Hi,

I'm an active webhosting reseller and thinking to expand it to dedicated server, but I'm new to this stuff and all the screen is grey for me.

I'm thinking of using Cobalt RAQ4 because the price is low and have very great features. CMIIW.
I found many prices, vary from US$50-200, for the same configuration of Cobalt RAQ4.

My second choice is using non-expensive processor, like celeron, but I heard a lot of good stand for cobalt.

Some dedicated provider come to my mind, there are valueweb.com, rackshack.net, and burst.net, but I'm still not very sure about to choose before asking your opinion first. :)

Kindly give your input, anything, so I can make my move to the world of dedicated server. Heheheheheh.....:)

Thank you.

If your looking to expand to a dedicated server and your new without a lick of knowledge do not go to an unmanaged server ---> Rackshack.net , even though I heard they are good. If you know what your doing and can manage it your self then go for it. Nocster is great for managed dedicated servers. I haven't seen much about valueweb and can't remember anything about them.

Do research on some companies, find out what control panel you want to use, and find out moe about the Cobalt Raq4 before choosing it. Price may be low, but low prices can hurt in the long run.

Basically, do research, figure out exactly what you need, who you need, and how much you want to spend... It'll all work out

I too looking for a server. Rackshack.net seems great. They have very active community, so getting help is easy. Sadly they don't offer cpanel on there servers. Nocster offers managed servers with cpanel.

Cobalt RAQ4? you can get P4 for the same price.

Cobalt RaQs are definately a good way to get started with dedicated webhosting. The interface is easy to use and eventually you'll learn your way around the shell and will eventually be able to work with 'whiteboxes' (if you want to).

But I would recommend that you go with a Cobalt RaQ 550 rather than an older model. You can get one for like $199 a month.

About 2 years ago after exceeding the load on the shared hosting, I was forced to look for a dedicated server to host my site and at that point of time, it was either plain vanilla linux or the RaQ. I got the RaQ 3 naturally because I was a newbie to linux (trying to comprehend it for 5 years but just cannot make heads or tails of it), the Cobalt RaQ was a godsend. It was easy to use and within 2 weeks, I was up and running my site and I was mastering most things. Because the RaQ unit are built with web hosting in mind and all hardware and software are standard, it is easy to get support because you know what works there would work on my system too.

Over the years, I did subsequently had to battle with getting a RaQ 4 or a higher powered PC based server at Rackshack, I chose the RaQ again because I love the simplicity and the ease of use. Yes, you could get better hardware now for the same money and I do not want to doubt that.

Now, I am using a Celeron 1ghz server with Cpanel/WHM as a natural upgrade. Found it harder to configure compared to the RaQ and a lot harder to use but I guess I needed to move on.

The RaQ is a very stable machine and can take a huge level of punishment despite only being powered by an AMD 450Mhz CPU.

Nice machine and great as a beginner's tool. But of course, if you never used a dedicated before, anything would do now since you could use start fresh.