60MinuteAffiliate

Hello there

I'm looking please for information regarding dedicated server hosting....with extremely high "up" time, high bandwidth allowances, etc, good customer support...the usual.

thanks in advance and have a nice day

colleen

john_kennedy

I always preferred softlayer.com. When I had my hosting company I had at least 3 servers there. Great support, great servers and if you catch a good sale you can get some good bargains.

John

Adway

If price isn't really an obstacle, you should definitely look at Peer1.com - You can't beat them in anything

I deal with them for Collocation Services.

Next up would be ThePlanet.com - There support is crazy and Uptime, high, they don't have downtime problems on their side. There was probably once or twice in the past 5 years where is was a big downtime in one data center. The fact that they have like 4 datacenters alone tells you something

I have also used Softlayer.com for about 6 months before moving to collocation, and their support, great, no downtimes and you have the ability to upscale in bandwidth, hardware, etc... pretty easily. But the same goes for the above two.

Scott Lundergan

I agree with the first few posters as well.

Softlayer is phenomenal, support is top-notch and they are always what seems to be at least six months ahead of what most dedicated companies in the industry are doing in regards to innovation. The layout/back office is easy to get around and upscaling is a breeze.

They are also good negotiators and pass off amazing partnership deals they get (like with internap) to their customers.

Debbie Songster

I have my dedicated server with ThePlanet via Hostgator.
I've had a dedicated server for 5+ years with Hostgator and the support is excellent. A couple times I was in the middle of an install that needed something special put on the server and the guys jumped right on it for me.
Their service goes beyond whats expected.

As for the server its self. I've got a special built system. One they don't advertise.
My suggestion to you is to call and talk to those places you are interested in.
I compare having a dedicated server to buying a house. You want to move once and it should have all the features you need. But, if it doesn't then you need a host that is willing to add if for you.

Up time isn't an issue.

I've been quite happy with mine. In fact I'm expanding to a second server and I'll be getting it from them.
They always look after me. I have no complaints

Good luck on your search.

babushka99

Rackspace, ThePlanet, SoftLayer, LayeredTech, LiquidWeb, HiVelocity, Pacificrack

theimdude

I have a VPS1 with Liquid Web fully managed cpanel installed telephone/email 247 support. Cost is $50 and you wont go wrong.
Here is a special only available WHT

(a VPS is much the same as a dedicated)

Discounts on Liquid Web Windows and Linux VPS! - $30/off all VPS Packages! - Web Hosting Talk

They also have a dedicated special only on WHT and here is the link

Liquid Web: Dual Opteron Blow-out from $114/mth! P4 3GHZ w/ cPanel & Support $149! - Web Hosting Talk

I have been with LW for nearly 2 years and had no problem

I also have a dedicate with Corenetworks for $29 with excellent service but is unmanaged so you need to know what you doing

zapseo

Let's ask a slightly different, but related question:

What should you look for in a dedicated server?

What are the options, what are the trade-offs?

What are the "buzzwords" to know when talking to hosting companies that don't make it sound like you just fell off a turnip truck.

(Let's take an example -- I certainly understand "backbone", but an ad I saw for ded servers said something about connecting to a 7x network -- that's "buzz" I'm not familiar with. I worked on computer communications networks (tymnet/tymshare) back in the early 80s -- and remember when we used to print out a graph of the "Internet" -- LOL. Those were the days.)

Thanks in advance for all your help/advice.

Live JoyFully!

Judy

Virtual Banker

Liquid Web
end of story. its the best. look no further.

Grabie

I agree! Great customer support. I use it for nearly 1 year, no down time.

Matt Wahle

It depends very much on what you need.

If you don't know how to run a dedicated server, don't touch Layered Tech with a 10-ft pole. They are 100% self-managed, and they will sit by and let you crash & burn if you don't know what you're doing. (I had several servers with them for over 3 years.)

I wouldn't touch Layered Tech with a 10-foot pole for other reasons though, and to find them out you need to do some basic research on Web Hosting Talk.

If you don't know how to run a dedicated server, you need to hire a server administrator. If you don't, your server will get hacked, your sites will get destroyed and your server will become a veritable spam fountain within a matter of months. Server administration is largely about security, and is a huge, huge thing.

The good ol' $29/mo. package is NOT sufficient. (I can go into the reasons ad nauseum if I must, otherwise do a search on Web Hosting Talk and you can read about it there.) Competent and proper server administration starts at $75/mo and goes up from there. So if you find a nice server at NetDepot, add $75/mo. to that price mentally, because you are going to have to hire a 3rd-party administrator to actually run that box. Self-managed providers DO NOT manage your server. Sorry to be so adamant about this but a lot of people have gotten burned before you, thinking "oh they aren't really that mean." Yes, they are.

Fully-managed providers are a different story. Ask your potential provider what exactly management includes; it turns out that most "fully managed" providers aren't really fully managed, they're semi managed... that is, there are key things they don't do. For instance, most hosts consider working on "non-standard packages" and 3rd-party scripts to be billable support. How much do they bill? $250/hr. adds up really quickly. Do your homework. Whip out Excel and do an old-fashioned comparison spreadsheet.

You will find that the hosts who actually provide semi management are a bit lower-priced (generally). This is because it costs less (particularly in human support) to run a semi-managed server than a fully-managed server. They aren't having to pay somebody to do as much stuff.

You don't necessarily need a fully-managed server. It depends on what you want your host to do for you, how much stuff you want to do yourself, how much you want to learn about running a server, etc. Most people get by just fine with a semi-managed type of set-up. Truly fully-managed, a la Rackspace, is priced through the roof and frankly hits the needs of a pretty tight niche. The overwhelming majority of people go with a quality semi-managed, reasonably-priced provider, and do just fine.

I should note that a lot of providers will simply call their servers "managed," there is no set standard of what defines FULLY managed vs. SEMI managed, etc. In my head, FULLY = EVERYTHING. SEMI = SOME or even MOST. But hosts use whatever words they think sound good, and their definitions vary wildly. So don't assume that just because they say "managed" or "undying support" or whatever, that it actually means you are going to get what you think you're getting. Get the gory specifics in print.

Your hands-down best resource for learning about Dedicated Servers, hosts, technical specs, and especially to research the history on a prospective host before signing up (ALWAYS research them first) is Web Hosting Talk - webhostingtalk.com. It is a gold mine of information.

Sorry this is so long.

MW

zapseo

Matt,

Don't apologize for making your post long! That's excellent information.
I have managed my own servers before, but not in a webhosting environment -- IOW, where hosting webservices was a very, very, very tiny part of what the servers did, and then it was behind a firewall (at Sun Microsystems) ... and it was back in the late 90s.

A friend of mine, who runs a hosting company -- figures with my shell scripting background -- that I wouldn't have a problem with a dedicated server. But the security issue is definitely one that I think requires constant vigilance. For that reason, I would never go with a self-managed server.

I really appreciate all the feedback.

Thanks!

Judy

michealscorez

try rack space or dreamhost..

Amber Jalink

Absolutely 500% Liquid Web.

I've used ThePlanet... I've used Rackspace.... I've used Alabanza. All of them had issues repeatedly from mail being lost (not arriving), to constant domains being blocked (Rackspace especially) because they let spammers through, to repeated down time, to endless hackers, to huge costs, and really poor support. Oh, and don't even get me started on "upgrades" to the machines WITHOUT notice that would knock scripts out, then tell us it was our responsibility to fix OR charge for them to do so.

Liquid Web gives WAY over and above everything. Support-they answer in 15 min or less. (I think its a guarantee, but not sure).

They put special tools in place (at no extra cost) to block hack attempts and are 100% on the ball with that kind of thing.

I've never been asked to pay extra for fixes, whether it was their fault OR NOT (and actually I don't think its ever been their fault on LW).

Been with them for 3 1/2 years now - not going anywhere else.

If support at no additional costs (within reason I'm sure), even on scripts you might have installed means ANYTHING to you, I wouldn't waste my time with anyone else.

We had a few others try to get us to move to them before we chose LW, and frankly no one could beat everything LW gives - and then when I moved to them, it's just been proven endlessly.

My former partner and I shared the server at the other sites, and especially with theplanet, because of the down time and hackers, he ended up losing 3/4 of his hosting clients.

Including me.

Nothing is perfect - but I don't know if I've ever seen any bad reviews on LW - and that's because they're the best.

billt91

Liquid Web

You can't beat their support and besides that they are always up