Is it better to BUY a 'physical' server from a computer company??

[VetTechJess]

I am wondering what would be better, renting a server from say, servint.com....OR buying a physical server from a computer company? Which would host better bandwidth wise?? What one of the following servers would be able to host stevepavlina.com with all its traffic and articles and value???

Below are some physical servers from dell.com:

Dell Performance Tower Servers - Healthcare

which one should do the job???

Any Advice??

[Iksander]

Unless you have loads of money and a very high demand - you should just go with remote hosting.

Managing your own webserver and paying for the highspeed internet connections (T1 is around 2k a month, T3 about 5k I think) takes experience and a very real reason...

I am a professional web-developer and I still use shared hosting with Lunarpages.com. If my website ever gets to the point where traffic is alot (like Steve's website for example) I will switch over to a dedicated server, which is still at THEIR location on THEIR OS98 backbone but I can manage it, do what I want (not share it) and pay around $200+ a month.


Shared hosting will usually limit you upto 2 gb of transfer per month, if you start exceeding that, a dedicated remote server should be your next growth step.

Dedicated local servers are not common, you will usually see really big companies doing that, education institutions, research labs, and the various computer services companies...

Another option is a co-location server (where a group of people get together and share the costs of running their own web-server), but I don't see that very often and still recommend you start out with a shared host.

Bluehost.com is great been with them in the past
Lunarpages.com is also very good, with them currently
Dreamhost.com I have heard good things about

Lunarpages and Dreamhost offer dedicated server boxes for the time when you need new shoes... Bluehost only has one plan - which is their shared host plan everyone gets.

[Minsc]

And you would have to make sure it works...
If you can't set up an HTTP server software, buying a server would be a waste of money.

If you get to the point where you need a dedicated server with its own internet connection, it'd probably be best to build it yourself. It would be cheaper or have better parts, depending on what you want...

I think stevepavlina is hosted on a remote dedicated server but how much resources this site uses is the least of your worries if you start a webpage.

[1000feet]

If you don't know what kind of hardware you would need, that's a good sign you shouldn't be buying it. By getting a managed service, you can have a lower price initially and never have to worry about replacing a hard drive on a live server in the middle of the night or figuring out why the connection is down.

Owning a server only makes sense for the biggest sites; when it's cheaper to hire a full-time adminstrator than to pay a hosting company, and you have a fast connection that you actually need all the time, and you have a datacenter with good ventilation and backup power, then you might want to think about it. I can't imagine a blog ever getting that big though.

Even when you do it yourself, there's a lot of disavantage over regular hosting: you have a much slower connection, you need to watch over it to make sure it doesn't go down, and you have to spend a lot of time configuring and maintaining it.

The best plan is just to upgrade as you need to. There may be some interruptions when you do (especially if you have a dynamic website), but you can start with hosting for $3 a month that's good enough to start getting readers, and then move up to virtual private servers (you control all the software, but the hardware is shared), managed dedicated servers (you pay a montly price for full control over a server and administrators on site ready to fix problems with it), and colocation (you rent space in a server hosting center; the hardware and software are your responsibility) as you need more capacity and control.

[Mayo]

Jessica,

You will need really big, i mean enormous(by the standards of beginner ) traffic to even start sweating those kinds of servers... and the price to pay for them is too high considering that you can build custom box with 10K RPM disks(Raptor), GB's and GB's(4-8GB) of Geil RAM(cheapest and best on market), good motherboard, Core 2 Duo processor.. for under 1500 $US

Now for renting or buying or .. you go for what technology you are using and what you want to gain.. for own bought(colocated), rented(dedicated) or virtual server you must have tech knowledge of how to run it

For ready made server space you don't need to know squat... you fill in the scripts and voila you have website up and running.. only when your current hosting plan gets hammered by the users can you go to better servers..

[Waker]

Site 5 do somewhat decent hosting with 5tb bandwidth and 55gb storage with lots of features for $120 for 2 years. (Currently this has been doubled too)

If this is your first website I would suggest remote hosting.

[1000feet]

Several people have commented that the price on these servers is too high, but that depends on your situation. When you can barely put up the money to buy the parts yourself and you really want one that might be the best option, but in some cases it makes sense to pay a premium for a system that's put together by experts, well-tested, and in many cases supported after the sale. In any case, if you don't know which way is better you're in the wrong market.

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by 1000feet

but in some cases it makes sense to pay a premium for a system that's put together by experts, well-tested

There aren't many ways to put together a computer once you have the parts...
(you can move things around to get better cooling but I don't think there's much else)

And you could find system you want and then buy all of its parts and put it together yourself if you need to(not sure if it'd be cheaper though because of shipping).

If you buy the parts yourself, you'll have warranties for them.

So I'd say the only reason you should buy a built computer is if you don't know how to build one yourself and don't want to try... Or if you're a medium/big business, it would make more sense to buy computers than to hire someone to build them.

[VetTechJess]

Originally Posted by Minsc

There aren't many ways to put together a computer once you have the parts...
(you can move things around to get better cooling but I don't think there's much else)

And you could find system you want and then buy all of its parts and put it together yourself if you need to(not sure if it'd be cheaper though because of shipping).

If you buy the parts yourself, you'll have warranties for them.

So I'd say the only reason you should buy a built computer is if you don't know how to build one yourself and don't want to try... Or if you're a medium/big business, it would make more sense to buy computers than to hire someone to build them.

Or I may be able to pay my cousin Sean to build me a server. I know he wouldnt try to screw me over or anything and besides... I know where he lives if the server were to screw up...[insert devil smiley here]

but seriously Sean wouldnt think of building me a server that he knew was a lemon...hes trusted and trustworthy...

[tobyhede]

Even with a good server, the issues of bandwidth and management remain.

Running your own server is a big job and requires a lot of very specialised knowledge.

You are definitely better off with shared hosting.