I just purchased two Dell 2550's for those of you that have been tracking my questions on what to buy. 1 for web, 1 for SQL, both are dual 1.13 P-III's, one with 1 gig RAM, one with 2 gig RAM.

Now I've been looking for colo providers, here's who I called and what I've learned, in rank order of who I would go with based on conversations with sales reps:

1) VenturesOnline: Moving to new data center on the 19th. Pricing is good, good options for how they charge for bandwidth. Free IP's, 100mbit connection to giga'ring. Approx 7 providers into NOC

2) Affordablecolo.com: Similar pricing to VO

3) RackMy.com - pricing a little higher, but seems okay

4) ThePlanet.com - too pricy comparitively

5) NTT/Verio - no bandwidth limit, 1 meg connection, but way too pricy! 4U = 350'ish/mo, bandwidth of 1 meg is $475/mo.

So, VO is most likely the path I'll take. Interestingly I also learned that VO is collocated with their servers, AffColo, RackMy are not! Picking up bits and pieces from others too.

What do you think? Do they rack and stack different to you? Are there any other companies I should call? I want to pick one by the end of next week.

Lastly, is having your own dedicated T-1 better than any of the options above? I have a company I may be able to share a T-1 with, wondering if that's a better option altogether as far as speed is concerned.

Thanks for your opinions!!!

You cant hardly go wrong with ventures online havent heard hardly any complaints at all about them.

rackmy is ok as far as price until you get down to bandwidth lol

5.00 per gig woohoo:angry:

Yup,

I don't think you can really go wrong with venturesonline. I've already ordered a full rack in the new datacenter. Can't wait for the move to be done so that I can start filling it.

Originally posted by airtime166
rackmy is ok as far as price until you get down to bandwidth lol

5.00 per gig woohoo:angry:


It's high quality, and once you use a bit more it isn't really too bad at $3/gb.

$3 still is right up there, paying less than half that at VDI.

-Brendan

Vdi uses Level3, Globix, and UUnet. ( UUnet only 1/8th of the network. )

While rackmy ( located in inflow. ) has oc3s to UUNet, Genuity, and ATT. ( 1 OC3 to each provider. )

You seemed to have picked ones that are typically regarded as pretty decent (from comments I've seen on the forum), so the choice isn't going to be easy.

I don't think I'd personally pick the T1 option, but it depends on many factors, some of which only you know (about the place, etc.), but connectivity would probably be lacking over the ones you mentioned above.