UK Server Help

[Dave G..]

Can anyone recommend a good UK based server.
Virtual or Dedicated.

I am currently looking at a RAQ3 from UK2.net does anyone have any info ?

[Martie]

I think Karl at kdawebservices is highly recommended.
http://www.kdawebservices.com

[Nicholas Brown]

Actually - KDA servers at VDI in New Jersey like ours are.

I would seriously stay away from UK2.net - Im not going into details - but i would stay away. Also, stay away from RaQ's.

[Martz]

I currently administer my companies RaQ3 with uk2.net - and it has been rebuilt twice in 4 months already due to security vunerabilities which are not fixed by the Cobalt patches :(

I guess the decision has already been made by Dave G. - however, I too do not recommened uk2.net if you are looking at vB hosting due to the above, bad support and a very limited 10GB per month bandwidth alowance.

However, they are cheap - so if it fits your requirements, and you don't mind getting your hands dirty with linux tweaking and patching - you may find it worth your while.

Also on a negative note, I do not know of any *good* hosts in the UK, I am looking myself, and thus fell over this thread. ;)

[WildWayz]

OK - tips on companies to avoid

UK2.net - for reasons stated above.
webfusion.co.uk - Heard a lot of bad things about them
fasthosts.co.uk - EVIL webhost - due to them not setting up RAID5 correctly, they had a HD fail, and no backups.

To be honest, forget about UK hosting - it is WAY overpriced. Get some decent servers from companies like
www.pwebtech.com
www.ultraspeed.co.uk (servers are in the US)
www.venturesonline.com (VDI.net is having problems at the moment, but should be fixed today)

--James

[Martz]

I don't understand how co-locating in the US for the Uk's needs can be cheaper - keeping the bandwidth in the same country (using the UK's internal infrastructure) *must* be cheaper, as it doesn't have to use the UK/Europe <-> US links.

Anyway, its typical for the UK to be more expensive than everyone else in the world, why should web services be any cheaper.

Since I am stuck with the 3 year contract with uk2.net, I'll have to research all this again some years down the line!

[Karl]

Believe it or not, it is cheaper to buy bandwidth in the USA then it is in the UK, in the USA an OK price for 1Mbit/s of bandwidth is $650, over here prices are usually £1200-£1600 for 1Mbit/s once VAT is added on to the prices.

[Dave G..]

Thanks everyone for your input.

I have currently joined twilight-online (www.twilight-online.net) servers hosted in the USA by on of this forums members.

Reasons were based on, Cost, Facilities, and having a UK host operator. (Nickolas Brown)

So far so good, a few teething problems with setting things up, mainly FTP transfers (server to server). But the main facilities and overall performance I'm finding very good. As an example the last test of my vB forum on a UK server was

Page generated in 19.339905977249 seconds with 15 queries,
spending 2.8841179609299 doing MySQL queries and 16.455788016319 doing PHP things.

Now its;

Page generated in 0.15472400188446 seconds with 20 queries,
spending 0.025922060012817 doing MySQL queries and 0.12880194187164 doing PHP things.

Speaks for itself.

[tubedogg]

I've only been with them for a few days, but I'm incredibly happy I moved. :D Plus Nicholas is really nice and accessible, which helps. ;)

[Jonathan@Refresh]

If anyone's interested in splitting a dedicated server, I'm looking for someone.

See this thread:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=15606