Greetings!

I am planning to move my company’s websites from a shared host that has been experiencing a lot of downtime over the last two months to a fully managed, dedicated box. I really don’t have the time (or complete knowledge) to dedicate much energy into maintaining the server. Pretty much, once it is transferred and running, we want to be hands off.

The main site is a hotel / resort that books most of its rooms via the site. Additionally, our email is hosted with our provider (we have crappy connectivity at our location, so an onsite Exchange server is not an option).

After some research here I am leaning towards the following:

Liquidweb
Dual Xeon 2.66GHZ Hyperthreaded
2GB DDR Registered ECC
Dual 120GB SATA / Hardware Raid 1
50GB Remote Backup
Linux - CentOS 4
CPanel / Web Host Manager
Fantastico
InitAdmin
Fully Managed
$339 / month

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I'm going to move this inquiry to the "Dedicated" section as this appears to be the wrong section (judging by the resonses).

Hi HotelIT,

The definition of fully managed does differ amongst companies. I have heard good things about liquidweb, so, maybe just clarrify with them on whether their level of management is what you require.

Is the script that takes your reservations a home made one? Are you also looking for a company to manage that script? or is this done in house?

If you really want to be hands off - make sure the company you choose will proactively support the OS and Control Panel. Also, if the site has the potential for further growth, and at least for planning purposes - ensure your provider has the ability to cluster and expand your services if required.

Hope this helps...

You might want to look at httpme.com- I use to host with them. If i wanted a ded server, they would fullfill my needs completely! Heck- you aren't allowed root access- thats how managed it is! Proactive management for your box to boot!

I second the vote for www.httpme.com. For $399, you can get a decent setup, and they offer true fully managed services, so you never have to worry about anything.

http://www.httpme.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19530

mrzippy- are you Jimbob from httpme forums? If not than I apologize=)

httpme is best in regards to completely managed services.

Getting RAID 1 protection is safe enough.

Getting RAID 1 protection is safe enough.

wow - I guess the people who invented RAID5 or higher, NAS devices, Tape Libraries, etc - were just wasting their time - no one really needs that anyway :)

Their are benefits to all types of RAID configurations. Raid1 is considered "enough" for him so let it be. It's preferences that controls the most of us. I would recommend RAID1 too.

For hosting Raid1 is sufficient. If you were a large company doing just hosting, than there are better Raid configurations to suit each specific need(s) when it arises.

Stay away from SW RAID. I dont recommend this at all!!! You have far more reliability with just 2 HD with one unmounted during the day for backup reasons.

Stay away from SW RAID. I dont recommend this at all!!! You have far more reliability with just 2 HD with one unmounted during the day for backup reasons.

Agreed

For hosting Raid1 is sufficient. If you were a large company doing just hosting, than there are better Raid configurations to suit each specific need(s) when it arises.

RAID1 is not sufficient for hosting or any other industry for that matter. RAID is not a backup solution - RAID simply offers some redundancy to data on a server. BackUp's are mandatory - and especially in the hosting industry.

**EDIT - actually, thinking about this some more - I would say offserver and or offnetwork backups are more important then RAID (if you had to choose just 1)

**EDIT - actually, thinking about this some more - I would say offserver and or offnetwork backups are more important then RAID (if you had to choose just 1)


Exactly, raid is not a backup. The way I look at it, raid is a tool that helps keep servers online in the event that one of the drives fail. There are no substitutions for remote/offsite backups.

To the OP: if you go with Liquidweb, I recommend losing the dual Xeon and going down to their Webmaster series, if the only things running on the dedicated are a hotel booking service and e-mail, then you want a dedicated for reliability I guess, so a single-CPU server with 1 GB RAM should be enough. You can add a RAID 1 to those cheaper configurations too at LW, so that's not a prob.

Regarding RAID and what's "enough", you need RAID 5 first thing when you want a larger number of disks. RAID 1 would be simply too expensive for a larger number of disks in an array since for e.g. an array with 5 disks' capacity you'd need 10 disks, whereas for a RAID 5 array with 5 disks' capacity you'd need only 6 disks (7 if you either want a hot spare or if you configure it to be RAID 5EE).