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I think you picked the most expensive dedicated hosting provider in existence. Have a look at SoftLayer, Hetzner, Incero, or one of the other alternatives. Also

by Udo 13y ago

I think you picked the most expensive dedicated hosting provider in existence. Have a look at SoftLayer, Hetzner, Incero, or one of the other alternatives. Also, at these prices, it's not unreasonable to just order any old Dell server for $600 and put it into a colo rack somewhere. For reference, the dedicated server I rent for my private projects comes in at €49/month and it has these specs: Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Quad-Core 16 GB DDR 3 RAM 2 x 3 TB SATA 6 Gb/s HDD; 7200 rpm Support is extremely fast and competent, I'm really happy. To try and mirror that package with any kind of Amazon (or Rackspace it seems) offering would be prohibitively costly.

cstejerean 13y ago
I did look at SoftLayer and it's still not significantly cheaper than AWS. Hetzner doesn't seem to have servers in the US, so I've already ruled them out. Incero seems cheap, but that's the only thing I've seen about Incero. I consider Incero to be in the bargain hunting on WebHostingTalk category of providers. I'm not entirely comfortable hosting mission critical infrastructure there yet.
- Udo 13y ago
  There are probably a lot of alternatives that other people know more about than I do. Just to address a concern with Hetzner: connectivity is really good there. Last time I was in the US, I got better roundtrip times from my German server than I got from MediaTemple gs in California (though they also have some very nice features). Of course there is no going around light speed the limitation, but I'd say for a lot of projects a European server +CloudFlare is totally sufficient. In the end, it's all a tradeoff between different factors ;)
- justinsb 13y ago
  I've tried Incero, Softlayer, Hetzner & OVH. I'd recommend Hetzner & OVH, and Softlayer if budget is less of an issue.
  - MrDOS 13y ago
    OVH has a history of suspending service at the drop of a hat. I'd avoid them for anything business-critical.
- corresation 13y ago
  An issue with virtually all dedicated server vendors is the tendency to grossly under-equip servers with memory: My Mac Mini has 16GB (a $100 upgrade), and it is simply ridiculous that going above 4GB on a server is considered some extravagant feature the requires significant, expensive upgrades of every other component.
  - BadassFractal 13y ago
    In VPS, memory is everything. Memory is the # of VMs they can spin up, which is directly proportional to the amount of money they're making. What you're ultimately paying for is memory. Yes, some bandwidth, but mostly memory. It's what hotel rooms are for hotels.
    - corresation 13y ago
      If we were talking about VPS servers, then sure, however we're talking about dedicated servers. What you are renting is a physical box (such as Dell R210s) sitting in a rack somewhere.
      - BadassFractal 13y ago
        Is it possible that they might want to save money by giving you wimpy memory, because they feel that with the 32gb they give you, they could be making a lot more with something like 64 micros?
  - dan1234 13y ago
    16GB of ECC memory for servers is a lot more expensive than your Mac Mini's memory. I recently spent £250 on 2x 4GB DIMMs for a Dell Poweredge server[1] (ok DDR2 is older and therefore more expensive, but still). The same configuration for my Mac Mini came in at around £50[2] [1]http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=36C1FA30A5CA7304 http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=36C1... [2]http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=9137AB4EA5CA7304 http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=9137...
reactor 13y ago
Mind telling who's giving it? Hetzner?
- achillean 13y ago
  The specs line up perfectly with the EX 4 from Hetzner: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4
vardump 13y ago
No ECC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory) in that configuration. That's a serious no no for running anything but personal/low importance stuff. Random bit flips do happen and will ruin your day.
- bigtones 13y ago
  Amazon EC2 does not use ECC RAM on anything but their very high end servers either (4XL and above)
  - pkroll 13y ago
    That's disturbing. A quick Googling didn't find anything either way, can you provide a link that confirms this?
    - tracker1 13y ago
      The whole point of the "cloud" is to use as commodity hardware as possible... accepting that failures happen. If you aren't using multiple regions and servers for deployment, with failover designs in your applications you are doing it wrong.
      - vardump 13y ago
        How do you suggest detecting corrupted memory that does not cause the instance to fail entirely, but silently corrupts your data or running processes? Or your page cache: https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/attack_of_the_cosmic_rays1 https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/attack_of_the_cosmic_...
        AsymetricCom 13y ago
        I doubt that would cause an instance to fail entirely in a majority of instances. Linux has it's own memory corruption checking and fixing (on 64-bit words afaik), also the customer can code their own sanity checking or CRC data to detect and eliminate them as much as possible. Also, many file or copy operations have built in corruption checking as well. Of course, on top of that you have your virtualization platform which I'm sure has it's own series of sanity checks and complex hardware handling logic. Ultimately, it's a business decision of risk-management. Also, if you're in any kind of serious business like banking, there is already regulations around the standards of hardware/software you can use.

by Udo 13y ago

cstejerean 13y ago

I did look at SoftLayer and it's still not significantly cheaper than AWS. Hetzner doesn't seem to have servers in the US, so I've already ruled them out. Incero seems cheap, but that's the only thing I've seen about Incero. I consider Incero to be in the bargain hunting on WebHostingTalk category of providers. I'm not entirely comfortable hosting mission critical infrastructure there yet.

Udo 13y ago
There are probably a lot of alternatives that other people know more about than I do. Just to address a concern with Hetzner: connectivity is really good there. Last time I was in the US, I got better roundtrip times from my German server than I got from MediaTemple gs in California (though they also have some very nice features). Of course there is no going around light speed the limitation, but I'd say for a lot of projects a European server +CloudFlare is totally sufficient. In the end, it's all a tradeoff between different factors ;)
justinsb 13y ago
I've tried Incero, Softlayer, Hetzner & OVH. I'd recommend Hetzner & OVH, and Softlayer if budget is less of an issue.
- MrDOS 13y ago
  OVH has a history of suspending service at the drop of a hat. I'd avoid them for anything business-critical.
corresation 13y ago
An issue with virtually all dedicated server vendors is the tendency to grossly under-equip servers with memory: My Mac Mini has 16GB (a $100 upgrade), and it is simply ridiculous that going above 4GB on a server is considered some extravagant feature the requires significant, expensive upgrades of every other component.
- BadassFractal 13y ago
  In VPS, memory is everything. Memory is the # of VMs they can spin up, which is directly proportional to the amount of money they're making. What you're ultimately paying for is memory. Yes, some bandwidth, but mostly memory. It's what hotel rooms are for hotels.
  - corresation 13y ago
    If we were talking about VPS servers, then sure, however we're talking about dedicated servers. What you are renting is a physical box (such as Dell R210s) sitting in a rack somewhere.
    - BadassFractal 13y ago
      Is it possible that they might want to save money by giving you wimpy memory, because they feel that with the 32gb they give you, they could be making a lot more with something like 64 micros?
- dan1234 13y ago
  16GB of ECC memory for servers is a lot more expensive than your Mac Mini's memory. I recently spent £250 on 2x 4GB DIMMs for a Dell Poweredge server[1] (ok DDR2 is older and therefore more expensive, but still). The same configuration for my Mac Mini came in at around £50[2] [1]http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=36C1FA30A5CA7304 http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=36C1... [2]http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=9137AB4EA5CA7304 http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=9137...

reactor 13y ago

Mind telling who's giving it? Hetzner?

achillean 13y ago
The specs line up perfectly with the EX 4 from Hetzner: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4 http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex4

vardump 13y ago

No ECC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory) in that configuration. That's a serious no no for running anything but personal/low importance stuff. Random bit flips do happen and will ruin your day.

bigtones 13y ago
Amazon EC2 does not use ECC RAM on anything but their very high end servers either (4XL and above)
- pkroll 13y ago
  That's disturbing. A quick Googling didn't find anything either way, can you provide a link that confirms this?
  - tracker1 13y ago
    The whole point of the "cloud" is to use as commodity hardware as possible... accepting that failures happen. If you aren't using multiple regions and servers for deployment, with failover designs in your applications you are doing it wrong.
    - vardump 13y ago
      How do you suggest detecting corrupted memory that does not cause the instance to fail entirely, but silently corrupts your data or running processes? Or your page cache: https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/attack_of_the_cosmic_rays1 https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/attack_of_the_cosmic_...
      - AsymetricCom 13y ago
        I doubt that would cause an instance to fail entirely in a majority of instances. Linux has it's own memory corruption checking and fixing (on 64-bit words afaik), also the customer can code their own sanity checking or CRC data to detect and eliminate them as much as possible. Also, many file or copy operations have built in corruption checking as well. Of course, on top of that you have your virtualization platform which I'm sure has it's own series of sanity checks and complex hardware handling logic. Ultimately, it's a business decision of risk-management. Also, if you're in any kind of serious business like banking, there is already regulations around the standards of hardware/software you can use.