Dedicated servers

Okay, here's the deal. I'm interesting in starting a website hosting company, one with fair deals and such bla bla bla, the whole nine yards. Well, I'm just starting off and I'm trying to find a host that's cheap enough but also high quality to start with and, a few users to get off the ground. Does anyone have any suggestions for either of these things?

I would suggest that you start off with a reseller account rather than a dedicated server. You will be able to find a reliable reseller account for much less than a reliable dedicated server.

Once you get enough clients then you can always switch to your own dedicated box.

Yeah, I was looking into it some more and that seems like a plan. Are there any implications as to switching their accounts over to the dedicated? Is it hard or a pain to do? besides transfering files of course.

Well, there are a few scenarios. One being that you end up co-locating with the same provider you previously re-sold for. In which case, moving should be fairly painless. They, (the hosting provider) might even be willing to assist you in moving entire data trees via some hands-on method. They are, after all, extracting much more money from you at this point. Since they will continue to be the authority for the DNS zone, that is to say, they will host the DNS resolver for the domain(s) you move, there should be little pain, save for those pesky resolvers which refuse to repect TTL's -- you know who you are!

Moving to another provider can be a more daunting task. Getting DNS switched over when YOU want it, can make one buggy.

Here's a tip to make it easier. About 2 months befor eyou decide to move, have your present host reduce the TTLs on the DNS resolver to about 10 min. - if they are not already. This way, when you finally do switch over to the new IP's, there should not be all that much lag time for DNS to switch world-wide. I am assuming of course that thehost would use a different range of IP's for self hosting, and for co-los... it would make sense in my mind to keep them sep via vlan.

Good luck.

Cheers.

Colocation is not a good deal - as today would be cheaper to rent dedicated server or have a reseller account, than to purchase the server and than set it up on provider background. So, IMO, you should look for dedicated server instead of colocation

I would defenitly go with a reseller plan at first. Reseller is way tamer than dedicated, dedicated can be a little overwhelming to get used to. Besides, just starting off, you don't need that expensive dedicated bill at first anyways.

When you transfer from Reseller to Dedicated, it depends on what control panel you get. If you use Cpanel, Cpanel has a tool that will transfer all files for you, including emails, all database settings, etc. I was kissing this tool because I just had to move 200 hosting account from one dedicated to another.

Anyways, hope this helps.

Tia

does dedicated server actually mean more processing speed for the websites which you hosted in?

more power than resellers' accounts?

dedicated means you have your own server, however powerful that is. And, you will most likely have way more processor power for yourself than in a reseller account. Colo is starting to become a very bad deal unless you need specific hardware for some reason... Running a dedicated server would not be too daunting a task for me... I know how to run one... it's more about legistics.. the price to host like you said. I am leaning towards reseller but, as soon as I can, I'm switching. I want to have my own server that I am in charge of and I can set up the way I like it.

If we are talking Windows hosting (ASP / ASP.net etc...) then I have a few good ones?

I am looking at whatever hosting I can get. However, it will have to have PHP capabilities. Linux is def. preferred but I would go with either. I know Windows can have PHP and I know how to add it if I have total access to the server soo... that isn't too much of an issue. I would like to hear what you know.

Regarding whether to choose a windows or Linux hosting platform, I would only suggest choosing windows if:

1) You are much more familiar with the windows os than linux

2) If you will need to have/offer asp.

Linux hosting is usually less expensive for comparable server specs. I believe you also have a few more options as far as control panels with linux. My control panel of choice (cPanel) does not currently offer a windows version.

If you want to be in control of how your server is configured you might want to look into vps, as an alternative to a dedicate box.

With VPS though, you can't do anything you want on the server IE install software, can you???

Yes and no. A more truthful statement would be to say you have more control over assigning bandwidth than speed. If you have a reseller account, you are still sharing webspace and the combined users on that server can only use its resource limits. But with a dedicated, you have more control over the amount of resources you want to use ( which are alot more than reseller) but the processing speed is basically the same, depending on what company you go with and what they have to offer.

Is 1&1 hosting any good. I have been seeing their ads everywhere lately.

Yes, you can configure the web server as you wish install rpms, mods, make changes to php.ini & http.conf, etc..


That being said I'm not 100% sure that vps is "ready for primetime," just yet.