Looking for a highly reliable colocated (ideally) or dedicated server provider in the Seattle, WA area.

How about posting your budget? and that kind of stuff so some hosts can email you with answeres?

Not sure what your time-frame is, but Inflow (www.inflow.com) has proposed a datacenter in Seattle. Inflow customers include Mapquest and headhunter.net. Based on a quick tour of their local datacenter (San Diego), reliability and redundancy are top priorities.

It also appears that Exodus has three datacenters in Seattle.

There are also a few Seattle based providers here: http://www.bighosts.com/big-big-big/freebies/washington/

I hope that helps.

- Mike

Okay, here's the whole scoop. It's a form letter i've sent to half a dozen host providers. I will need 2 servers using different backbones for redundancy, so I'll be using 2 different host providers. One of them needs to be in the Seattle (ideally, Bellevue) area so I can kick some ass if need be.

I run my business, http://www.eSnipe.com, on a dedicated server. I need to replace the hosting service because of performance problems. I feel a little bad airing my dirty laundry with the hosting service, but if you feel you're unable to meet my site's needs this will make it easier for you to disqualify yourself.

eSnipe is somewhat unusual among websites in that realtime performance is critical. eSnipe is a service that automatically places bids on eBay during the last few seconds of an auction. Currently eSnipe places about 10,000 bids per day. This shouldn't be particularly challenging, but the latency and general performance of my current hosting provider (www.dedicatedhosting.com) is unacceptable. While eSnipe falls well within the specs of their service, they are not performing as advertised. Normally I wouldn't be so blunt in discussing these problems, but I'm trying to emphasize my need for reliability and adequate throughput.

eSnipe is a somewhat popular site, with 38,000 registered users and 2.2 million page impressions per month. The pages are mostly text. Maximum bandwidth is currently 30-40 GB per month typically, but the user base is growing. Again, this should no problem for the server configuration we rent, as specified at this page, but they're falling down on the job:

http://www.dedicatedhosting.com/products_winnt.htm

I prefer to colo my own server. If you don't have that service, could you tell me if your rented servers meet the following requirements?

* At least a PIII 500 Mhz
* At least 256 Mb RAM
* At least 6G hard drive
* At least 2 IP addresses
* 50 GB transfer. Burstable isn't important because eSnipe runs pretty much the same all the time, except for peaks on Sunday nights. However, additional bandwidth when necessary (of course I'll pay for it) is imperative because the userbase is growing quickly.
* At least NT 4.0 with latest service pack (6a or later)
* IIS 4.0 or later
* A mail server (MS SMTP is fine)
* Windows Script Host 5.1 or later

Budget: Roughly $500/month per server.

Tech support is far less important that reliability, and the budget is flexible.

And some questions. Sorry for the large number of them, but having been burned once, I'm extra careful in evaluating new hosts.

* What would a configuration meeting this minimum requirements cost per month?
* What is your setup fee?
* What sort of uptime guarantees do you have?
* What sort of bandwidth guarantees do you have?
* If you require an annual contract, does it allow me to exit the contract if you do not perform as advertised?
* Can you point me to some sites hosted on your dedicated servers?
* What do you charge to reboot the machine?
* What do you charge to restart an NT service?


Tom RC Campbell
Owner and Site Manager, http://www.eSnipe.com

Yes, I'm an idiot. My email address is tom@esnipe.com.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

Tom what your site does violates the Rules on E-bay reguardless of what your FAQ says.

Please read
http://pages.ebay.aol.com/help/community/png-user.html

Item 7

I really don't think any host is going to allow you on their server.

Your users run the risk of being banned from E-bay and thus putting you in a very bad situation.

Ebay member since 1997 :)

Thanks for the feedback, Newbie. Not only does eSnipe not violate the rules (they are officially agnostic about sniping) but rest assured it's known at the very highest levels of eBay. eSnipe is not a robot or spider, which Section 7 forbids. If you look into their developer program you'll find whole APIs designed to do the very kinds of things eSnipe does. Readings of the rules along your lines would forbid any of two dozen popular listing and bidding utility programs such as AuctionTamer, Vrane, or Andale's extensive services.

Our 39,000 registered users place about $15 million in bids each month on eBay. It's not exactly a secret, although admittedly eSnipe has never advertised.

I appreciate your knowledge of eBay's rules and your interest in assisting me. Can you help me with colocation or dedicated servers in Seattle?

Sure, I am actually pretty bored anyways. I'll Call Ebay monday and see what they really say. I don't find any Developer tools on Ebay, Oh well. Let me see what I can find for you.

Hmm newbie, why would you even say a thing like that, seems like your just trying to start a fight, anyways tomscat your setup sounds very impressive, ill do some reasearch and find some choices for you in that area, there should be plenty. By the way it was very refreshing to see how polite you were to newbie even after he attacked you, good business ethic...

Humm

http://www.abovenet.com
http://www.sla.com
http://www.ninewire.com
http://www.eskimo.com/
http://www.netfixr.com/
http://www.dataform.com/home_fs.htm
http://www.allegrix.com

Also checkout hostsearch.com their equiptment is in seattle

I know bad Newbie:smash: Really wasn't meant as an attack was just mentioning it, because I have been on Ebay so longggggg. I thought I would say something, but now I am interested if I am actually bidding against someone's server rather then a person on a computer.

Charles you been acting way different lately too. Seems as the mood around here is getting a little over stressed.

Mr. Baker, very kind of you. dtwebworks has great prices and is on my short list for when i need the 2nd server outside the Seattle area.

Newbie, thanks for the offer of assistance. The eBay developer program *is* a bit hard to find; it's currently a small-scale experiment limited to 25 participants. But it has tons of documentation and I think you'll be jazzed by all the opportunities. Most people with a site of the quality of SWMIC would not be bored but I suspect you're just out of my league. The starting point for eBay's developer here:
http://developer.ebay.com

The FAQ is here:
http://developer.ebay.com/getstart/register/faq_tech.html

The developer docs are here:
http://developer.ebay.com/Licensed/documentation/API_Documentation.zip

You have to be a registered user for the developer docs and the program is closed for now, but who knows--eBay is probably open to serious inquiries such as your own.

Good luck! Working on a realtime website like eSnipe is an incredibly challenging task and one certain to tax your technical skills! (Well, mine, anyway ;-)

Tom Campbell

Newbie,

Ive simply lost all patience for the people on this board, if your (by your i mean all the members) going to be a member dont start fights and follow the rules, I dont go out of my way to be rude but if people are going to continue to turn the board into the free for all that it currently is, im either going to stop it or move on...

Nothing against you newbie you seem to be a nice guy, just kind of caught me off guard that you were so blunt with the new member, when hes been so polite...

Thanx for the link Tom, Nope I don't plan on doing anything like that, But am very interested in what Ebay is doing as I would rather goto the store then play tag with a computer.

Nope I love the KISS Method, I guess the military does wonders for teaching. Btw KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). There are hidden advantages to having things a certain way. I think you will find if people can't find what they are looking for fast and effectively they will leave. So far everyone just goes into the prices, humm I wonder why. Atleast I gave them 100 Seconds to find what they wanted to know :D

No problem Charles, I understand what you are saying :) I don't hold no beef's and I still plan on Co-locating with ya sooner or later.

:)

Thanks for the great links, Newbie. I had somehow managed to miss most of the services you pointed out to me, and all in my backyard.

Sadly, yes, you are now often bidding against a server. The reasons people snipe are manifold and are usually much better than my reason for sniping (I'm a cheapskate). They include:

* Foreign users who don't want to be up at 4:00am their time placing a bid near the end of the auction

* People who prefer privacy

* People who want to save money

* People who like an automatic bidding service because they run selling businesses and don't have time to sit at the computer with a stopwatch.

I was an eSnipe user before I bought the service. I did it to save money & assumed that was why most people liked it. If people knew I was bidding on a guitar a week before the auction was over, the price tended to be closer to $600. If I sniped it, the price went closer to $500. eSnipe had reliability problems but so what? It was free.

Was I in for a rude shock when I became the owner. The psychology of sniping deserves its own treatise. I had no idea how many people took sniping dead seriously. Not just collectors (who are clannish but also like to bid in privacy) but also the business owners. They get angry when bids are missed, even though eSnipe is free. It really knocked me for a loop. So we completely rewrote the bidding scheduler and reimplemented the database, in essence hollowing out the site I had bought and giving it a full brain/heart/lung transplant, while never shutting the site down. But dedicatedhosting.com is so bad I realized the only way to preserve our 99.75% hit rate was to run on 2 different servers with redundant machines on different backbones. Expensive, but necessary, as I found out again just last Sunday when dedicatedhosting.com decided to do some unannounced router maintenance on our busiest day (as many as 15,000 bids get placed on Sundays).

You don't know if you're bidding against a server, either. There is a whole subculture of auction buyers who love literally to sit at their machine with a stopwatch and snipe the auction by hand. They often boast of 2-4 second snipe times and just love the sport of it. Which is great, as far as I'm concerned: anyone who makes me look almost well-adjusted is a welcome presence in the world ;-)