Dedicated Server - Need some Information

Hi,
I was planing from quite long time to purchase a dedicated server, now that I have decided to go ahead get one, I was a bit confused on which companies Server to buy.
I have shortlisted three Companies can you [ If you have some experience with them] provide me some review about these companies.

1: iWeb [iweb.com]
2: Liquid Web [ liquidweb.com]
3: XlHost [xlhost.com]

It will be great help for me and for those who are looking to buy a dedicated server.

Thanks in Advance.
[+Ve rep will be added for good review]

 

I had ONE dedicated server for more than 2 years since fall 2006. was very happy and fully loaded / overloaded one server with mega loads of traffic these past xmas days, hence
Now i have 3 dedicated servers - from the same hosting company.

I don't now your 3 choices above
but mine had a few points in the TOS that I loved
- NO minimum contract duration - hence month by month if you like ( I chose yearly advanced )
- NO monthly traffic limit at all - hence NO risk to get charged after a while for spamers/hackers DDoS, etc
- location - I prefer a location in EU. after many years being hosted in US, I figured out that EU based hosts get more traffic for same content than US based hosts for the simple reason that US is on censorship with dozens of countries., apparently EU is NOT.
- all servers have dual drives / RAID and most servers have dual x86_64 and 4 GB RAM ( some more ). thats just perfect for a normal content site.
I love that extra power/reduced page-load time when loading content from 2 drives, i have no need for raid
- another very important factor was that my host offered a large variety of OS-images to chose from and install - among others always the very newest ones. hence I chose my Linux flavor I have offline on my laptops. that makes remote admin much easier if you can see and test everything offline on your localhost as well
- the price - actually price never should be a real factor, a quality site gets in a less than a week the full annual dedicated server expense back (adsense). hence quality above $ for greater success and peace of mind
- but a rescue console allowing you a remote hard reboot is certainly a factor you love to have - I have and used it a few times.

 

I think you can give a try to liquidweb, you can check their reviews at
webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=745483
webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=745483

 

Thanks for the reviews, I'm looking into it. I have some more time before I finalise which hosting company to go with.

 

If you limit yourself in 3 those hosts, Liquidweb will be the best. I hear bad stories about iWeb. I myself helped some members here with their iWeb servers already.

However, there are other good vendors. Can you share your server requirements? What are you doing on that server?

Thanks.

 

I always recommend softlayer.com for dedicated servers, as I am having no problem with them from last 1.5 year. They always respond to tickets on time, I never faced delay in support tickets, they usually respond with 10-15 minutes. You may also read reviews at webhostingtalk.com

-Regards.

 

What are you gonna use the server for? is what i would ask you first. Do you need high bandwidth or ? have you had a server before? do you need it managed?

 

I would choose Liquid Web. They have been reliable in the past, and I am sure they are now..

Check out some website hosting reviews...

Good Luck,
~ Mike

 

Also, make sure that you pick a company that manages and own their own hardware because if you work with a reseller and they go out of business, you can say goodbye to your files.

 

the purpose and benefit of a dedicated sever is to have a root server - hence NO managed dedicated server.
that might at first be more time consuming and far more demanding, however the advantage is priceless. whatever, when ever, however you want things done, you do all yourself within seconds rather than wait hours or days for managed support.
I would for no money in the world want to surrender my own root access with a professional server management. never imply that managed server always are managed by knowledgeable sys-admins. truly knowledgeable pros have their own site and make must more $ from self-publishing than from working FOR others.

and of course what is said about resellers above is absolutely true. always get sites, domains and server from original sources NEVER from resellers. ( I started with a reseller account - resellers are those wanting to earn easy money without having the knowledge, skills and expertise to really do it on their own. in addition when you need them they are on leave or vacation or time off.

another point when looking at CPU/RAM resources offered is security. if you love peace of mind, then you sooner or later build into your site/server additional security features such as mod_security, snort, and other security enhancing SW.
That peace of mind however may cost you server resources - roughly on a high traffic site up to 20-50%. in return you can go on vacation or sleep well.

 

Thanks for these reviews, I was about to order on iweb now I have a second thought.

I need this server to run my sites, and one of my big site currently It is on a liquidweb dedicated server, sharing with my friend, who also has some big websites hosted there, resulting into downtime during peak hours, no doubt LW is great in support I have also worked with them since I manage 3 servers hosted at Liquidweb, for some reason I feel there servers are not that strong compare to there support.

I'll do some research on Softlayer and see if it suites me.

~Thanks

 

Well Imran, as i posted above that i am using Softlayer from some time, never had any issues with them. You will really enjoy their services. Give them a try.

 

I have purchased the Doul Opteron Server From Softlayer, Initially I had placed order in both Iweb and Liquidweb, but I think decided to go with Softlayer, I hope it meets the standards and services I'm looking for.

 

Those seem like excellent prices for what you're getting.

I'm bookmarking this to try them out later.

 

More important than the excellent price is the excellent service and hardware performance.
In 2+ years I had NO downtime of any kind. NO hardware problems and all other problems I may have created myself could be fixed by self-controlled remote hardware reboot via rescue console connection to the server.
Hence you have remote separate access to reboot or reconfigure or reinstall your existing server in addition to SSH direct access.
And in recent months when I added 2 more servers, it took but a few hours to have the new servers up and ready.
And since the location is in Germany - we enjoy an excellent www connectivity into all parts of the globe and perfect power stability - most likely one among the very best locations in the world for a dedicated server.
there might be cheaper server hosts, but in cheap countries with lots of power failures and other problems to consider as well.

 

Softlayer is very good, if you know how to manage a server, and if you don't, get some help with Platinum Server Management. They have a fast network, use quality hardware and have great support staff. From what i have heard, their server control panels are one of the better ones out there.

I can also recommend LiquidWeb, just like everyone else.