Dedicated Server vs. own server, suggestions?

[federicola]

Ok, our company is growing in users fast!!!, we use a dedicated server service provided by a well known company, but their service sucks, their technical support is a joke, sometimes connection fails, the price is also excessive, upgrading memory on our rental server isn’t really an option, memory upgrade would nearly double our monthly fee. So, we’re looking at buying our own server, the initial up front cost would be high, but we will save some money in the long run. What are your thoughts on rent vs. buy

[migrantgeek]

Do not host yourself. Find a better provider.

With collocation you'll end up responsible for all of the hardware and still be dependent on remote hands so service could still suck and likely get much worse.

System Administration is hard and unless you have the $$ to pay one full time, rent the HW.

Most hosting companies will suck if you don't have much business with them. I worked for Rackspace years ago and bigger fish always get much more attention.

I do some consulting work now and find myself on calls with Hostway pretty often and they seem to know their stuff. You might check them out.

[auganov]

You have to look at your profit margins and costs to decide what's the right choice. If you have very low margins and hosting constitutes a big chunk of cost it's very reasonable to get your own servers. If that's not the case aim for flexibility and comfort. AWS is very expensive. Many startups simply have high margins and wasting time on optimizing hosting costs makes little sense.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ is a nice board about hosting.

[incision]

Are you sure it will save money in the long run? I feel like most of the conversation along these lines that goes on is pretty shallow, performance to dollars in a vacuum.

I'd say flip it around, think about what you're trying to achieve and do the math on all the options to solve it. Pre-framing it as a dedicated rental versus a self-managed purchased is unnecessarily narrow.

[dildonics]

Have you guys seen Hetzner hosting? Their servers have ridiculous hardware for very low monthly costs relative to other hosts, and the support usually gets back to me within the hour.

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-pr...

[federicola]

Thanks, but prefer service in the states.

[CyberFonic]

I'm assuming you have the technical resources to manage your own hardware.

I've built a a lot co-lo solutions for clients. They end up being very expensive if you use a "name brand" provider. You are paying for rack space, power, A/C, security, bandwidth, etc, etc. And then anytime something breaks, you need to send somebody in to fix it. If the provider supplies "hands" then they charge heavily for that. Remote consoles are good, but not that good.

With so many providers out there, ranging from bare metal to VPS to PaaS - I find that hybrid solutions work the best. Not putting all your eggs in one basket, etc.

In my experience, the greater the lock-in the worse the service - of course YMMV. I tend towards pay-by-month and stay flexible. Whilst AWS is expensive if used continuously, I find it good for handling spikes. But you do need to architect you solution to move the workload around and that can end up being more bother than its worth.

[iloveshw]

If you're thinking about hosting yourself it doesn't make any sense. If you think about collocation then it's better but in your calculations include the fact that hardware breaks and with dedicated servers you get it fixed for free, when you buy the server yourself you have to buy anything that breaks and replace it. Almost always it means more of your time spent in dealing with it, more time of your users with lower quality/no service and it adds to the cost. Of course it's an option but you have to keep those things in mind. And before you do it I would search for some other provider of those dedicated solutions (or vps) before making that step

[federicola]

Thanks for the answer, yes we are thinking in Collocation, we offer different kind of services, will start moving the lightest service first, just to see if we can handle the situation and learn from our own experience.

[hashtree]

I'd colocate if you have a proven/reliable revenue stream, predictable growth, you anticipate more than 6-RUs worth of servers, or need very high speced servers (e.g. 192GB of RAM in one box). You can build entire servers for the cost of one month of PaaS/SaaS in many situations. There is a whole strategy that addresses every single issue that has been brought up (e.g. hardware failing, sys admin, being on call).

Feel free to connect. I can speak to how I do it with about ~1.25 racks worth of servers for my company for ~5 years now. I've also done it for MUCH larger international companies. No, I am not trying to sell you something :)

[ScottWhigham]

Upgrading memory on dedicated servers is and always has been crazy expensive. It's absurdly expensive - we had a 4gb Dell server at <big company /> and, if I wanted to double that to 8GB, it was going to be another $50 per month for two years. I could've bought the memory outright for $120. It's around that time that you need to re-evaluate which server you have and whether it's time to change servers completely.

[federicola]

Yes, we have exactly that problem, we will try a pilot project with own server, for a specific service, and see if it works.

[true_religion]

Don't host it yourself unless you're planning on using the same server for 2+ years. If not, then stick withe rentals and find a better provider. At the end of every year, renegotiate your prices for a better deal if you want to keep the same server, or bump up to the newer models.

[thenomad]

+1 for "Don't host it yourself, find a better hosting provider".

There are lots of very, very good providers of servers out there. Sign up with one of them.

[cmer]

We've been with OVH for about 3 months and over all the experience has been good. Prices are also very competitive. I'd look there if I were you.

[AznHisoka]

What's the one thing you dislike the most about OVH, if you had to choose 1?

[cmer]

They've had some internal network problems lately. It's been really annoying but it's apparently fixed now.

The other thing is their billing system. We have ~30 servers with them and have to pay for each one of them separately. It's such a pain. I noticed something yesterday in the web console that I think solves this, but I'm not sure.

[Theory5]

I've always wanted my own server, but then I discovered Amazon's AWS. It's much much cheaper, and you can scale pretty easily.

[shiftpgdn]

If you think AWS is cheaper than ANY bare metal hardware you are out of your mind or simply just an amazon shill.

[Theory5]

I am sure if I went dollar to dollar, pound for pound, it may be more expensive, but I don't have money for the bandwidth or infrastructure to install at my house to do half the things I do with Amazon. If you have any alternatives, please let me know.

[federicola]

A couple of years ago Amazon went offline for 4 days, also they have security problems. Not considering them right now. I heard the cheapest dedicated servers are from godaddy, don't know anything about their technical people working there...

[makerops]

Hey,

Shoot me an email [e-mail] I am developing a service specifically for startups, that you may be interested in, I can probably help.

[federicola]

Hey your website is not finished, you have lots of LOREM IPSUM :)

[makerops]

haha..hence the developing! I really just want some feedback, to see if the business model I have in mind is any good; Ill be happy to make some recommendations in exchange, the OP doesn't have enough for me to help, and would like to ask some more directed questions.

[federicola]

ok, again in your website, looks better, is your service free or subscription based?

[makerops]

AS far as it pertains to your thread, Ill be happy to help out for free in exchange for bouncing some questions about the biz model off you (ie, Id like to know more about your company/current tech etc and start a dialog). But the plan is to be a subscription based service, basically a completely managed, hands off server environment for your team, that scales, for a flat rate + the normal rackspace/AWS/cloud provider rates you pay directly to them.

[devb0x]

change hosts, go with a company with history and longevity in mind.