Forum Moderators: phranque
My questions are, first off, a hosting company which can provide me w/ 500+ GB/month and extremely low downtime (as well as fast machines) for about 100-150 USD/month...any suggestions
Second question, a book, or an online guide about setting up Apache and MySQL, firewalls, etc to prevent hacking and general administration routines...
I am very new to web development (approx 2 months in), built a new PHP/MySQL CMS from scratch, have 2+ years of C++ experience.
Hopefully someone can point me to something usefull, and thanks in advance.
Another thing you should be aware of is that most hosting companies don't support their dedicated machines like they do their shared servers (VPS, etc). (I'm not saying ALL..cause I haven't tried all dedicated hosting companies)
What I mean by that is, most hosting companies figure, if you want a dedicated machine - you want to run it the way you want to run it. You will be responsible for all software installs (beyond the standard OS install they do) and upgrades. In most cases you will be responsible for setting up DNS info up for your domains and vhosts. There are other things such as user accounts, ftp, email...etc. In most VPS environments the hosting company gives nice tools to make administration like this easy...but on the dedicated side many company don't offer nice tools - and if they do, they offer things like Plesk, Ensim, Webmin...which can do the job - but have a significant learning curve!
One of my questions for you is...are you sure you need a dedicated server? In many cases people think they are in the need of a dedicated server when they're site starts to have performance issues - which the most common cause is another account on the VPS hitting the machine hard ... or the physical server is using old hardware (ex. PIII 1Ghz. 500MB Ram). You could do just fine by being migrated to one of their newer VPS machines. This solution could save you A LOT from a lot of stress! Also, possibly consider using multiple VPS solutions.
May I ask what you main reason for needing a dedicated server is?
I don't mean to scare you off, but you mentioned you don't know to much about server administration and where to start.... I've been in your shoes and took the dedicated server jump twice in the past year and in both instances I ended back on a VPS (multiple VPS servers). Not because I didn't know where to start, but because each time it became such a pain and not worth my time I went back to the VPS (I was not happy with the dedicated server solutions I was provided in both instances).
Now, in my situation I still plan on going dedicated (some unix flavor) because I want to be able to have many IP addresses (from different class C blocks). This way I can host all my sites on one machine instead of multip VPS servers. I am still shopping around for a dedicated - but until I find a dedicated hosting company that provides a solution that is as easy to use as our current VPS servers - I will stay with what works! ....by the way - if anyone knows of a few good companies that offer well supported dedicated servers with comprehensive administration...PLEASE sticky mail me! :-)
Rackspace are the best bar none! But 500GB/month is going to be well outside of your stated budget.
If you can make the financial leap then definately select Rackspace, if you want to stay inside budget then take a look at ServerBeach who basically use the same network as Rackspace but offer a much lower price due to the limited support mechanisms.
I might not know anything about server administration but I am very quick learner when it comes to these things, and I know I will learn it fast, provided I have some kind of manual to read about the basics.
My only true concern is security, hack attempts, etc...Since I don't know much about these I'm worried I'll get everything all set up and someone will come in there and delete my databases.
Now, if I get a package w/o a control panel, does that mean that I will be doing everything from the command line?
Might try them out next time around.
Now, if I get a package w/o a control panel, does that mean that I will be doing everything from the command line?
I can't answer that question directly, but if you're serious about web development and can't afford to have someone else manage your servers for you, my advice is to learn to use linux and to use the command line anyway. A control panel will almost always be limiting in some respect.
It's really not that hard once you get used to the basic command set. I now couldn't live without my "tail -f"'s and my greps!
TJ
oneandone.com - $49 for 500GB bndwth, etc.
I use their european shared hosting package and am happy with it, want to upgrade but the equivalent UK server package is £29 pcm for 10GB... can't get through to an intelligent sales person to tell me why the discrepency exists. Worst - the shared hosting has 40GB transfer?!?
Dangerous thread this one - running close to the promoting/selling clause.
If you just need lots of bandwidth and disk space, you may get it on multiple shared servers. I use three shared servers on three different hosts. My main server greets all the users and the bots, and when heavy scripts are required (and heavy bandwidth), it redirects the user to www2 or www3 server, which are hosted on different hosts.
If you can design something similar, where you can keep all crawler related stuff on a single IP (www server) and some dynamic pages on different machines, you may not need dedicated hosting.
This might also eliminate dependency on one host.
If you still want dedicated server and if you are okay with FreeBSD instead of Linux, I would recommend pair networks. They have listed some QS1, QS2 .. etc dedicated server plans, but you can also get QS0 (same as QS1 service but a lower end machine compared to QS1). QS0 plans are usually not listed on their web site, and you need to ask them availability of QS0 at qs at pair.com.
Search this forum for pair and you will find only good reviews about it. I am hosting my site for a year, and my server was rebooted just once. They show all server's configuration on their suppport site, so you would know your machine's config. They also show when which server was out of service and why. They also show since when the individual server is up and running. You can add extra memory in your QS servers at nominal prices.
Theres an option to view the control panel(demo). Its outragously sweet and supports, includes EVERYTHING you could ever want for a website. Also includes phpbb2 and more.
