Hi,

I'm looking to host about 70 accounts (the number will go up to about 110 by the end of the year). Most are brochureware although about 10 are e-commerce (with another 10 on the way). In addition to webhosting, I'd like to offer limited email services. Once the server is up and running, we'll probably be adding some custom PHP/MySQL apps and maybe a VBulletin or 2 to some of the sites. I don't have a handle on traffic, but think it will be under 50Gb/month total. The drive need not be bigger than 20 Gigs.

I've received quotes on 20 Gig IDE drives and 18 Gig SCSI.
Quotes on dual PIIIs, single PIII, single AMD at various speeds.
Quotes on 512 and 1Gig Ram.

I've already decided that I would like to run RedHat 7.2 with Plesk PSA 2.5.
I have a budget of about 600-800 per month. Given my needs, any help with putting together a spec for a well rounded fast system would be greatly appreciated. Some of that budget will need to go to managed back ups on a second drive and a firewall. I'm leaning towards Rackspace (I know the prices are higher, but reliability is essential).

Thanks in advance,
Steve

Nobody wants to help with the specs?

Nice choice on RedHat and Plesk.

Plesk will allow you and your customers to easily access their website and administrate it over the internet, instead of coming to you and asking you to do something. It seems you are going to need absolute reliability and therefore require a high uptime dedicated server host.

Are you familiar with dedicated servers or will you need "somone to hold your hand"? Not being trying to be sarcastic or funny :)

I'd suggest www.nocster.net and you won't be spending that crazy amount of money each month. In fact daily backups to a second drive are only 100$ additional each month. So depeding n the server and specs you exactly want you will spend most likely no more than 300-400$ per month.

Aretna - This will be our first dedicated server, but we've been using a virtual server from Verio to host our clients on. All of the work on that server was done directly at the command line.

NixHosting - I'll be looking into nocster - I've already touched base with them.

Anyone have any recs on a fast system in my price range. I'm actually looking to spend about $500 or less now (I've decided to go without the managed firewall).

For the small amount of sites you will be hosting a 700-1000mhz system would be fine. 256-512mb ram would be good. Hard drive is your choice. Only you can determine what your users will utilize. I've had over 300 domains on a 700mhz with 256 ram. No problems at all.

NixHosting - thanks for the info.
700-1000 - great, that's what I was thinking. I was also thinking PIII, not an AMD processor. Is that a good call?

256-512 of RAM - I was thinking 512-1Gig - I'm guessing more wouldn't hurt.

What about the rest? I'm looking to set up a fast balanced system. Something where I'm not wasting resources. For example, I don't want to use dual 1Ghz PIIIs if my IDE hard drive is going to be so slow that the extra power of the PIIIs is wasted.

Also, I'm not looking for any offers/quotes here, just some info. When I'm ready I'll post my request in the appropriate board.

Thanks again,
Steve

Why are you leaving Verio?