Dedicated server hosting?

[Michael T. Halligan]

= name the price range you wanna pay, and oyu can find
= people that will fit that budget
= 
= name the "SLA" you want, and/or tech support proficiency
= and you eliminate lots of possible vendors ??
= 	- tech support will be a major key if you
= 	need your servers to stay up and running ...
= 

Agreed. Uptime costs money, and requires experience.

Look out for companies that dont' offer 24x7 support.  I just pulled
one of my customers off of another unnamed small hosting company, who's
idea of 24x7 support was "the owner of the company was also the network
engineer and sometimes he'd answer his pager when the network was down
at 2am) .. It really bothers me, because you can run a fairly reliable
datacenter by having 2-3 fairly people in 8-10 hour shifts, and one or
two people to do phone support/tech support who'd otherwise be making
minimum wage at some store.

Another problem I've run into is offshored tech support.  Sure it looks
good on paper, but when it's 3am and I'm trying to tell somebody my
network is down, and his/her accent is so heavy I have to ask them to
repeat some things 6-7 times, well I wouldn't call  that quality 
customer support. 

= 5Mbps .. sustained .. you've eliminated lots of the
= smaller webhosting outfits ( and you're now looking for real colos )
= 
= - i say, watch out for those "overselling" of the same bandwidth
=   gazillion times over
 
True.. I won't mention names, but I've moved several of my consulting customers
to various facilities, to get away from them.  The most common scam seems to be
a provider buying a 50-100mb link from cogent (because it's cheap) and then getting
a small link, like 10-20mb from wiltel or someone "a couple of steps" above cogent, and
then banking on the fact that most customers won't use their alloted bandwidth..

I'm just trying to offer good prices by leveraging a lot of usage.
You'd be surprised what kind of prices you can get by finding another
hosting company, and saying "hey, let's get our bandwidth together under
one account" .. When you're both doing 75mb/s, and decide to just go
and get a 200mb link from a provider together and allocated half & half,
you end up saving money.

Personally I get capped bandwidth, so I can plan things better, and I
provision speed to my customers, and allow them to monitor their usage
and plan their needs with cricket.


= - from my poking around last few weeks..
= 	level3		$ 900 full rack + $800 for 5Mbps 
= 	he.net		$ 400 full rack + $100 for 1Mbps ( $400/5Mbps)
= 	layer42		$ 500 full rack w/ 1Mbps

Layer42 seems pretty cool. I used to work with a guy there, Steve Rubin,
and he definately knows what he's doing.  If I wasn't giving it a go
at starting my own thing, I'd host with him. Last I talked to him, they're
doing alright too.. Worth checking out.

= 	uu.net		used to be good .. till mci took over
= 			and is now a giant mess, though they
= 			still carry 25% of the worlds traffic
= 
= 	and you can get either level3 or he.net for lot less if you go
= 	"shopping" around

Level3 is pretty pricey last time I called them.  Nice facilities though. 

= 	(bankrupt) above.net is now mfn.net
= 	(tinkering on bk) cogent.net was/is the old psi.net

Forget cogent.   If you want routing problems, or if you want to get hosted on
ip ranges that are black listed, then you go with cogent.  They're cheap, their
peering blows, and they have a huge spam problem.  If you just needed a point
to point between datacenters for nas/db server replication, then they're a very
economical option though.


= - major pops/naps
= 	http://www.navigators.com/isp.html   ( good stuff )
=  	http://www.micro-colo.net/POP.gifs/

Another option is to go with a carrier hotel, like equinix.  I'm at
e200paul (exchangecolo) in san francisco, mainly because it's in san
francisco.. I'd rather be in equinix, but I don't have the time or the
constitition to spend time in the south bay, otherwise that's where
I'd host.  At a carrier hotel you pretty much (over)pay for space, and
negotiate the pricing with bandwidth providers yourself, provide your
own hardware, and manage your own routing .. 

A rather odd side-effect I've found with carrier hotels is
networking.. The people kind.  Since moving into e200paul, I've gained
4 new clients from people basically walking up to me and asking me
questions.. Carrier hotel sales people seem to be into networking a lot too,
and usually know the sales rep that everybody is buying hardware from for
X vendor, and that gives you some more buying leverage.  



-------------------
Michael T. Halligan
Chief Geek
Halligan Infrastructure Designs.
http://www.halligan.org/
2250 Jerrold Ave #11
San Francisco, CA 94124-1012
(415) 824.4453 - Home/Office
(415) 724.7998 - Mobile