Going dedicated on Catalog or Tera-Byte?

[Ramses]

I am window-shopping for my first dedicated server (O joy! Control will finally be mine, all mine! ) for my movie multimedia website (all PHP/MySQL dynamically generated, with a reasonable amount of media files populating the site). I have low cash-flow at the moment, but revenues will more than pay for the server expenses, so I looked around for decent, well-rounded, inexpensive mean machines that won't have me mortgage my neighbor's house. Reading posts at GeekVillage and Webhostingtalk, I narrowed down the list to the following first two deals:

I've been eyeballing the Red Hat servers at Catalog.com, for example a Celeron 500, 128MB, 10GB HD and 50 Gigs bandwidth for 200$, no set-up fees. Extra features and bandwidth are quite affordable (2.5-5$/Gig). Add only 130$ for a PIII 650, 256MB, 9GB SCSI.

It's either a good price, or there's something I have overlooked...

There is also Tera-Byte.com's dedicated RaQ3 boxes starting round 200$ with x86 (AMD?) 300Mhz, 256MB, 20GB HD and 40 Gigs bandwidth (128Kbps line). Ok, there's a 500$ deposit to shell out first...

Finally, a third, recent discovery was Cheapservers.net with a PIII 750Mhz linux box with 256MB, 30GB SCSI and 100 gigs bandwidth for 300$ and no set-up fee. They are a new service and I haven't found much about them.

Questions: My site currently serves 300,000 pageviews per month and will increase to 1 million/month by year's end. Would any of those two dedicated servers (Celeron or RaQ3) withstand the load of the site, the vBulletin forum (ghost-town now, but it will grow soon) and still leave some room for growth? Does anyone have recommendations on how much RAM I should have in total to have a smooth, purring, friendly server marching along?

P.S. This message would have served as a reply to TechTalk, but since I have no personal experience with these dedicated servers I started a new thread here

[George L]

hi this is singloon from geekvillage

the celeron with 128MB may not cut it...

my vbulletin and 20 domain sites (4 active) are on a AMD K6/2 500 with 128MB at first and memory was lacking... i had to upgrade it to 256mb and just the other day went and upgraded it to 384MB ram. my vbulletin get's average 1000 visitors/day and 14000 pageviews/day and the rest of my sites combined on the server get around 3000 visitors/day and 15,000 pageviews/day

i looked at tera-byte before but a US$500 deposit put me off and haven't heard of cheapservers before..

catalog.com is cheap and i did email and enquire about their raq3 back in April 2000 but they stopped reply to my questions so i moved on and choose rackspace.com

you can get a decent server at rackspace for under US$300 ~ a duron 600, 128mb, 20gb eide, 20GB to start - check the online configurator link i posted in techtalk's post.

then there's digitalnation which chris recommended to techtalk.

companies that i have seen recommended

catalog.com
dialoneinternet.com
rackspace.com
digitalnation.com

it seems that memory seems to be important for a busy vbulletin and anything else using mysql...

i'd say go with with either catalog, rackspace or digitalnation since they don't have a min contract period and start with 128MB ram and make sure the host you go with gives you an easy upgrade path on your server specs when you need it.

i know rackspace does not sure about the others.

[Ramses]

Hi Singloon, it looks like we share common grounds at times

I'll inquire at Catalog.com about upgradability. From what they've posted on their site (recent price drops, thanks to user input) hard-drive and memory upgrades seem easy and very affordable. Of course, CPUs are a different matter. I'll send them a quote-request and see where that goes.

I'll take your memory advice and will stock on memory for rainy days...

Since Rackspace and DN are a tad pricier, I'll have review my mid-term financing options. Since I am literally fed up with low-paying, under-achieving banner-networks, I am looking at selling my ad-space myself and getting it to pay for the server and expenses.

I've heard nothing but praises about Rackspace... much like people do for Mercedes, Ferrari, and Porsche... I guess it can only mean that they are good at what they do.

Thanks for all the info, I appreciate it greatly... ...and I really like your Star Wars site.

[George L]

yes we do

catalog.com changed their pricing options due to feedback made at webhostingtalk.com in their dedicated server forum (coincidently is anotehr powered by vbulletin forum/ex-UBB)

finding a good ad network is a pain in the neck... luckily my other sites have paid for the hosting costs for my server etc... next month i'll be on the luna network so see how that goes...

for my vbulletin and other sites i have also decided to sell my own ad space but still haven't found the right banner serving scipt to server all my different sites - including my starwars site .

so from your post i take it you're leaning towards catalog.com ? if you do, i'd be interested to hear your experiences with the plesk server admin software that comes with their linux servers...

rackspace staff at their forums have indicated they are also working on licensing the plesk admin software for their servers as well. currently i use webmin and it's great but lacks documentation.

[Ramses]

Catalog.com it is! I've signed with them yesterday. I got a Celeron 600, 256MB RAM, 20 GB EIDE HD, 4 IPs, 100GB/mo Transfer for $259/month. Set-up is free, upgrades are inexpensive and going from Celeron to scsi based PIII only costs me the actual price difference in packages, no service charge. Plus they recently started their support forum... using vBulletin! Can't go wrong then, I guess.

I'll just monitor the load and see if I need more horsepower. I'll keep you posted about the Plesk CP.

Why, O why! did my local theater decided to present a Goldorak and Albator movie marathon the very week-end I should be working on my new server? I keep repeating to myself: "Priorities prevail, I'm going to see Albator!"

You've probably received info on the updated beta version of dotBanner (0.98). It now allows for displaying banners on external sites as well. Plus wandrer is fast to answer questions about his product and he quickly implements user requests into dotBanner. While I've yet to use it site-wide, I've customized dotBanner to suit my needs and even got my custom templates included in the next shipping version! (pride, pride )

For those who haven't heard of dotBanner, it's a vBulletin-compatible banner management script based on PHP/MySQL. Seems pretty good!

[George L]

great stuff ramses just remember to keep an eye on those server loads and stats... check the server config forum and read in the mysql forum here as well... never hurts reading ahead for the likely problems and obstacles ahead of you

yep catalog.com decided on vbulletin after seeing it used at webhostingtalk.com i think let me know about Plesk

i registered over at wanderer's dotbanner vbulletin as well, and asked about the external site serving support - glad to hear it available

Just yesterday some good news came about so i may not have to worry about the costs of hosting and expanding my sites any more ... might not go with Luna network then...

Let us know how fast your server gets up etc... cause i could well be in the market for more servers if all goes to plan

[kds82]

catalog.com

Hi, i am about to sign up with catalog.com and is it me or did their price go up? They've given me a redhat package celeron 500, 256meg ram, 100gig transfer 10gig hard drive for 259 a month which is more expensive than remses' deal. Anyways, please let me know what you think

[Ramses]

kds82, I've just read on Catalog's board that they did not offer the Celerons anymore because the manifacturer is no longer producing these boxes. That might give you an edge in negociating a deal if the offered box is one of their last. Compared to my leased server, you're 10G short on the hard-drive (no biggie unless you really need all that space; my site is a storage hog and still takes only 1 gig for media files and 2 for backup logs; I could go without maintenance for quite some some time if space is all that matters) and 100Mhz short on CPU.

Performance-wize I get medium-traffic (600,000 pages/month, only have one site and vBulletin on box) and all my pages are dynamically generated with "more-calls-than-I-should" to the MySQL database server and the CPU rarely goes beyond 10% for user while the load averages 0.15 0.15 0.10. The same may not apply to you depending on the number of sites you wanna host, the traffic you get, the load of your scripts, etc.

I hope that helps!

Reminds me that I forgot to follow-up on that Plesk issue I "promised" eva2000 I would. (bad person Ramses, bad. ) I had a new system install done the next day due to the unflexibility of Plesk. This CP could certainly please many, alas not me. Personal tastes, I guess, but I found Webmin to be more powerful at general server maintenance than Plesk is. On a plus note, Plesk is easier to use... and quite a bit of a looker too!

The server was delivered within a couple of hours, quite a speedy service I recall.

[George L]

hehe ramses glad to know webmin recommendation is working for you

[WreckRman2]

Hmm, I have a dedicated RaQ3, 128 meg ram, 10.2 gig HD from Tera-byte and I pay $99 a month with 100 gig bandwith, no setup fees but fees to install more ram (comes with 32), PHP, MySQL, etc.

Overall - Excellent service and support...

Please tell them David Smith sent you, more information at http://www.4webspace.com

PS. I serve more then 500,000 pageviews a month and the server has never been more then slightly loaded...


[Edited by WreckRman2 on 01-14-2001 at 06:17 PM]

[Swamper]

Originally posted by WreckRman2

PS. I serve more then 500,000 pageviews a month and the server has never been more then slightly loaded...

Funny how times change now eh? Now you're in the same boat as me with vb 2.0 beta 2 chewing up resources like there is no tomorrow.

[WreckRman2]

YEP! With vB2 beta 2 I can't say that no more... Almost tired of trying and about to revert back to a fresh copy of vB 1.1.5. There is a nice feature that shows a server too busy message and I have it set to 5.00 only I am seeing it TOO much! Even with only 15 members online at a time, sometimes.