welp... been haning out on WHT for about little over a year and have been basically looking at shared hosting accounts.

So far I've went through 1 free web host for developers, then jumped to a reseller's account then to another hosting company for another reseller account.

One of the things that I found out was that no matter how good a hosting company may seem at the time you are looking for an account, sometime in the future they will have their down times and slow support times and lack of activity or whatnot.

I've always been careful at choosing a paid hosting service - but now I think im ready to take the next step and to step into the world of getting a dedicated server.

I seriously have NO IDEA what it takes to manage a dedicated server. I don't know what I get once I get the server (aka software wise) and don't know if anything is setup. I know what root is ;) but have no clue what I need to do with it.

With that in mind, I also consider price to be an important issue since this would be my first dedicated server and I need something cheap in price but not too bad in hardware-wise.

I thought about getting a dedicated server with rackshack, especially once they started to provide those celeron $99/mo. deals. But I've read so many unique sets of opinions from members of this forum about their support. Then webreseller.net came up out of nowhere couple weeks ago - their deals aren't too much expensive then rackshack.net and they seem to be going pretty well and becoming well known.

Now, I believe that once a company gets well known - their level of support drops down and can create more excuses for them. This is one of the things that I'm afraid of... and getting a dedicated server isn't like getting a shared hosting account. Dedicated servers actually require you to invest some money into it... so in fear of not choosing a good service provider, I still ponder if I even should go for a dedicated server or not. Plus, I still have those questions about running a server. Am I going to be able to do anything that is necessary to get a server going with plesk/ensim/whm-cpanel ?

Any suggestions/answers/comments would be appreciated ;)

I would seriously suggest you spend some more money and get a managed soloution if you don't knwo what you are doing...

Originally posted by acidHL
I would seriously suggest you spend some more money and get a managed soloution if you don't knwo what you are doing...

That or get something with a web based control panel. Even then your still going to have to learn a few things here and there. You wont have to be as "hard core" though. :)

get a managed server possibly
get a pet admin who will work when required to secure the server and perform upgrades for you for minimal cost and use a control panel for other stuff
dont think its easy lol, its painfully annoying at times.
dont grab the server and cancel your reseller immediately, run the server a month or so before you transfer.
get a host that offers good support. webreseller offer partially managed servers cheap thats good.
watch out for those celeries, they only take 512 mb ram max i think, if im wrong apologies but this could be a problem if the server gets busy.

best wishes and good luck.

Originally posted by alpha
Any suggestions/answers/comments would be appreciated ;) If you want to learn how to manage Linux server without spending much money upfront, find yourself a good old Pentium box with network card ($50 these days). Read one of linuxdoc.org installation guides and install Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2, without X Window. Download Plesk 2.5 from Plesk web site and install it as well (it is free with 1 domain). Plesk comes with Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL etc, so you don't have to install them separately. Now, software wise, you have basically the same Plesk server RackShack offers!

Experiment with it. Create yourself a site, ftp account, MySQL database etc. Create simple Perl program (print "Hello, World!\n"). Play with your server for 4 weeks. In a month, you will see your knowledge about Linux dedicated servers has improved dramatically.

Greetings:

I could be 100% off base, but every single time we see "managed hosting" and "managed servers," what we are really seeing is infrastructure (i.e. their network) and equipment (i.e. the hardware you rent lease) management.

Meaning, I've yet to see any "managed hosting" provider offer server administration built into their pricing structure.

I've seen cases where you can buy admin time on a reactive basis; but nothing proactive where they take care of the server for you proactively.

Examples of reactive:

* Security and update patches -- at best they let you know several weeks after an update has been out asking you which patches you want to apply for $x fee per patch with no service level agreement on the patch application or guarantees of not breaking the system by applying the patch.

* You put in a request to harden the system and apply a firewall and IDS system, and they send you a work order telling you how much.

* Their basic monitoring system notes there is a problem, and they let you know there is a problem. Then it is up to you to diagnose or ask them for a work order for them to diagnose and fix.

Am I off base here? Or are there companies out there that truly manage the server (not just the infrastructure and the hardware)? And that do so on a proactive basis?

Thank you.

perhaps start out with a RAQ4 or something. get it, patch it up. learn some of the ins and outs. host a handful of smaller sites on there just to get the hang of it.

easy to update, easy to maintain. (everything you need to know is in the RAQ forums here, rackshack, and cobalt). fairly powerful. i use a RAQ4 with 512mb RAM to host 6 of my own sites. one of which is pushing out about 50gb per month, completely dynamic/mysql/php driven, and has about 5300 registered users. my RAQ barely makes a peep, so i know i could stuff another handful of sites on there (if i had them heh)...

the RAQ in my opinion would be perfect as a learning experience for at least basic administration knowledge. it's how i learned everything. i didn't know anything about linux 6 months agao. now i've pretty much got the RAQ down.

again, just my opinion. i would imagine you would want something more powerful however.

http://www.rackshack.net
http://www.serverrack.net
http://www.4webspace.com

are just a few of the RAQ sellers out there...

let me iterate something...

im not looking for offers, if so - i would've posted this in the advertising forums. so please do not send me PMs or emails about services.

just wanted some suggestions from experienced consumers who had this kind of thoughts and wanted some personal experiences - thats all.

sorry if I mislead some people into thinking that I wanted offers...

dabystru's suggestion is good ;)

Anyway, you can also look for VDS solution first and it is cheaper for you to *experience* with it as I do :D

Just my thoughts :stickout

Cheers!

Kindest regards,
Choon

I am also inexperienced in managing a server. I have purchased a book, and will continuously gather additional reference matarial. As far as a company, I am going with Rackspace.com. They have had grave reviews throughout this forum, and the service thus far has been excellent.

Good luck
Nawaz

First, there are still a few shared hosts out there that provide excellent service. I got a few sites running at FutureQuest.net. And despite their size they are excellent. Never ever did I get a off point or late response to a support question. And their online forum is terrific. If you are still looking for shared hosting go there.

One of my sites is generating too much traffic for a shared server. Therefore I was looking around for a dedicated server. Another reason was that I need full control over the server for some other reasons.

Although I know enough about computers as I am a (Windows) developer, my Linux experience was quite limited. Last month I decided to jump and got myself a Ensim Compaq server at RackShack. I got a Compaq instead of a whitebox to limit the chances of hardware failure.

Beforehand I was afraid that the server would crash or get hacked within days. That's why I did not put any critical sites on it. For the first few weeks it has been learning box. I tuned the box, installed patches and new software using information from the Webhostingtalk and rackshack forums and I had no problem at all.

Not even once did I have to ask rackshack for so much as a reboot. I did post one trouble ticket about the rackshack monitoring system which shows traffic for another ip/server than mine and that was answered wrongly. They closed the trouble ticket with the answer that the monitoring service was working. (the guy who handled the ticket did not even bother to read it properly). They still have to improve in that department.

So for rackshack it is: you get a great deal for a very low price. But the server is dedicated not managed. I see many people still mixing up those terms. And support is not great if you got a non reboot/restore question. You are better off asking your questions either here or on the rackshack forum.

About getting your own server: if you got a learning attutide and know were to search/ask, you will be just fine.

Jan Derk

I know you aren't looking for offers so I won't solicit one. I do sell dedicated servers, and to lots and lots of newbies, so I have a perspective you might appreciate.

The thing I tell most people, is if you can be comfortable at a DOS prompt, then you can learn Linux and get started. If they don't know what a DOS prompt is, I sell them a server with Plesk on it. But a number of linux newbies have servers with me and do just fine. The reason is that we have setup cron jobs to handle log rotation, etc, and backups, everything that can be automated is. And then we have shell scripts that handle the addition/deletion of accounts, so everything is pretty simple. Want to add an account? Type newdomain and it asks you username/password/domainname and sets it up in DNS and Apache, and installs a bunch of cgi scripts.

So if you are so intimidated by Linux that it bothers you, and you don't necessarily want to learn it at all, go Plesk (or Ensim, or... you get the idea) but otherwise look for a dedicated server package that comes pre-configured to do what you want, whether it be web hosting or developing, or otherwise.

Hope this helps!

so if a dedicated server comes with plesk or another control panel, you will still need to take care of security patches though, right? So even if you are a newbie runing a dedicated server with a control panel, you still need to know how to take care of security holes. A control panel only makes it easier for newbies to administer apache (?)

I'm thinking of getting a box from rackshack, play with it and do my own host reselling biz with it.

toygeek, can you please direct me to your site or where I can learn more about your offer?

thank you,
Steven