Dedicated Server Options?

[Medianeer]

I need to switch to a dedicated server ASAP. I had a dedicated server in the past, but it was too costly. I was paying $175 a month 3 or 4 years ago and at the time it was more cost effective to move back to shared and pay $20 a month for what I was actually using.

Well, now shared is not cutting it, so I need to move back to dedicated. I keep getting the "you're using too many resources" emails from my provider so I need to get back to a dedicated server ASAP.

I have a few sites hosted between 2 companies using shared and VPS accounts but I want to consolidate them into 1 dedicated server.

I know there's got to be cheaper dedicated servers out there, I just don't know of any reliable companies.

If anybody knows of a good, reliable and cheap hosting company that provides dedicated servers with cPanel (or equivalent), MySql, Imagemagick (very important) on a Linux/Apache server with lots of space and decent amount of bandwidth for around $100 a month or less, I'd like to hear about it.

I understand about the terms of service, so if you don't want to post URLs, please PM me with your suggestions.

Thanks a bunch for your help in advance!

[rocknbil]

good, reliable and cheap

LOL . . . I answered your PM before seeing this. :-) My comments I gave you stand.

We have a saying in the print industry. "Good, fast, or cheap, pick any two. You can't have all three." It pretty much applies here. :-)

[Medianeer]

Yup, that's how it is. It applies to pretty much everything.

The company you suggested puts me in the price range I'm looking for (at $80 a month it's only $15 more I'm paying right now for 2 shared accounts) and it's a company I know and I'm familiar with, so that's good! Thanks a bunch!

Now, I'm familiar with a managed dedicated server, but I don't have experience with unmanaged. I never had any issues when I had the managed server, so I don't know if somebody was babysitting the server 24/7 fixing my screw ups or if I just got lucky and didn't mess the thing up while I had it.

I do all my programing and testing on a server at home so I know everything works they way it should before I upload to the server.

I never have any issues with configuring or installing stuff because what I use is pretty much standard on a regular shared environment (perl, mysql, imagemagick mostly) and the company you mentioned offers all that.

I guess my next question is how hard and how time consuming is it to manage an unmanaged server?

Thanks for your help!

[rocknbil]

A caveat about that company - pay by the year. I think it went from like $136 to $114 per month, big savings.

Managing a server? I wouldn't touch it myself. I am partnered with an administrator who deals with all the server issues, things going wrong, installing modules (I can cpan a perl module, that's about it!), updating software, and hundreds of other things that are beyond me. If it weren't for my admin, I'd be hosed. I need and can work from SSH command line for various things, but I don't futz with the O.S., that's his job.

So it's up to you, if you can deal with a kernel panic or configuring the server, go unmanaged. If you can't and can live without command line access (other than the cheesy SSH Java window in the control panels,) go managed. Otherwise find a good system administrator you can trust, share the server with him, and send lots of beer. :-)