dedicated server question please help

Not enough information. You need to compare all the pieces, including the redundancies.

i definitely wouldn't bother paying for a 400gb bandwidth per month, cos thats a ludicrous amount really, and i highly doubt anyone would use that much in a month! If there is a cheaper option with less bandwidth, take that!

... again, you need to determine the redundancies -- how many connections, how close to the backbone. What is the service agreement? Who administers the server?

If everything is equal, then you can discuss bandwidth and cost issues. But it probably isn't going to be.

A solid server makes regular backups, usually is administered for you (or you can pay for that option), and has multiple redundancies, so if one connection to the web dies, there is no perceived loss of connection. Some excellent companies offer you a whole other server as a backup if your primary server dies.

can't ever argue with you, i'll give up.

Here's my view on this matters...

The Cobalt RaQ servers are known for being easy to use (my first dedicated server was actually a RaQ3 ). For example, to install a new software or to update/patch all you need to do is to copy paste an URL! Their control panel is also very easy to use. However, the RaQ4 ones only have a 450MHz CPU which is more than enough for most users.

If you need more than 20GB space and more power then you should probably get the Celeron (or a real Intel/AMD) server.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

PS. Daveyboy, I think he's getting the server from RackShack so 400GB is the minimum

Do not go with the cobalt, Some will probably flame or argue with me. But from 3 years experience these machines are not worth their weight. If you have just static html pages you are fine but anything outside of the the cobalt will not be able to even handle.

Go with the celeron machine you should have no problems

Cobalt are just as good as any other server for dynamic websites. Of course, if your site needs more resources than a Cobalt has to offer then that's another story.

RaQ's aren't so bad, I have five of em. Hostdog you have no clue what you're talking about.

Quote: Originally posted by ROB
RaQ's aren't so bad, I have five of em. Hostdog you have no clue what you're talking about.

Then I congratulate you however what types of sites do you have on these and how many ? I can assure you with technical data that a cobalt can not go toe to toe with other servers of the same type.

I have never seen a cobalt able to handle todays usage scripts or push over 100 gb a month with non static sites.

Quote: i definitely wouldn't bother paying for a 400gb bandwidth per month, cos thats a ludicrous amount really, and i highly doubt anyone would use that much in a month! If there is a cheaper option with less bandwidth, take that!

I disagree. My friends site uses about 1500 Gigs of bandwdith a month. But thats a media site that gets a lot of people downloading like 100 meg files etc. but still...thats just 1 site using that much, this is a dedicated server

Quote: Originally posted by hostdog
Then I congratulate you however what types of sites do you have on these and how many ? I can assure you with technical data that a cobalt can not go toe to toe with other servers of the same type.

that's not what you said. you said a raq cant handle "anything outside of static html pages" which is 100% inaccurate.

Quote: I have never seen a cobalt able to handle todays usage scripts or push over 100 gb a month with non static sites.

what do you work with? 10 year old raq 3's? the 1.26ghz p3 and 1gb ram that came in my new 550 seem to work just dandy.

besides, a raq isn't designed to be a dedicated server. if a single site transfers 100gb/mo it shouldnt be on a raq anyway. i'm not a raq fanboy by any means, but they do have their place, and claiming they can't handle dynamic content is just ludicrous.

Quote: Originally posted by hostdog
what types of sites do you have on these and how many ?

raq3-1 has about 30 sites on it ranging from small personal sites to moderate traffic community sites. also a tiernary nameserver and mail server. most of my personal crap is on this one. about 40gb/mo total traffic. most sites use php or perl with mysql extensively.

raq3-2 secondary nameserver, about 50 sites, 50-70gb/mo total traffic. mostly static but 3 sites in particular account for 70% of the traffic and use php/mysql, netpbm, emal and ftp extensively.

raq3-3 no live sites, dev and backup

raq4 not more than 10 sites, mostly ASP

raq5 primary nameserver and 3 high volume php/mysql websites using netpbm and pdflib extensively, 100+gb mo total traffic

I've worked with cobalt raqs for nearly 4 years, and while they do have their drawbacks, they're pretty solid machines for the beginner.

It looks like we are talking about different fields of hosting our average server is

p4 1.8 ghz 1gb ram raid 1 80gb hardrives

accounts range from 40 -500 on a server
providing java asp mysql php cgi
average network bandwidth for 5 servers we are using around 1800 gigs a month.

We started with raqs and had constant server overload and crashes due to cgi scripts and php mysql usage we switched to home built 1u's redhat 7.3 and havent had any problems

The raqs we had were two years ago 3i's

I have one left that I tried to keep a couple personal sites on but it couldnt keep up with a vb forum average 40 users online at peak times 5 at mininum.

That is my experience with raqs.

In a simple statement, if you are not inclined to tweak a servers config files, or you get lost at shell prompts, go Cobalt.

If you prefer to do the hard stuff, like the control and the power trip that having total configuration control gives you, go for the other box.