Hi all,

I am currently working for a small/mid company doing web marketing/designing for them. Right now they have in-house hosting and their previous web effort included only plain-html pages generated by netobject by a pure sales manager. I was thinking of using nuke/oscommerce to create a product catalog with potential of future e-commerce possibility, but doing so would require php/mysql on the server. I thought they would have someone capable of providing such support since they are hosing inhouse, but apparently the network admin never heard of php or mysql in her life. I gave a couple tutorial on the installation but it took her two weeks to decide that she couldn't install it because it was "giving her error messages". One solution would be calling the consultant which built the server and get charged couple hundred (or who knows, thousands?) just to install these usually-basic capability on the server. Feeling that the company was probably scammed by this consultant who also built the cheaply-made workstations running 98 with old SiS boards, i doubt that he could do it even if he was paid. Complaining about this to my supervisor, I was empowered to search for an alternative solution. So i thought since there is no one here who is technically competent and the network admin knows nothing about the server, an out-sourced solution seems to be better at this point. Again, a given authority usually carries responsibility as well. Can I have some suggestion on the pro vs. cons of inhouse and out-source? If out-source, what would be the best choice? (dedicated, virtual, or others) and is there any reliable company that could have some stats that could help me to convince the board for the switch? I don't think this would be a site with high traffic but expandability is a definitely a concern as well. The consultant never installed any web traffic program as well so i have no idea how much traffic our site is generating now. Right now only few sales were contributed by the website (that's why i am here), but we do have about 200 active product as of now. help please...

but apparently the network admin never heard of php or mysql in her life. I gave a couple tutorial on the installation but it took her two weeks to decide that she couldn't install it because it was "giving her error messages".

Sorry but i have to really laugh at this.....

LMAO

ledmirage, if you go with a hosting company make sure you do a lot of research. I would recommend companies like Pair or Verio. It's your ass that's on the line if you choose the wrong host and the sites go down.

Can you recommend any site that would provide cost/feature comparison other than read through the entirety of this forum? I've been reading this forum primarily for my personal use (mostly shared hosting) but for business use i really need to think twice about that. have to give a report tomorrow too... and i only have one month left before the completion of the website....sigh

loststryk,
that's ok, i couldn't contain my laughter too once i went to my cubicle. I even asked her about what are the error messages, but she said she didn't write it down and wouldn't tell me because she thought i was gonna mess up the server... right... and this is coming from a network admin who spent one whole day trying to give me right to ONE folder....

sorry if i sound ignorant, but out-sourcing from an in-house server would usually require migration of the email server?

hi ledmirage,

try http://www.itsallnet.com

LOL your network admin never heard of PHP or MySQL, that's just too funny ... I mean she's suppose to know since she's the network admin right? Then what does she know?

I'm not defending anyone but PHP and MySQL are pretty much internet related. You can be a good intranet admin without knowing them.

I have no idea what she knows. So far, i know she knows how to set rights to each folder, map a network drive, and reboot hehe.. i don't think we have an intranet yet (except the basic windows network). I've only been here for 2 weeks, but i smell something fishy going on here in the IT department.... oh well not my problem.

Anyway, I just talked to a really nice CSR online and on the phone, and i was quite impressed about his sales pitch, but again, this was my first contact. Anyone has other suggestions? (on hosting company and alternative plans...)

an IIS admin may have never heard of PHP or MySQL.

I do believe you are requesting nothing short of mission critical hosting.

Do a web search with Google and then plan on staying with a major player. It will cost you but it could cost you more to pick the wrong place.

As far as I know about 90% of the guys here that host sites can do what you ask but I would not stake my job on their abilities.
Generally I would never advise going with a major player but short of risking your job I would not advise otherwise.

what are the major players as of now? I've spoken with Verio and they seem to be pretty big, according to their statistics. I don't think money is an issue unless it is more than 1000/month, it's certainly more economical than the consultant they hired.

Verio should prove ok for you I would think

i would recommend pair over verio.

paul

Greeting ledmirage:

You are not alone with your story and experiences.

I used to be the Manager of Information Systems for the largest non-profit visiting nurse agency in the tri-state area.

When I got there they were using dumb terminals mixed with half-based half-bread PC's (this was 1990). No network, no automation, etc.

To make a long story short, I got them set up on a Novell network, moved to an IBM RS/6000, automated their QA department, was in the process of automated medical records, was working with them to get laptops in the field, etc.

I left because of political infighting, and the person they hired to replace me?...

Told them in the interview, he never worked on a network (any), didn't know any programming language, never worked with UNIX, etc. Yes, they hired him.

After two weeks of coming in at 8 AM and leaving at 4:30 PM, they stated something to the effect of “Peter used to work more hours, and take work home,” and he replied something the effect of “they hired me to work 40 hours…”

So yes, I can believe companies having system administrators who don’t know what they are doing <sigh and smile>.

Now, to your questions:

“Can I have some suggestion on the pro vs. cons of in in-house and out-source?”

Generally, it is extremely expensive to host in-house; the expense comes in many forms: multi-homed, BGP4 connectivity for reliability, backup power, environmental control, backup control, system administration, etc.

We’ve done Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) studies; and in-house often runs $84,435 per year (sometimes a lot more).

“If out-source, what would be the best choice? (dedicated, virtual, or others)”

This really depends on your specific needs ranging from the pure technical (actually load you need to bear, up time you require) to security to overall customer care.

What you might want to do is look at temporarily contracting with a managed service provider who can manage your existing environment (most of the solid ones can do it remotely; and most of the solid ones can work with many operating systems).

During the time period of managing, they can review your statistics, review your system needs, work with your in-house team for current and future needs in order to propose a battle plan outlining what steps should occur in what order in order to 1) stabilize, 2) grow, and 3) answer your questions for managed dedicated, dedicated, co-located, managed co-located, virtual private, etc.

Thank you.

Thanks for the response everyone,

Paul, would you elaborate more on your preference of Pair over Verio? Currently, the VPS plan seems appealing but i am not sure we need that kind of service.

Dynamicnet,

Thank you for making me feel a lot better now...
Do you know of any realistic TCO studies on the net (not the ones provided by the hosting company) Again, the admin never kept any financial record or even traffic analysis software so it would be difficult to do comparison without assumption. (again, shady practice again) Also, would the managed service provider you were talking about cost more than the expected hosting plan?

I am actually leaving the company

sorry didn't finish the sentence.
I am leaving the company soon so I want to suggest a secure solution and peace of mind for the management so that it would not ruin my career in the future.

Greetings Ledmirage:

"Do you know of any realistic TCO studies on the net (not the ones provided by the hosting company)"

If you do a search, you can probably find some from IDC, Forrester, etc. You may have to pay to get the reports, not sure.

When we did them, they were custom to a particular customer.

"Again, the admin never kept any financial record or even traffic analysis software so it would be difficult to do comparison without assumption. (again, shady practice again) Also, would the managed service provider you were talking about cost more than the expected hosting plan? "

That's why it may be best to go the option of having some one remotely manage, compile data, make recommendatins, etc.

The investment may save money, not sure. It all depends on what the cost is to them now, and can they bear that cost without true gain for how long?

Thank you.

Is there any suggestion other than pair and verio?

Doesn't matter what type, just reliable tech support and fast load, relatively low down time (but again who doesn't want that?)

Also, is there any way to get a reference for any of these companies?

Thank you all.

Originally posted by Dedicatedone
LOL your network admin never heard of PHP or MySQL, that's just too funny ... I mean she's suppose to know since she's the network admin right? Then what does she know?

You don't understand, the real IT admin was laid off because of cost and the higher ups thought, how hard is it to turn on and off a computer, so they canned that person.

The big chief was banging one of the girls who happened to have a computer and AOL at home and made her the new IT admin. That way they can bang in the server room without getting caught at work and saves money on the hotels.


Office Politics 103

Greetings:

NTT/Verio -- http://www.verio.com/

Pair Networks --- http://www.pair.com/

Rackspace.com -- http://www.rackspace.com/

Please note most of these providers are awesome when it comes to their networks and the equipment they use; however, from our perspective they don't offer full managed services.

So having a server there still requires a level of server management skills, and a good deal of security management skills.

Thank you.

Was looking at Verio's VPS plan, and it seems to be fully managed. Anyone has experience with it? Again, it doesn't have to be dedicated server as long as it's managed and with relatively good support and spped. Pair, on the other hand, doesn't seem to offer anything like it (except the upper-tiered plan)

Thanks

Greetings:

"Was looking at Verio's VPS plan, and it seems to be fully managed. Anyone has experience with it?"

Yes, we do ;-)

We've been working with NTT/Verio since late 1996, and have worked with their VPS product line since Verio acquired iServer.

It is not a fully managed, product.

Hint, you need to know FreeBSD; that's not a bad thing, but don't go in there expecting you don't need to know or have server management skills.

And the control panel makes the worse one look good.

On the good news, is is among the best VPS product on the market. But it is not fully managed.

There are companies that do offer fully managed VPS products based on Verio's VPS line; and, even ones whose pricing plus the product is within $50 per month of Verio's list price on the VPS (actually not bad in terms of an investment).

Thank you.

Originally posted by ledmirage
Was looking at Verio's VPS plan, and it seems to be fully managed. Anyone has experience with it? Again, it doesn't have to be dedicated server as long as it's managed and with relatively good support and spped. Pair, on the other hand, doesn't seem to offer anything like it (except the upper-tiered plan)


In your original post, you seemed to be looking for a company to help you actually develop your site/application with PHP and MySQL. That's a consulting job, contract work. I don't think any host's definition of "managed" goes that far. There are certainly companies which combine site design, programming, consulting, and managed hosting. Perhaps Digex (if you don't mind the WorldCom smell).

I think most hosts define a managed solution as an offering where the host maintains the system, applies patches, performs software and hardware maintenance, and keeps everything running smoothly. But they don't develop your site or applications for you.

By contrast, an "unmanaged" hosting service would be something like a bare OS install from a $99 server company.

Kevin

Dynamicnet,
When you say the VPS is not fully managed, what does that mean exactly? (what's lacking in the VPS service?). We do not have any IT staff except the network administrator and a totally useless consultant (see previous posts) after I leave, I really don't want to get blamed in case of server downtime in the future.

Sigma,
I am gonna be the one designing the site perhaps utilitizing some of the nuke cms program around. I just need the hosting company to manage the server so that there wouldn't be any trouble just running the website. Of course i am not expecting a hosting company to do the design work. (actually that suggestion did come up during our meeting.)

Which services from Pair or Rackspace would you guys recommend? Any other suggestion on reliable companies?
By the way I would like to thank everyone, especially Dynamicnet for the very useful suggestion. Thank you.

Greetings ledmirage:

Well, let's state you want to run your own name server on the VPS platform.

You need to know how to set it up, install it, and secure it.

Let's say you want to secure your VPS in terms of who has SSH access. Well, you need to know how to do it yourself or contract some one.

Let's state you want to set up LDAP on your VPS. Guess what, you need to know what you are doing, and you handle the installation.

We manage servers for a living <smile>, so to us "fully managed" means YOU concentrate on your business and we concentrate on ours.

Verio's VPS product is awesome, but to it is not a managed product; and if you want to call it managed, you should know the "managed" is extremely limited.

Thank you.

P.S. Same goes for mySQL (you install it and configure it), PHP, etc.

I am assuming that your business model is similar to rackspace then? Seems like everyone's definition of "fully managed" varies. I guess that rules out Verio then? Accroding to the CSR, mySQL and PHP is already installed, plus most of the freeBSD applications. I doubt that the company would venture doing anything with no IT staff on site. The most they ever considered doing was having some CGI script running. Again, dedicated server is probably not what we need, a full management would be more crucial. Dynamicnet, it seems that you provide services in this sector as well, why don't you advertise some of your business here? or you have some other options in mind that you could suggest?

Greetings ledmirage:

Unfortunately, "fully managed" does have different meanings, and even the word "managed" by itself gets twisted often.

The forum rules are strict on advertising within non-advertising based forums.

Please note from my previous posts, though, there are companies that provide Verio's VPS servers, but manage them for you. Some are within $50 of NTT/Verio's pricing so you get fully managed, but the VPS environment.

You may be right on the dedicated not being needed; however, because it is hosted in-house, chances are high there is zero shared utilization (shared resources outside the company).

So it is possible that usage could turn out heavy.

In any event the key as you are doing your home work (which you have been working on in these threads and probably at the office et all) is asking a lot of questions.

What will the provider do for you?

What do you need and expect them to do for you?

What can you handle on your own?

Etc.

Thank you.

I have no idea about what the current usage is because the network admin couldn't provide a usage report for the web server.

Just spoke with the CSR at Rackspace and they recommended shared hosting as well... How is CWIhosting.com?

What I need from the provider:
Setup, transfer website and domain. Relatively good bandwidth with no down time. CPU resources enough to handle server-side script such as nuke cms. Generous traffic limitation. Proper backup and recovery time. Site management such as cPanel. Have most of the common software preloaded on the server (mainly php/mysql), maintain server security, update, and traffic report. Have shared/exclusive resources such as licenses and SSL. And most important, technical support.

What can you handle on your own?
Again, I am just a website designer so i just wanna start doing my job instead of worrying about hosting. so basically only updating the website , don't think i will need root access too...

Is this too much to ask for?

Greetings ledmirage:

While I love Rackspace.com for their 100% network up time, I get a kick out of their sales people <smile>.

"What I need from the provider: Setup, transfer website and domain."

Set up is generally included in shared hosting. Managed VPS will do that as well.

Shared hosting typically has up time SLA's no higher than 99.9% which isn't 100%. For that you would need load balanced dedicated servers.

Good bandwidth typically means no cogent.

CPU resources and traffic without knowing your specific needs can be hard to handle.

Bandwidth usage drives RAM utilization. And interactivity drives RAM and CPU.

Without knowing the specific needs, it may be hit or miss.

Thank you.

Just got a response from the Verio's CSR, and they said that "The Mangaged Private Servers (MPS) that Verio Offers, are the same level of service as the VPS". But you are right, user customization of course requires user knowledge of the server technology.

According to the engineer at Verio, running phpnuke would require the VPS pro plus or MPS v2.0 due to"the nature of the application it will need a hardware resource on the server to run smoothly"? I've seen most of the phpnuke site hosted on shared hosting even with no problem. Is his recommendation true or is he just trying to make a sell?

Greetings ledmirage:

The VPS 2 platform makes use of fair share technology when it comes to a number of factors except for processes.

We’ve been trying for several months now to get NTT/Verio to commit to exact numbers; and while not exact, here’s the best approximation:

VPS Standard => 75
VPS Pro => 150
VPS Pro Plus => 350

Every application on a server takes at least one process; many applications such as server-based technology (Web, Email, etc.) often take a number of processes.

If your combined application processes and their child processes go above 75, then you need the Pro; if above 150, then the Pro Plus.

While a shared platform generally does not limit the # of processes a given host site can use, a well managed shared platform may involve getting kicked off the platform by technical support for using too much of the resources (remember shared = sharing).

A dedicated server could handle a lot more processes; the number being based on CPU, RAM, simultaneous connections, bandwidth being used per second, etc.

Thank you.

Originally posted by ledmirage

Is his recommendation true or is he just trying to make a sell?


Trying to make a sale.

Originally posted by MilkMan
Trying to make a sale.
I agree 100%. Even phpnuke main'site isn't on a "awesome" connection. And let's not disconsider PHP - which needs LESS resources than CGI, for example.
I DO run a nuke CMS on a shared hosting account and it works awesome. :angry:

Dynamicnet is right on those numbers (same as the number provided by the CSR). The CSR claims that VPS v.1 doesn't have root access (eh?) so installation of phpnuke was not possible therefore no statistics are present for that release. Is that true?

Greetings ledmirage:

VPS 1 (as compared to VPS 2) does not have true root.

VPS 1 does provide ssh access, and its level of approaching root is close; but not on the same level of VPS 2.

I don't believe root authority is needed to install PHPNuke.

Thank you.

P.S. I'm not sure what you mean by stats. The VPS 1 product line has less processes (approximately 20%) than VPS 2, and also had limits on the # of Apache processes.

Originally posted by ledmirage
Dynamicnet is right on those numbers (same as the number provided by the CSR). The CSR claims that VPS v.1 doesn't have root access (eh?) so installation of phpnuke was not possible therefore no statistics are present for that release. Is that true?
phpNuke DOES NOT need SSH access for it's installation :) You iwll simply install it with your browser. But you need, indeed, to chmod some folders. (i'm sure it can be done via ControlPanel)
Best regards.

Going with Verio... as of now... Thanks again everyone for your insightful inputs, especially Dynamicnet.
One more question (this might sound elementary": Is it possible to keep the email system in-house and let the VPS host the website only?

Good choice with Verio.
You can keep the email system in house but the tech guys around here will have to explain to you how. You will need to direct incoming mail to your servers. Cname and MX records and such. The stuff I leave to the techs.

ok, i was expecting this to happen...
Changed mx record to point to our server and was hoping that perhaps it takes a little time to propogate the changes... 24 hours later, no incoming email now... pop3 doesn't work... but internal and outgoing mail works fine. All the incoming mails are bounced back and we had no email for 2 days now... I am pretty sure it's not verio's fault since pinging the mail server returns the ip address that was given by the sys admin. Anyone experienced this with exchange server? Thinking about resetting the firewall now... i wish this blaming game would stop now...

Greetings Ledmirage:

I'm not sure if you ever got my PM before you decided to go direct to Verio.

But given that you went direct, I would have expected this and other things to happen.

As I stated more times than I care to write again, there are managed VPS companies that work with Verio's base line VPS product who are either the same price or less than Verio's list price.

They take the headaches out of the picture, and often times ensure the problems like the ones you are encountering now do not happen.

Thank you.

Greetings Dynamicnet,

Thank you for your concern. I am pretty sure that the problem is not Verio's end, but rather our email server. I am not sure if a managed solution would take care of this because the setup is on our side. Verio has been helpful since day one and the response time is amazing (no waiting in line). Perhaps it's time we replace our incompetent consulting service...

Greetings ledmirage:

1. The managed solution would be less than or equal to Verio's list using Verio's infrastructure.

So you pay the same or less for the exact infrastructure quality BUT gain through managed services for which NTT/Verio does not handle or charges additional money.

2. At least one of the managed VPS providers would include helping the client on their end to ensure a smooth transition.

In ending, may you receive what you've decided upon.

Thank you.