i have noticed a lot of folks here offering web hosting services with dedicated unmanged web servers from companies like rackshack.net. since rackshack.net and most of the 'value providers' do not offer a managed and even worse, not backed up servers, what do you do in case of a hdd crash? leave the customers out in the cold? hoping that the customers back up the data on their own, sacrifizing their transfer quota? without a raid solution or spare hdd drive would easily bomb your allowed transfer, so what do you do?

i also noticed folks in here who want to run their own web hosting business with little or no knowledge of linux and networking experience. yes, getting a dedicated server can be fun for your private use, but please don't offers services that you cannot support. web hosting is NOT a point and click solution, but require years and years of hands-on experience with unix, perl, php, apache, sendmail, etc... ensim, plesk and wsh can at best ASSIST, but not REPLACE. there is nothing worse than crappy setup and support.

besides, do you seriously think that someone here or somewhere else will tell you where to look for dead cheap servers? web hosting is a razor-sharp market with a very few making a profit. most 'webhost-from-home' companies do it for fun.

bah.

sorry, had to let this out.

I'm quite proud of my backup system, and our prices are quite uhm, competitive :D

http://forums.dixiesys.com/viewtopic.php?t=1319

If you'd like to read about how backups work on our Plesk servers.

Originally posted by reaktor
i have noticed a lot of folks here offering web hosting services with dedicated unmanged web servers from companies like rackshack.net. since rackshack.net and most of the 'value providers' do not offer a managed and even worse, not backed up servers, what do you do in case of a hdd crash? leave the customers out in the cold? hoping that the customers back up the data on their own, sacrifizing their transfer quota? without a raid solution or spare hdd drive would easily bomb your allowed transfer, so what do you do?


That's what they get for "cheap". I've seen all sorts of stories "ah, they lost me database" and I just LOL to myself " sucker!". :)


i also noticed folks in here who want to run their own web hosting business with little or no knowledge of linux and networking experience. yes, getting a dedicated server can be fun for your private use, but please don't offers services that you cannot support. web hosting is NOT a point and click solution, but require years and years of hands-on experience with unix, perl, php, apache, sendmail, etc... ensim, plesk and wsh can at best ASSIST, but not REPLACE. there is nothing worse than crappy setup and support.

They think they will make a million overnight. Just like a few other posters here asking "I've been up for a week, where are all the customers?". Remember, you don't need "years" of experience as most data centers now offers "remote hands". You can just rent-your-admin. Mind you, they will need to know a little because they will be doing the support. But then again, you can hire people (real cheap too).

I don't like plesk or cpanel. In fact, I have written my own control panel. Not as fancy as the others, but it get's the job done and when the customer needs something advanced done, they can call me.


besides, do you seriously think that someone here or somewhere else will tell you where to look for dead cheap servers? web hosting is a razor-sharp market with a very few making a profit. most 'webhost-from-home' companies do it for fun.

bah.

sorry, had to let this out.

I find it funny how the retards that look for really cheap servers here find them, then bitch because "it's too slow", or "i never got what I paid for". Well, when you pay for **** all, you get **** all. It's getting to the point where hosts here BEG for customers as they try and out due each other.. $9/month.. $6/month... $2/year! It's sick. Most of these hosts will be dead in two months.

Originally posted by Dixiesys
I'm quite proud of my backup system, and our prices are quite uhm, competitive :D

http://forums.dixiesys.com/viewtopic.php?t=1319

If you'd like to read about how backups work on our Plesk servers.

Are you using dedicated unmanged servers from a provider like crapshack??

I still have 2 rackshack servers actually.

But no we're moving to a larger local data center just as soon as the truck arrives with my new rack!

Edit: I build all of our servers, currently I use 1.6 P4, 1 gig ddr, 2x80 gig mirrored drives, 1U case for the servers. And our servers aren't unmanaged, we manage them as best we can! :D

elf,

i totally agree. but then, how many customers check a web hosting provider for speed and reliabilty? most users don't know anything about networking. and how many contact their provider before they hit the order button? not a lot. it's all about price and features and customers usually start complaining when it is too late. those are usually the users who don't even backup their data on their own computer and start whining if their hdd crashes.

companies like rackshack seem to it easy to start your own business, but not a web hosting service!

excessive resellers and crappy dedicated hosting providers seem to make it easy for newbies to start their own business. so, why in the world would resellers give away THEIR business to other companies and not cash in the money themselves? hellooo?

Originally posted by Dixiesys
I still have 2 rackshack servers actually.

But no we're moving to a larger local data center just as soon as the truck arrives with my new rack!

Edit: I build all of our servers, currently I use 1.6 P4, 1 gig ddr, 2x80 gig mirrored drives, 1U case for the servers. And our servers aren't unmanaged, we manage them as best we can! :D

Hmmm, the OP said "unmanaged" dedicated servers, seem your using your own servers. So, when you buy a rack, you have the extra space to slap another (backup) server where as the RS host has to either pay $99/month again or buy a second hard drive for it.

All it costs me, is a little space for a few backup servers (plus the cost of the servers). My backup solution was very easy (took around 15 minutes to create - software side anyway).

B# = backup server #

Server -> B1
B1 -> B2
B2 -> B3
B3 -> B4
After B4, data is deleted.

I could do the above on crappy pentium 2's. Do it daily, and you have a almost perfect daily backup solution. The cost to me is low, as old computers are cheap. If a server dies, you can replace it and still have data on the other two. So to a penny host, that's an extra $297/month.

Total cost to me: about $40/month (for power) after the cost of the server ($100-free)

Yep, places like Rackshack don't make backup easy, and that's one of the reasons I quit renting their servers when I needed more, live and learn. Also (and I have to say they have gotten MUCH faster!) the hour or more to get a server rebooted really opened my eyes that I couldn't keep customers happy on a rackshack when they expected near 100% uptime. Again, I have noticed this has improved a lot lately so that's good. But there's still other issues that the business model of rackshack really cannot support that I won't go into.

Originally posted by reaktor
elf,

i totally agree. but then, how many customers check a web hosting provider for speed and reliabilty? most users don't know anything about networking. and how many contact their provider before they hit the order button? not a lot. it's all about price and features and customers usually start complaining when it is too late. those are usually the users who don't even backup their data on their own computer and start whining if their hdd crashes.

companies like rackshack seem to it easy to start your own business, but not a web hosting service!

excessive resellers and crappy dedicated hosting providers seem to make it easy for newbies to start their own business. so, why in the world would resellers give away THEIR business to other companies and not cash in the money themselves? hellooo?

Well, you can't blame the host in whole. The customer must also keep a copy of THERE OWN site. Not to many do check. I've found the ones that call before they order will stick around for a year (maybe more). The ones that just signup, tend to leave.

I think that's where people go wrong with dedicated servers. I call a dedicated server a server dedicated to one site, your site. Not to start a web hosting company. The hosts that use RS are cheap, and only get CHEAP customers. Let them have 1,000 customers just to make a $1. I find the people that brag "I got 15 servers" then if you ask them "how much profit do you make?" chances are, less then $300/month/server (or $3000$4000) super-de-duper funny when they should be making $1000-$1500/server.

Right now, I've seen a few companies jack the price of hosting when my company is dropping the prices. Oh well... I don't care. Make your customers pissed, and I'll make mine happy! :stickout Nothing says "Thank you for your business, we value you as a customer" more then, hey... Our prices just went up! :rolleyes: