I'm trying to get an idea of what to look for in a colocation company. I just bought a server, my second, and I need to find it a good home. My first server is simply my 'test' server that I run from home to beta things before I put them live. Until now, I've always used someone elses servers so I have no idea of what to look for, what kind of pricing to expect, etc. Now, I am (as I type) already researching local colocation companies in my area but in the mean time I figured that I could ask this question and see what comes of it. I am not sure of the bandwidth I will need as I'm not sure what to expect just yet and just in case anyone out there REALLY knows what they're talking about and would need to see my server specs to give me a better answer, here they are: HP Proliant DL380 G3 X3.2GHz/533 1MB 1GB 1P RCK (333705-001) Duel Intel Xeon 3.2 GHz Processors With 512KB L2 Cache, 1MB L3 Cache 2GB (4X512MB PC2100MHz Advanced ECC DDR SDRAM) Upgradable To 12GB (Or 8GB With 4GB Online Spare Memory) Ultra320 Hard Drives: Two 286714-B22 72.8GB Universal Pluggable Drive 10k Four 286778-B22 72.8GB Universal Pluggable Drive 15k 2x1 Memory Interleaving: Advanced ECC Detects And Corrects 4Bit Memory Errors That Occur Within A Single DRAM Chip On A DIMM. Serverworks Grand Champions LE Chipset With 533MHz Front Side Bus Dual Compaq NC7781 Fast Ethernet NIC (Embedded) PCI-X 10/100/1000BT Gigabit Ethernet Integrated ATI Rage XL Video Controller With 8MB Video Integrated Smart Array 5I Plus Raid Controller With 64MB Of Cache (Supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5) Rack Optimized Form Factor (2U) Six Universal Pluggable Drive Bays With Support For Both Universal Pluggable Drives And Hot Plug Tape Drives. Bay five has additional space above it to support a hot plug tape drive without taking up a second bay. Hot plug tape drives can also be used in bays 0 and 1, or in 2 and 3. Because of the height of the tape drive, it will take up the space of two pluggable drives. The server can support up to six universal pluggable drives, or five pluggable drives and one hot plug tape drive, or three pluggable drives and two hot plug tape drives or one pluggable drive and three hot plug tape drives. Three PCI-X Slots 400W Power Supply And Five Standard Fans. Optional Redundant Power Supply And Redundant Fan Kit Integrated Lights-Out (ILO) Management with optional software upgrade to support Java Web Browser control and USB Floppy drives. Automatic Server Recovery-2 (ASR-2 thank you!
This server might eat power, and you will end up with higher monthly fee. Why not use the new CPU? Do you really need HP? Mostly, I hear good things about HP ILO, but it's expensive and eating more power than custom-built systems, like from Supermicro
You might contact TechEvolution for some advice and proces as well. They helped us set up our servers and offered a decent price. It was a bit more expensive than the last company but worth it in the end.