www.rackshack.net/13

A preview of what's to come.



Pockets full of cash.. pretty-ass, high-class, anything goes

RackShack must be singing that song :P

How you get your hands on that?

Chris

HeadSurfer posted it in their forums.

THere is a logo of daretocompare.net on that image you have

And you know what ill take that challenge any day of the week.

That i can offer a better product and you know what i know there are alot of other companies out there that can offer better hardware and what not that rackshack

Joe

It looks as if daretocompare will be more marketing material for the rackshack folks to give out..

lol ok shoot. you gonna offer such diverse bandwidth and that spec machine? go for it, ill buy if your a decent sized company with your own datacentre and a reasonable number of staff.
i await your post in the advertising forum.

but back on track.
nice deals but they neglected to up the size of the HDD on the unlimited machines. would have been nice to see an 80GB or larger as at least an option. if your gonna scale the bw up then they should offer an option to scale the space with it.
and no ensim RAS. ah well. no windoze boxes but some plain installs for those that wanted it.
not quite as major as id expected. or as many as id expected but i guess ill wait for the proper announcement tomorrow.

but back on track.
nice deals but they neglected to up the size of the HDD on the unlimited machines. would have been nice to see an 80GB or larger as at least an option. if your gonna scale the bw up then they should offer an option to scale the space with it.
and no ensim RAS. ah well. no windoze boxes but some plain installs for those that wanted it.
not quite as major as id expected. or as many as id expected but i guess ill wait for the proper announcement tomorrow.

If RS would have included all this, someone would have complained about something else.

The *unmetered* (theres that word again) plan is a hell of an offer. Now I know where to ofload some high BW use sites. ;)

probably they would but i would have thought at least an option on larger drives would have made sense. i dont see a problem with their unmetered plan. seems great and its well thought out. they certainly have the pipes to support it. what was it last time about 3.? GBps they have running in there.
wouldnt mind that in my office.

Yep but the slow turn around time on tech support just burns me up.

I can't in any fairness offer an SLA or go after companies wanting truly first rate hosting because I can't supply truly first rate hosting if it takes my data center 2 hours and more to reboot a seized up machine, or 3 and a half hours to fsck the harddrive after that hard and dirty reboot.

yup thats true. that and 25.5 hours for a restore and a further 4 hours for them to get a monkey to type in a plesk key but i guess thats on roberts list of things to sort. i thought they had got hot on reboots tho?

All I can say is headsurfer is apparant. better at surfing then managing business. Everyone knows what they pay for bandwidth and one can only guess what they pay for staffing and their facility, you can do the math and see their business model involves making no money what so ever. You can disagree with me all day but simply do that math. 56k dialup is drying up no one wants dialup anymore

I can sell at cost all day too and offer the same deals they are, 2x as fast transit, and better support. But then again im in the biz to make money :)

Of course im not faulting rackshack, Im sure as long as headsurfer gets his salary check cut every month, why not play around with what capital he has left.

Wow, only $399 for a 10Mb/s connection? That's not bad at all. I may get my cobranded tucows mirror yet.

Originally posted by cbaker17
All I can say is headsurfer is apparant. better at surfing then managing business. Everyone knows what they pay for bandwidth and one can only guess what they pay for staffing and their facility, you can do the math and see their business model involves making no money what so ever. You can disagree with me all day but simply do that math. 56k dialup is drying up no one wants dialup anymore

I can sell at cost all day too and offer the same deals they are, 2x as fast transit, and better support. But then again im in the biz to make money :)

Of course im not faulting rackshack, Im sure as long as headsurfer gets his salary check cut every month, why not play around with what capital he has left.

I think it is intrigueing that someone decided to look at dedicated margins in the same sense as a shared hosts margins.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
The *unmetered* (theres that word again) ...
UmBilly, keep in mind we aren't talking about a shared platform here. If I say you are getting this server, with these specs, hooked to an unmetered 10Mb/s connection for $399 -do you have any questions of exactly what you are getting and what your limitations are? This is unmetered, but not unlimited. The words aren't bad, their use often is.

I take unmetered to mean something different than unlimited in this context. An "unmetered" 10mbit connection to me means if I peg that baby to "10" and keep it there 24/7/365 then no one is gonna say a word and no one is gonna cut my access.

It may be intriguing, but their other offers were a bit out there before and if they were doing so poorly on those, one would think things would have been scaled down, not up. I have a feeling Robert is doing ok somehow (just a guess).

Originally posted by cbaker17
...I can sell at cost all day too and offer the same deals they are, 2x as fast transit, and better support. But then again im in the biz to make money :)...
They just bought a huge new data center, and are looking for another, they bought 1000 Compaq servers, just to see how they sell... I don't think they're hurting for money...

Originally posted by Chicken

UmBilly, keep in mind we aren't talking about a shared platform here. If I say you are getting this server, with these specs, hooked to an unmetered 10Mb/s connection for $399 -do you have any questions of exactly what you are getting and what your limitations are? This is unmetered, but not unlimited. The words aren't bad, their use often is.

I am well aware of this. My point it simple. "unmetered" the word is being used more and more to describe bandwidth use. A few months ago unmetered was the same word as unlimited. Read prior post.

Also, let me see you push 3200 GBs of transfer through that server. Seems to me resources are the limiting factor.

Originally posted by Chicken
It may be intriguing, but their other offers were a bit out there before and if they were doing so poorly on those, one would think things would have been scaled down, not up. I have a feeling Robert is doing ok somehow (just a guess).

As seems to be a standard operating procedure with you Chicken, you once again expand far too much into my post. Show me where I said Robert isn't doing ok. Show me where I say RS is doing poorly on the shared and dial up side.

My two cents:

Rackshack's support has improved dramatically in just the two months that I've been there. The last trouble ticket I submitted was resolved within 20 minutes.

yup saying that tho, i have a network ticket thats been sent to the black hole that is the networks dept. since 1/5/02 which i think is the 5th of jan is i deamericanise it :) luckily it wasnt the most important of things but nevertheless it would have been nice to get some sort of reply. i was gonna sit on this and remind them in a few years but i guess the cats out the bag :) other tickets have been dealt with promptly with the exception of one when the mtrg graphs went french on us and it got forwarded to 'networks' (we spotting a pattern here) and took a few weeks to get dealt with. it wasnt a major problem i guess and they were prolly prioratising.

Well we needed a reboot of one of our machines entered a ticket a literally 20 seconds later got a confirmation about the reboot!. It has improved latley!

And I just find it funny some people are already bashing Rackshack for this...

Originally posted by GAMPort
And I just find it funny some people are already bashing Rackshack for this... Did you forget where you are? It's WebHostingTalk! Where no good word goes unpunished!

Sorry. It seems I forgot for 2 minutes :stickout

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
I am well aware of this. My point it simple. "unmetered" the word is being used more and more to describe bandwidth use. A few months ago unmetered was the same word as unlimited. Read prior post.

Also, let me see you push 3200 GBs of transfer through that server. Seems to me resources are the limiting factor.
Can I ask you something... exactly (and I mean exactly) how much bandwidth and transfer will you get (maximum) if you signed up for that RS offer on 10Mbps? Do you read that and think you'll get more than what is offered? After reading the offer, do you now know how much and what you are getting for your $399?

Now, take a shared 'unmetered' plan. Can you say the same thing? If not, then that's my point.

I think we've debated 'unmetered' before, as it relates to unmetered hosts in general and to your specific offers (not from what I've seen, as I haven't seen your offer, but rather from from what you've posted about the offer). I'm not sure this is the thread in which it should be discussed again (rather the topic should focus on RS' offer specifically).

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
As seems to be a standard operating procedure with you Chicken, you once again expand far too much into my post. Show me where I said Robert isn't doing ok. Show me where I say RS is doing poorly on the shared and dial up side.
Sorry, I think you misunderstood the post (somewhat). I borrowed one word from your post, but it wasn't in relation to what you posted (my mistake, I should have picked another word so you wouldn't think it was directed at you). It was in response to Charles' post.

I'm not sure Charles was looking at dedicated margins in the same sense as a shared hosts margins exactly, but certainly dedicated margins *must* be considered in any offer, as they should be considered with shared plan offers. I think we agree on this point.

Again, my apologies for the confusion.

Well as much as i discredit this company for some things bandwidth is one place i dont

Maybe people dont understand how bandwidth is billed, but if you get a t1 line you will usually only get billed for either incoming or outgoing not both

So lets say you have a t1 and you get billed for outgoing.

1.544mbps is billed for outgoing

which means 1.544mbps is available for incoming usage.

In rackshacks case they are lucky most ISP's are happy that you can have alot of incoming bandwidth ie ev1.

As long as they continue to expand ev1 there bandwidth costs will be cheap.

Chicken sorry i didnt read what you said, but someway or another you are right somewhere in there.

Joe

Umm
Surely you don't get billed for bandwidth on a dedicated leased line, you just pay for the capacity.
You pay X amount for a line of Y capacity whether you use it
or not.
Its not metered by GB usage.

Or have I got a particularly good deal for the new office line?
(you don't want to know how much leased lines cost over here)

Gordon

OH
And on the unmetered thing:

"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when they said the world was round."

"The all laughed at Gordon when he started free hosting with each domain."

"They all laughed at Robert when he started great unmetered server deals."


Seems to be a pattern emerging here.
(You might have to be a certain age to know the tune to that one)

Good luck to him.
I am pretty sure he is making good money out of the hosting business.
I know I am .........

Gordon

www.rackshack.net - their new offers are up now!

No daretocompare.net yet:(

Chris

Amen, I say it all day long.............

Can I ask you something... exactly (and I mean exactly) how much bandwidth and transfer will you get (maximum) if you signed up for that RS offer on 10Mbps? Do you read that and think you'll get more than what is offered? After reading the offer, do you now know how much and what you are getting for your $399?

Now, take a shared 'unmetered' plan. Can you say the same thing? If not, then that's my point.

There is a common thread in all this. Resource use as the limiting factor. So you answered your own question and helped validate mine.

Dedicated and shared servers. If both have a dedicated 10 MB line as max, both are unmetered, then the dedicated will have a better shot of using more BW simply because it does not compete with others. However, as I stated before, can RS *guarantee* my server will be able to use all 3200 GBs of transfer? No. They can guarantee that I can use as much as I want that the server will allow. So again, resource use will be the limiting factor *not* the pipe. (I am sure someone will argue that they can work it to where they can get close to 3200 GBs through that machine, however most will tell you from experience, 3200 GBs will not be meet). This can also be done on shared. The maximum use for BW will be lower simply because you now compete for resources with 250 or so others. Again, resource use limits, not BW.

Common sense should also play into the word unmetered. If I sell you a huge chunk of space all the way out to the Andromeda Galaxy, what does that really mean? You have not enough resources to truly enjoy it all. Take an all you can eat buffet (unmetered food intake). No one is watching how much you eat. Only the customer can tell you what the limit will be. A 55 pound kid won't consume as much as a 500 pound eating machine. A site with few cgi scripts will not abuse the server as much as a site with tons of CGIs. As traffic increases, so does cgi use, which in turn slows the server. Once it is too high, you tell the customer. Also, it is a numbers game. The all you can eat buffet isn't expecting a bus load of 500 pound eating machines to show up. If they do, then that is a risk the establishment took. Just like offering unmetered. If they are an honest company, they will honor the risk they took.

This is all just a personal opinion/choice. Does a host want to offer a customer a set limit or a random limit to be decided by resources. The only people who can make that call are the customers.

Chicken, PM me if you have anymore questions so we do not turn this into another unmetered thread. <too late - you started it :)>


GordonH, what was the intent of your last post? Seems a little vague (probably just me). Especially this pattern you allude to. I am curious to hear what your post meant as I find what I think it meant interesting.

To keep on topic - Go RS!! :D

Hello
I just meant that people say the Rackshack venture will not make money.
I was just pointing out that people often say that things are impossible or won't make money and then someone makes a fortune from them.

I learned the hard way.
In the 80's I had this idea to sell advertising space on rental VHS video tapes.
I was told by various people in the trade that it was a non starter as the tapes had too long a shelf life.
Now every rental tape I get has an ad on it for some product or other.

Oh and I also approached a well known book seller about providing an on line and postal book service (using printed catalogues and other methods like teletext - the net was very small then).
They told me there was no demand for it.
Last week they went into receivership citing Amazon.com as one of the causes.

So...........
One of my maxims is now
"not having enough money is not a good enough reason for not doing something"
If something feels right I just go for it.
Like spending $10,000 putting in a new win2K hosting system over the next couple of months.
Feels right, and when I get that feeling it usually leads to making money.

Its the same with the Rackshack thing.
Its based on a straightforward proposition.
I am sure it will make money.
It has that feel to it.

Gordon

I just meant that people say the Rackshack venture will not make money. I was just pointing out that people often say that things are impossible or won't make money and then someone makes a fortune from them.

Thats what I thought your post was on. I couldn't agree more.

Originally posted by GordonH
Its the same with the Rackshack thing.
Its based on a straightforward proposition.
I am sure it will make money.
It has that feel to it.

They are definitely good at marketing, very good.

Rackshack is making money on every server they sell.

There concept is rather easy to figure out.

Rackshack is doing very well

Joe

they seem to be making it work. theyre listening to customers. diversifying carefully. they seem to be able to sustain their offer. their average useage cant be that high altho i can see it getting higher. the man might just have cracked it.

I don't see why RackShack would not make any money off of these *unmetered* servers. From what I've understood, a 100Mbit Cogent line costs $1000/mo (I'm sure RS get a lot better deal). If you only set 10 servers using one 100Mbit line, they would still make $300/mo/server (I'm sure they put more server on each 100Mbit line since not many people are going to actually use their whole 10Mbit bandwidth).

By the way, if you look at the *unmetered* deal on the first page (http://www.rackshack.net/), it says the servers come with 1GB of RAM, but if you click on more information (http://www.rackshack.net/compaq10mbps.asp), it only says 512MB.. Which one is it?

its 3x the cost for transit providers :) and they admitted in the past they would oversell it a little. but yeah they must have plenty of discounts. and they are adding more gig es even at 3000 a month its not a loss.
little breakdown
300 for the port
30 for power max
then you got yer server - setup
then add in overselling. yeah i can see it might work, and on past results they turn cants and maybes into already dones

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Dedicated and shared servers. If both have a dedicated 10 MB line as max, both are unmetered, then the dedicated will have a better shot of using more BW simply because it does not compete with others. However, as I stated before, can RS *guarantee* my server will be able to use all 3200 GBs of transfer? No. They can guarantee that I can use as much as I want that the server will allow. So again, resource use will be the limiting factor *not* the pipe. (I am sure someone will argue that they can work it to where they can get close to 3200 GBs through that machine, however most will tell you from experience, 3200 GBs will not be meet). This can also be done on shared. The maximum use for BW will be lower simply because you now compete for resources with 250 or so others. Again, resource use limits, not BW.
A few points. One, does your unmetered offer (but besides your offer, do any or most unmetered offers) clearly state a limit of a 10 Mbps connection? If not, then the offers aren't comparable. My guess is that you don't state a connection limit, I don't see this posted on most pages, I can't say that it is something I've ever seen.

Regarding: "can RS *guarantee* my server will be able to use all 3200 GBs of transfer? No." Do they state anywhere that you'll be able to use all 3200 GBs? I don't see that. I don't know why you'd think you would. No, they don't guarantee that, it isn't the offer, if they said, "Server ABC includes 3200 GB of transfer a month" then yes, that's what I'd expect.

I have to go so I can't reply on the other point, but as I said, I think we've covered that already. Just wanted to clarify the points above.

"Server ABC includes 3200 GB of transfer a month" then yes, that's what I'd expect.

Doesn't a 10 Mbps line allow for about 3200 GBs of transfer? Someone would say, it they are paying for that, they should be allowed to use all that. Instead, you are actually limited by the servers resources which will vary for *every* customer. A huge forum site may be only able to get 200 GBs out of the server. A popular HTML site, much more. Just like a shared unmetered plan. The bottom line is that a TRUE unmetered offering simply means you are not *paying* for BW, it is included in the offering. No overage fees.

Very Interesting :)

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Doesn't a 10 Mbps line allow for about 3200 GBs of transfer? Someone would say, it they are paying for that, they should be allowed to use all that. Instead, you are actually limited by the servers resources which will vary for *every* customer. A huge forum site may be only able to get 200 GBs out of the server. A popular HTML site, much more. Just like a shared unmetered plan. The bottom line is that a TRUE unmetered offering simply means you are not *paying* for BW, it is included in the offering. No overage fees.
If you can somehow manage to even push 3200 GBs of transfer out of a server, then yes. Even if you can't manage to do it evenly and top out over, the server will push slowly at peaks, but yes, there is a top limit of 10Mbps, no getting around that.

'True' unmetered offerings that I've seen are so stripped down (meaning limited) that I personally feel that it isn't even worth the bother considering them.

If your site is really just HTML pages, or the type that would qualify for general unmetered plans, then you'll get a crap load of usage out of a regular 10 GB plan. If your site isn't of the HTML variety, and if of the type that commonly is high traffic (offering downloads, videos, multi-media (covering all types so I don't have to list them), then you simply won't qaulify for unmetered plans. In other words, if you are one who truly needs high transfer amounts, most often unmetered/unlimited hosts are not what you should be looking for. What's the point?

If you don't need high transfer amounts, then you could host just about anywhere. For the few who wold benefit, great.

'True' unmetered offerings that I've seen are so stripped down (meaning limited) that I personally feel that it isn't even worth the bother considering them.

This sums up the issue with the Term for some. They are too bent around the axil trying to compare unmetered to unlimited. This does not exist. This is *my* use of the Term and my companies.

unmetered - no bill for overage on BW. Even if you use lets say 50 GBs and crash the server due to resource abuse on popular CGIs, you will not get a bill. No where do I say, you have "unlimited" use.

Here is how I use it. You can come to our company and use as much BW as you need. Once you start hitting high resource use (and we prove it by showing the customer) we treat it like EVERY host treats high cgi use, we ask them to upgrade to something more isolated.

Unlimited says exactly that, you can use as much as you want WITHOUT any limit. Unmetered does not say this.

Here is another way we look at - "metered" = to record with the intent to bill or charge. A parking meter, electric meter, gas meter, etc.. these record with the intent to bill.

unmetered - no intent to bill for overage.

What we rely on is common sense. (yes that sounds funny since many say common sense would say unmetered doesn't exist). The same common sense that applies to any customer going to a hard limit host who is allowed 10 GBs but never uses 2 before their CGIs kill the server. We say, you can use as much BW as common sense would dicatate. Can you use 400 GBs on a shared server with 300 other sites? No. Can I run a large cgi-chat or message board on a shared server? No. This same common sense dicates how much a "all you can eat buffet" really is, or even a "pay once" parking meter. Will that $.50 let me park my car indefinatlly? No, eventually someone will move it as it looks abandoned. Common Sense.

Is every customer going to want to chose a host offring something without a hard BW limit? No. That is a chance we take. All the better for our compitition, right?

It is all numbers and planning for us. Just like every host does or business does. It is sitting down and writing formulas. It is worse case senerio planning. It is about acceppting and HONORING risk. Do we get sites pushing 50 GBs? Yes. But that cost us $5 - $7.5 and our lowest shared plan is $10.00. It is about numbers, and I can tell you only about 1:1000 use that much. This is from our experience.


Agian, this is just me. However it really pisses me of when so many people compare unlimited to unmetered. Hey, you don't have to agree with unmetered and you can hate it. But at least understand what it can mean to some.

Do you think rackshack will ever make enough money to buy rackshack.com? :)

you can onlyhope. i keep typing that in when too tired. they must get so much traffic from it. wonder if theyre hosted there lol

when when RS takes over the dedicated world (beating every provider there is), they would be making money.

I see them in every tech / business related magazine so I assume they are making about the million line. It actually creates more jobs for system admins :)

Originally posted by Synergy
when when RS takes over the dedicated world (beating every provider there is), they would be making money.

I see them in every tech / business related magazine so I assume they are making about the million line. It actually creates more jobs for system admins :)

If I werent' so busy with web hosting I could probably get by and make a living just hiring myself out to Rackshack (and other) customers who need help running their servers :) matter of fact I DID do that while Dixiesys built up steam back in Oct and Nov and Dec.

:) he makes a very good tutor as well.