent company that can give me the following:


UK based, Linux server

At least 50GB transfer / month, preferably 100GB to allow for growth.

Cpanel - preferably with xcontroller / Fantastico

Some degree of server management (ie they automatically apply the latest updates, and make the server secure, so I don't have to worry about it)


I've considered moving to shared hosting to take away a lot of the admin hassle, but some of the databases I run probably use too much processing time in a shared environment.

[999gi]

Aquanuke recommended www.dedipower.com (ASUK) in the past & I have been using them for the past 3 months. Dont have any real issues although support is a bit slow.

I also use XCalibre but I dont think they do cpanel as standard, and they are quite expensive.

[drivetowin]

Why not look at a virtual server with Beamhost?

I've been with them for about a month now and have now upgraded to their largest virtual server solution. - it gives 200GB a month data transfer and you can run as many databases as you want (providing you don't run out of disk space of course - but you get 16GB which should be enough for most people)

Their support is first class and they take care of everything. I'm having a slight issue with my email forwarding with them at the moment but I'm confident they will get it sorted - I've asked them all sorts of questions in the last few weeks and they've never failed to come back with an answer (oh and looking back through their answers on average it's only taken them 21 minutes to come back to me and the average time for resolution of each issue is less than 1 hour so I can't fault their response times).

[Jeff]

Originally posted by kbudden Why not look at a virtual server with Beamhost?

Because according to another post on here their servers are located in the US.

[.net]

Originally posted by Jeff One of my dedicated servers has been infiltrated by hackers. The first time on that server, but I've had three other servers compromised in the past. It seems no matter how quickly I apply the latest software updates there's always a chance someone will exploit holes before I can patch them.

The number one cause of exploits is weak root passwords, make sure you have a rock hard password (example sn38@ds1_s) which is changed regularly. It might even be a good idea not to know your root password, if your hosting provider offers a managed hosting service.

[.net]

Originally posted by Jeff Because according to another post on here their servers are located in the US.

We have servers located both in the US and UK. However yes, new VPS customers are currently being placed on an array of host nodes located in dallas:
SuperMicro Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz Hyper-Threaded (or higher)
4 GB Registered ECC DDR RAM (minimum)
Multiple 15,000rpm U320 SCSI drives in Hardware RAID
Hot-Spare drives, zero downtime during failure
Hot-Swap drives and fans, replaceable on the fly
Redundant Hot-Swap power supplies (3 total)
Dual 10/100/1000 Network Interfaces

Once this array of nodes has completed population, we will be introducing pyhisically located virtual private servers in London (obviously with substantial price increase).

[Jeff]

Originally posted by .net The number one cause of exploits is weak root passwords, make sure you have a rock hard password (example sn38@ds1_s) which is changed regularly. It might even be a good idea not to know your root password, if your hosting provider offers a managed hosting service.

I don't think it was the root password that was the problem, it looks like they exploited a security hole in cpanel.

When I logged into WHM there was a large red warning telling me to upgrade because of security problems that had been discovered, if I'd seen that a couple of days earlier I'm sure I'd have been OK. I thought I'd got it set up to update automatically, but that doesn't appear to have happened. I must remember to log in to WHM at least once a day to see if there's anything that needs updating urgently.



Rather than get a UK based dedicated server I've decided to use one of my US based dedicated servers just to run my databases on. I'll (hopefully) make it more secure by turning off all services that aren't required, and I'll use it to serve database results to sites hosted in the UK on a reseller hosting account. So I'll have the advantage of my sites appearing to be in the UK, but still using a relatively cheap US based dedicated server to do the processor / disk intensive stuff.

[Aquanuke]

I got a server last month with poundhost, the problem I find with UK server farms is they dont have multiple networks. In the last month theres been atleast 8 outages admittedly pretty short ones but today they where down for 114 minutes, due to a fibre optic carrier going down in Redbus. But then its quite common for a DOS attack to take down the whole network.

[Aquanuke]

The number one cause of exploits is weak root passwords

Ive been using my bank account password on my last server.. but then their the same bank that sent me a pin card with 1234