Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : What's wrong with Dedicated Servers?

[AcuNett]

From my experience dedicated servers (those rented from providers) have proven to be crap, or is it just my bad luck?

We've had 3 servers with Rackshack over a year ago. There were two incidents of RAM failures and two incidents of hard disk failures.

Of the 4 servers we had with Rackshack, two of them lived on with no problems.

We had a server with webreseller.net, no problems there.

Had a server with the burstnet dedicated servers (forgot what their subsidiary company was called). No hardware troubles, but left pretty soon because of network issues.

Server with ServerMatrix, everything was good for a few months, then we had a hard disk failures, and more hard disk failures.

A few servers we manage at Rackshack have also experienced HD failures.

Failure rate seems to be about 50% for dedicated servers.

For our own, custom-built colo servers, failure rate has been 0%.

Just sharing my observations, no bashing intended to any of the companies mentioned above.

[BVS]

Originally posted by AcuNett
Had a server with the burstnet dedicated servers (forgot what their subsidiary company was called). No hardware troubles, but left pretty soon because of network issues.

Their subsidiary was called NOCSTER. In terms of problems with dedicated servers, I think price would be a problem. Everybody wants cheap dedicated servers and top notch hardware....

[mdrussell]

Ultimately if you are going with a budget / lower end provider, they need to make a profit so will use lower end hardware to help margins.

Lack of cooling / lower quality cases / lower quality components / quality of the PSU are all factors that affect the hardware failure rate of hard drives, processors, memory and motherboards.

[misnomer]

My first servers were with Rackshack, but left cause of network and hardware issues about a year ago. I then moved onto ValueWeb who I found excellent - I've had practically 100% uptime, save a switch failure which was replaced just under 2 hours mid-last year. I now been hosting with Beachcomber since October? ish cause I wanted to move to Cpanel, and have never been happier with the service I've received . I've got a server in the NJ datacentre (on DN's network) which has been giving fantastic network performance (90-100ms to here in the UK) - if you want a stable, hassle free dedicated server experience, I'd try speaking to Mark @ Beachcomber-Creations.com, cause I now recommend his services everytime

[sightz]

I wonder if some companies are using factory returns or off-lease components to save costs?

Most servers come with 80 Gig drives these days, and conveniently most of the desktop computers that are ending 3 year leases would also have 80 Gig drives and similar specs to a lot of the servers our there. (Celerons, 512 Megs Ram, etc).

I would think having a mish-mash of boxes would be expensive to support but maybe the hardware cost savings offset the failures.

[Defcon|Rich]

We originally started with companies such as SM Nocster and have had our fair share of problems but have since gone to different providers which cost alot more but downtime is zero now. I'll say it again, You DO get what you pay for...

[tracphil]

I agree that it is lower cost components that is what you are running into. RAM is not all created equal and the same goes for everything else in low end boxes... not saying you have low end servers as I have no idea but from the places that you mention you have dedicateds then that would be my first guess.

For would recommend that you get some Dell Poweredge 1750's (SCSI, RAID5 etc) and colo them. Then you know exactly what you have purcased.

There is Rentech http://www.rentech.net/colo.html and there is the place that Jack used to colo at but I can't remember the name of it.

[RobTheGolfer]

It was ISDNnet, www.isdn.net. They are located here in Nashville but aren't to impressive for the prices they are charging...

[Fahd]

We've had servers with RS for about 3 years and never had any hardware problems. With TP a little over a year now and not a single problem. However, one of our colo servers ethernet card quit working. This was a 3COM card by the way.

I think it depends primarily on manufacturer and then on how much you use it.

[rusko]

rob,

perhaps now would be a good time to consider a provider that uses rackmount servers engineered for the colling requirements of a datacenter environment. while hardware failures do happen and have happened to us as well, i have found that using solid hardware (we use supermicro, many swear by dell and ibm) and cooling it properly is a key to minimizing hardware problems.

paul

[smallbox]

I am sure that most EV1 customers have experienced the same problem. I rented a server with them like 2 1/2 years ago, I got Ram failure the first 2 months there with them. Lucky we asked them to test the Ram or we would have experienced more downtime and they never offer any help about that unless you tell them what may be wrong. We moved and are very happy, just use that server as backup. I think whenever you see a host offering servers at that pricing, you know you will most likely experience hardware failure and ok or slow network. And no, you're not the bad luck one, if you read and visit other webhosting forums, you'll see more threads about hardware failure at Ev1, crappy network speed, and downtime in different subnets, but just not here!

[RobTheGolfer]

Originally posted by rusko
rob,

perhaps now would be a good time to consider a provider that uses rackmount servers engineered for the colling requirements of a datacenter environment. while hardware failures do happen and have happened to us as well, i have found that using solid hardware (we use supermicro, many swear by dell and ibm) and cooling it properly is a key to minimizing hardware problems.

paul

Thanks for the offer but we build our own servers and colocate them now.

[rusko]

rob,

it wasnt an offer. we are hardly the only people using rackmount servers; in fact, using dektops is more of an exception rather than the rule.

paul

[inteltechs]

supermicro rackmount servers are excellent.

[RobTheGolfer]

Supermicro's are indeed nice. Our dedicated server at webreseller.net was a supermicro PIV. No problems at all, and performance was terrific.