colocation and rental systems - Discussion

ProWebUK

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New thread split from previous ssl discussion - opinions, comments, discussions etc on colo or server rental can go here.

Ev1 --- RHEL servers for the same price as plain redhat starting 01/01/04

Cant say a dual xeon 2.0GHz with 2x73GB SCSI HD's 1GB of ram with RHEL and 13+ GigE connections linked up isnt bad for $199 / month.

I will take 2 :D

and the SSL prices are still most definitely undercutting many of its competitors still, can you find geotrust SSL less than $49 and chained for $19?

Chris
 
ProWebUK said:
Cant say a dual xeon 2.0GHz with 2x73GB SCSI HD's 1GB of ram with RHEL and 13+ GigE connections linked up isnt bad for $199 / month.
We have no problem with those who sell their products for less; after all no one better than they know what their product is worth :) .
13+ GigE connections linked up
What do you mean by "linked up"? They, like the rest of the Internet, advertise their lowest-cost connections with the highest priority, and also use their lowest-cost connections as the highest priority outgoing.

The majority of their traffic in the past has always gone through connections that many ISPs consider to be slow and unreliable, but of course their willingness to advertise and use higher-cost routes when necessary makes up for that quite a bit.
I will take 2
You'd better make sure first that DA will run on them :) .

Jeff
 
jlasman said:
We have no problem with those who sell their products for less; after all no one better than they know what their product is worth :) .

What do you mean by "linked up"? They, like the rest of the Internet, advertise their lowest-cost connections with the highest priority, and also use their lowest-cost connections as the highest priority outgoing.

The majority of their traffic in the past has always gone through connections that many ISPs consider to be slow and unreliable, but of course their willingness to advertise and use higher-cost routes when necessary makes up for that quite a bit.

You'd better make sure first that DA will run on them :) .

Jeff


They have quite a few very good links..
http://www.ev1servers.net/english/aboutus/networks.asp

Even the 10mbit deals are no longer cogent only and are on their BGP4 network.. So all traffic is routed based on BGP4 metrics not the cost of the server...

I have a 150/month server from them and the network is great.. I've pulled 80mbit from it once..

And they do offer plain Redhat servers, which can have DA installed on them :D
 
Don't forget the "+ TAX" everywhere =)

Those new prices seem nice, can't wait to see the servermatrix counter attack, they can't be beaten for the lower end servers, including management.
 
We have used them for close to a year now, nothing can beat the service they provide at the cost they provide it, and it keeps on getting better and better :D
 
You wrote:
Even the 10mbit deals are no longer cogent only and are on their BGP4 network.. So all traffic is routed based on BGP4 metrics not the cost of the server...
I stand by the first line of my previous post, and also point out that the system is question is quoted at $249, which is still a good price on the face of it.

I suppose you're saying that "cost" isn't a programmable BGP4 metric. I'm not a BGP guru, but I just called my network specialist and he advises me that BGP can certainlly take it into account. All I know is the cost of some of the networks they use far exceeds the prices they charge. For example, they offer a Xeon server with 1200GB of monthly transfer for $249. That's 2.4 T-1 connections running full time at full speed for an entire month.

Of their 10 mbps connection servers, the only one available is Cogent only, for $349.

Looking at the others, starting at $399, I doubt they'd use others (besides Cogent) more than occasionally; my cost for 10 mbps connections, inside a Class A carrier-neutral datacenter (where we get the best pricing because of competition), is almost 7 times that.

You also wrote:
I have a 150/month server from them and the network is great.. I've pulled 80 mbit from it once..
You managed to pull the equivalent of almost 3 T-3 lines from them? That's quite impressive, though a bit hard to believe. Did you see number that from their monitor page, or from your own system?

Nevertheless, I was very heartened by the response to this thread, and decided to look into using ev1 for our main list-server for our mailing list business and a slave DNS server.

Lest you think this is a rant, I assure you that I don't mean it to be; I mean it to be an explanation of why I felt I couldn't use one or more of their rental servers. I really wish I could use some of their systems; at first glance their prices look quite reasonable.

The problems I ran into were (in no particular order but as I think of them):

* Lack of availability and misleading advertising. For example this morning (New Year's Eve, still 2003) looking at Intel Celeron Server Series, the home page says 91 servers available from $99/month, but clicking on and going to the page, there are only two servers available, one a Compaq DL320 with Ensim WEBppliance 3.1 for $129, and one a Compal DL320 with RHL 9 at $119. Mind you I have no problem with the DL320; I have one less than three feet from me as we speak, but where are those other 89 servers I can choose from? While I understand it may not be the easiest thing for them to update the page, I don't see any for $99, and only two available at all, not 91, and I think that's a bit misleading.

* No software updates once the operating system is installed. They supply out-of-the box RHL, of the version ordered; updating it to secure it is entirely up-to-you. From speaking with tech support it appears as if their sole "fix" available is to restore the system.

* Inefficient use of hard disk space. Your mileage may vary, but for me, I find it quite inefficient that they offer dual 60-gig drive systems but they won't set them up for software RAID. I don't need 120 gigabytes of space near as much as I need the protection of RAID. They do offer RAID on their Dual Xeon systems beginning at $349/month (only with CPanel and RHL9), but both are sold out. (They're also a bit higher priced than I'd like.)

* No customization of setup available. For example, their tech support tells me they only build linux servers with one partition scheme: a boot partition, a swap partition equal to 2x the memory, and the rest of the drive. While linux beginners and desktop users can get away with that (my desktop Linux systems are built that way), most experienced admins know that partitioning gives you lots of advantages, including flexibility with quotas, the ability to prevent hacks by loading your non-changing partitions as readonly (to prevent hackers from replacing your software with their own), and protection from runaway services filling your drives and making it impossible for you to log in.

Now some of these failures you can resolve yourself (you can keep the systems updated yourself, for example), but for me they just don't work.

My main concern is RAID. I don't run systems without RAID.

While it's no secret I have my own facilities, I need geographic dispersement (especially for DNS) and I do need to colocate in, or rent from, other locations for that.

I've found RAID-enabled servers, high speed processors and 1 Gig of RAM, with customized OS install, customized Memory size and other customization available, as well as software update service, at much lower prices than ev1 charges for their more sophisticated offerings.

To bring the thread back on topic, we remain happy with reselling Comodo certs, and I believe you will be, too.

If there's to be any more discussion on colocation and rental systems, we should probably move it to a different forum, perhaps even "Off-Topic", or perhaps to webhostingtalk.

Jeff
 
jlasman said:
* Lack of availability and misleading advertising. For example this morning (New Year's Eve, still 2003) looking at Intel Celeron Server Series, the home page says 91 servers available from $99/month, but clicking on and going to the page, there are only two servers available, one a Compaq DL320 with Ensim WEBppliance 3.1 for $129, and one a Compal DL320 with RHL 9 at $119. Mind you I have no problem with the DL320; I have one less than three feet from me as we speak, but where are those other 89 servers I can choose from? While I understand it may not be the easiest thing for them to update the page, I don't see any for $99, and only two available at all, not 91, and I think that's a bit misleading.

Go into live support and speak to sales, I have seen them put out servers on request previously and im fairly sure you would get what you want. I know at the moment they are trying to slow down sales until the new datacentre is ready (expected april 2004) Also, make sure you consider the fact they are expecting to release RHEL and FBSD *VERY* soon.

jlasman said:
* No software updates once the operating system is installed. They supply out-of-the box RHL, of the version ordered; updating it to secure it is entirely up-to-you. From speaking with tech support it appears as if their sole "fix" available is to restore the system.

OS updates are a bit of a pain, they are obviously possible at your own risk but the moment you install your own software etc the task becomes difficult. Dont forget they are 100% totally unmanaged servers although I will confirm that they will often check problems you have which are totally unsupported and even go into your box investyigating upon request in most cases. For OS updates (pretty much the one thing we cant do ourselves or dont *want* to do) we get an equivalent server then transfer all data..... its usually a VERY simple process since everything is virtually the same apart from the OS, this changes if you move panels etc though

jlasman said:
* Inefficient use of hard disk space. Your mileage may vary, but for me, I find it quite inefficient that they offer dual 60-gig drive systems but they won't set them up for software RAID. I don't need 120 gigabytes of space near as much as I need the protection of RAID. They do offer RAID on their Dual Xeon systems beginning at $349/month (only with CPanel and RHL9), but both are sold out. (They're also a bit higher priced than I'd like.)

Again, as above dont forget they are planning to offer RHEL and FBSD *VERY* soon, this could be one of the reasons although I advise you to contact sales regarding this if you want 1 immediatly :) ...

jlasman said:
* No customization of setup available. For example, their tech support tells me they only build linux servers with one partition scheme: a boot partition, a swap partition equal to 2x the memory, and the rest of the drive. While linux beginners and desktop users can get away with that (my desktop Linux systems are built that way), most experienced admins know that partitioning gives you lots of advantages, including flexibility with quotas, the ability to prevent hacks by loading your non-changing partitions as readonly (to prevent hackers from replacing your software with their own), and protection from runaway services filling your drives and making it impossible for you to log in.like.)

You can always repartion your drives and change your setup as you wish, the only difference is you have to spend a bit of time doing it :)


jlasman said:
I've found RAID-enabled servers, high speed processors and 1 Gig of RAM, with customized OS install, customized Memory size and other customization available, as well as software update service, at much lower prices than ev1 charges for their more sophisticated offerings.

With the dual xeons you can add memory up to 4GB, they, I would say are fast enough processors for most users and also have RAID.

jlasman said:
If there's to be any more discussion on colocation and rental systems, we should probably move it to a different forum

:eek: .... done

Chris
 
Thanks for splitting the topic, Chris.

I have discussed these issues with the sales department over and over again. Frankly I'd like to be able to resell their servers to my clients who don't need the higher end (and the higher-end pricing) I regularly provide.

I understand that they may be trying to limit sales until the new datacenter is ready, but I still feel it's misleading to have "91 servers from $99" on the home page, and none available.

Yes, I know we can upgrade ourselves, but we won't, unless we have access to the server; it's just too easy to break everything. We're still on RHL 7.3, and will stay at least through the end of this year (that means 6 hours and 52 minutes :) ). But that's not what I meant; what I was writing about was something like up2date, which is easy enough, but which so many people who rent from them don't know enough to do until after they've been hacked (yes, I've gotten clients that way, but honestly, it doesn't make me happy to make money at someone else's expense).

And I know we can even set up RAID ourselves, though of course if there's a slight mistep there could be a system failure which they'll address by rebuilding.

But all in all, I can't see myself going through all those steps.

Nor can I see using their systems without going through those steps.

Yes, those high-end xeon processors are powerful. In fact overkill for most of us.

If they had a $99 server a day or two ago when I looked I probably would have gotten on; as it stands I found one elsewhere and sent them a kickstart file so they could do the install according to my specifications.

Thanks for your insight as someone who writes an obviously satisfied user.

I have a good friend who also hosts with them, and he's happy as well.

Happy new year!
Jeff
 
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