Hi,

I’m looking for experiences with co-loc vs. hosting for ‘complex’ systems (e.g. 3 or more servers).

We are currently hosted at RackSpace.com with the following systems:
Web Server 1 (load balanced with Web 2):
PIII 1GHz
1GB RAM
20GB x 2 IDE RAID 1

Web Server 2 (load balanced with Web 1):
PIII 1GHz
1GB RAM
20GB x 2 IDE RAID 1

Database Server:
Dual PIII750
1GB RAM
9GB x 2 SCSI RAID 1

We have 200GB of transfer a month. Our site receives around 8 to 10 million impressions a month. The total monthly cost is WAY too high – we want to get it below $2000 a month. (RackSpace is a lot more than that).

Our thought is this, consolodate the web machines into a single box and get a larger DB machine so it would be like this:
Web Server:
Dual PIII 1GHz
1GB RAM
20GB x 2 IDE RAID 1
Red Hat Linux 7.1

Database Server:
Dual PIII 1GHz
2GB RAM
36GB x 2 SCSI RAID 1
Red Hat Linux 7.1

This way we don’t have to pay load balancer costs but we lose the fault tolerance. The question is:
Do I build the machines myself (e.g. buy the CPUs, RAM, etc. and put together) and then ship to a co-loc facility and host them there for a low monthly fee ($800/mo or so) or should we stick with a hosted solution at or about $2000 a month? With the co-loc option they will do minor things like reboots, tape swap, etc. for free. If we want more technical help they can do it for a fixed hourly cost. The only problem is that if we have a hardware failure they won’t have one in stock.. so I was thinking get a third ‘failover’ or spare machine with something like this:
PIII 1GHz
512MB RAM
36GB SCSI

So that if we have a single hardware failure (other than the motherboard) we can simply cannibalize the spare for parts (e.g. CPU, RAM, hard drive, etc.) until a new one can be shipped from the manufacturer. All told I could probably build these three machines for under $4 to $5000 (then they would be ours, no monthly costs, etc.).

Has anyone gone this route or do you generally stick to buying off-the-shelf systems (e.g. Dell, Compaq, etc.)? Any words of wisdom to help make our minds up? If we could get the web / DB server combo outlined above for like $1800 a month we’d go for it but it looks like most people are up around $3000 a month which is a silly amount of money to pay considering you can buy them outright every two months. Of course you pay a lot for them taking care of the boxes but I’ve been around Linux (and Unix) for many many years and they’ve never really done anything that I couldn’t.

I would say, build them yourself.

Also, I'd go with having two web servers. And round robin them, you don't get fault tolerence, but atleast, you'll still be up if one box goes down. Unlike with haveing one web front end.

hey Matt nice to see ya around :wavey:

try getting a hold of StephenRS http://webhostingtalk.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=2601 he builds and colocates several boxes with different hosts and i think he knows his stuff :) => http://webhostingtalk.com/search.php?s=&action=finduser&userid=2601

i asked the same question (theoretically though) a few months back and StephenRS has more than a few answers for me hehe

I would consider purchasing a Web Accelerator. Netscaler makes a WebScaler that is a drop in solution that has performed well.

Matt

Originally posted by eva2000
hey Matt nice to see ya around :wavey:


Good to see you too! vB forums make this place a small world, eh? :D


Originally posted by eva2000

try getting a hold of StephenRS http://webhostingtalk.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=2601 he builds and colocates several boxes with different hosts and i think he knows his stuff :) => http://webhostingtalk.com/search.php?s=&action=finduser&userid=2601

i asked the same question (theoretically though) a few months back and StephenRS has more than a few answers for me hehe

I triend sending him an e-mail but haven't heard back yet. Anyone else have an opinion?

I noticed the "we're moving" message at http://forums.fanhome.com/fh_downtime.html ... so what did you decide on doing and how much did it cost?

Originally posted by pmak0
I noticed the "we're moving" message at http://forums.fanhome.com/fh_downtime.html ... so what did you decide on doing and how much did it cost?

We've decided to go with a hosted solution (again) since it's easier for us in the short to medium term to have someone perform the care and feeding of the boxes... mainly hardware failures, tech support, etc.

We have:
Dual PIII 1GHz
1GB RAM
18GB x 2 SCSI RAID 1
(web box)

Dual PIII 1GHz
2.5GB RAM
36GB x 2 SCSI RAID 1
(database box)

For a very competitive price (less than half of what we're paying RackSpace now for inferior hardware). I can't say exactly what it was but it was a lot less than $2,000/mo.

It is with DialToneInternet -- we've read good things and they were able to give us more hardware for less money with better pipes and no setup fees.

Hello Mr R :)

that does sound like it will work out for you with them.

Good luck! :cool:

Seems to be much faster although we're still waiting for some people's DNS to filter down.