I opened my web hosting business a few months ago and I guess I made the terrible mistake of starting out with Cobalt RaQ servers. I have quite a few customers now but I am very displeased with the servers. My host is great and their prices are pretty competitive, but the thing is that I cannot offer the same type of hosting that I would if I just had a couple of Linux boxes with decent control panel software installed. I think the panel on the RaQ is just too limited and does not offer enough features. Also, I have to telnet into the box every time I need to change something because their "GUI" is pretty useless for anything other than basic administration.

I have been thinking about moving to a different host that can offer me a Linux box with CPanel, Plesk or something else. I have pretty much narrowed my search to three hosts: Ventures Online, Weinbar and Host Rocket. The most appealing is Weinbar because their bandwidth is competitively priced, however, their setup fee would be outrageous for the type of box I want. Any suggestions? Can anyone share their experience with these hosts? Is total automation (Host Rocket) worth the bandwidth costs?
How many "average" sites can I host on a Linux box with about 512MB Ram?

I am a real newbie when it comes to Linux boxes so your help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!!!

Hello, I have almost the same problem here but actually i have a dedicated linux box with rackspace for 2 years that uses webmin for administrative purposes.
I was very happy with my machine but i want to start offering more webhosting than webdesign. This company charges me $4.00 per GB what I think is very high and they do not offer any user control panel.

After Almost 4 weeks of investigation I'm more confused that I was at the beginning.

weinbar?? hostrocket?? rackspace?? venturesonline etc.. geeeee!!

Please help!!

Mauro...:bawling:

venturesonline

I heard good things about them. And my friend who is reselling for them seems very satisfied with their services.

Thanks for your advice. Also, do you know how many "average" sites a Linux server with about 512MB of RAM can handle? I know this is difficult to know, but I am just looking for a ball park figure.

Thanks!

around 250?

Originally posted by bert
Thanks for your advice. Also, do you know how many "average" sites a Linux server with about 512MB of RAM can handle? I know this is difficult to know, but I am just looking for a ball park figure.

Thanks!
250-300 easy .

That is it? Can't push it to about 500?

Depending on the type of server you have, you could put over 1000 domains, although I wouldn't recommend it.

Typically, you shuld only put up to a maximum of 400 per server. Although your can physically put more on a server, performance decreases as you add more users. Make sure you have a big enough box to handle the amount of customers you want to put on a server. But don't overload it. You will have some unhappy people on your hands :(

If you're not sure how many sites your server can handle, you might want to set up MRTG to graph load average, cpu time, memory, bandwidth used, possibly even httpd response time. That way you can see at a glance how heavily loaded your server is and when you should start putting new customers onto a different system.

Also, don't furget to leave some space for those sites to grow, otherwise you will find yourself in a very messy situation :(