rumrugby said:
Why are some dedicated server providers cheaper than others??? Why can server4you of servers at $49 a month with everything while ev1 servers only offer a basic server at $99 a month?
If we presume that all companies in the dedicated server business are run professionally, then we must presume that:
(a) they're all in business to at least cover their costs.
(b) they all know what their costs are.
So we must assume that they charge different prices because they have different costs.
For example, is the server you're looking at renting a 1U server designed for 24/7 operation in a data center? Or is it a low-cost desktop or mini-tower unit? At a recent meeting of our local Linux users' group, one of the gents there indicated that he happily buys the $30 cases when he builds his own servers, but spends more than twice that for the power supplies he buys to replace the ones those cases come with, because his experience with cheap power supplies is that they'll fail.
Is the server you're looking at a real server? Designed to work 24/7 as a server? Or is it a cheap desktop class box being put into duty it was never designed for?
And how about the connectivity? We could buy conectivity for less than half of what we pay for it, but we don't. Does your vendor? And if so, then why is that connectivity less expensive?
None of this may matter to you, and I present these differences only in the spirit of answering your question.
Our dedicated rental servers are much more expensive than the two choices you've mentioned, yet at least half of our clients come to us after experienced with low-priced vendors.
Is our service, our bandwidth, our server quality, all worth the difference? A lot of people think so.
But even if you think so, surely your budget is an important part of the whole issue.
Does anyone have any experience with these various providers??
When I first went into the dedicated server rental business (in '99 if memory serves) I looked at the less expensive data centers and rented in one of them (not one you've mentioned, but a low priced data center in San Diego, Calif.). My experience was that they often had latency problems, especially at odd hours of the night. They didn't back up the servers for me, and their "service" didn't extend to custom installations and problem-solving of services, only of their connectiivity and of the base OS.
We also found that the particular vendor we chose had greatly oversold their connectivity and hosted both spammers and adult sites and servers, all of which made speed and latency nightmare issues for us. Your mileage, especially today, will most certainly vary.
Then we went to a very high-priced data center.
Two years later we moved to a Tier 1 (telephony and bandwidth) provider known for direct peering connectivity. We're very happy where we are now.
What do i look for in a dedicated server company???
1) Longevity in business
2) References
3) Do their services match your needs
a) backup
b) monitoring
c) software updates
d) software trouble shooting
4) Security
a) locked cabinets/cages
b) 24/7 secure access
5) Redundant (multiple) uninterruptible power systems, including battery and diesel/gas power generation.
6) Redundant network access
7) Redundant air conditioning systems
8) Multiple Private networks so you don't have to worry about sniffers installed on all those hacked Microsoft Servers above and below you in the cabinet.
In looking at professional data centers over the years we've found plenty of companies that consider themselves quite professional that:
a) charge $200 each time they have to look at your server
b) don't have more than a half-hour power backup because "the power here has never gone down"
c) don't have airconditioning because "we're in a city with natural airconditioning
d) low-speed lines to their upstream carrier because "we monitor our connectivity and we've never gone over 80% of our available connection speed"
Of course we didn't go with these companies. While they certainly fit a niche, and you may want to use companies like these, but you should understand what you're getting.
And if I may step up on a soapbox for a moment (or perhaps out on a limb), we do NOT use companies with lots of provider pipes but who can't prove to you which pipe most of your traffic will be running on. In spite of the fact that they tell you their BGP protocol routers will always select the best route, the fact is that BGP is not always fast-acting when networks get slow, and a few expensive data pipes kept in reserve at a data center for when the inexpensive ones experience problems is
not a replacement for redundant connectivity from a good tier-1 provider.
We've chosen to stay at the high end, and not be what I call a "bottom feeder".
You? You pay your money and take your choice.
Since we offer our management packages attached to any server, no matter where it's hosted, it certainly doesn't matter to us.
Jeff
