Help EnWorld Find Cheeper Hosting!

[grodog]

www.he.net and www.directnic.com come highly recommended from folks in the Juniper Networks IT department.

 

[Psionicist]

For example I could get you a 1Ghz AMD Duron with 1 Gig DDR SDRAM and two 60 Gig IDE harddrives and 300 Gig bandwidth with 5 ip addies and cPanel/WHM interface with redhat 7.3 for 200 a month after a 370 one time setup fee or if you want a stronger machine I can get oyu a Dual AMD Athlon MP 1800 with 1 Gig DDR SDRAM and 80 gig IDE hardrive witht he same 5 ip addies and the cPanel/WHM interface with redhat 7.3 for about 250 a month with a 1 time setup fee of 500 bucks.

Stronger machines cost a bit more and weaker machines a bit less. It all depends on the specs for the server machine.

Calm down and take a deep breath.

The one reason why the current machine cannot handle EN World optimal is the forums, a large MySQL database with a neat GUI more or less. A database server needs one: A whole lots of RAM, 2 gigs + preferable (which is actually waaay cheaper than it sounds). And two, a reliable storage subsystem such as SCSI. Raw computer power is nice too, but somewhat secondary.

The problem is, as always, money. The server can be replaced later, the current problem is the bandwidth - or more precisly, the lack of bandwidth. So the best option right now is probably to find a cheaper host which shouldn't be too hard and then in 6 months or so replace the actual computer.

 

[rpgHQ]

RPGHQ that sounds amazing. Morrus said once things calm down for the current major problem he'll focus on this. I'm waiting for the tech gurus' to post and tell us about the machine morrus runs.

I forgot to mention also that its managed dedicated server included in that monthly fee, update redhat or apply security fixes for redhat and whatever web services your running. Run your own irc server on the box for instance and they'll update it for you with security fixes as they come out or at your request.

And of course with cPanel/WHM you can setup as many domains, subdomains, email services, and all that type of goodness that comes with having oyur own dedicated machine. With 5 ip addies you can setup your own DNS servers so oyu only need one IP you can share with all your website domains and subdomains and still have 3 IP's left over for running say a IRC server app or for your email pop3/smtp server app.

I still cant believe the site has been running thru a T1 (someone said E1. whats the differance in thruput?), which explains a lot of the slow downs and other funkyness that happens withthe site from time to time.

 

[roninuta]

my site is hosted on a shared server at macserve.net (albeit pro-bonno)

before you go nuts - it's a mac based service but they do colocation at the infomart in Dallas - that's is a huge pipe 1 hop from the internap backbone in Dallas(Mae Central). I think I get on average around 60-80Mb bursting.

http://www.macserve.net/services/colocation.php

I think the baseline for 160GB is $300 US and that is at a 512Kb metered rate.

just my 2 cents - but the contact info is onthe site.

 

[SnowDog]

Rackshack (or, EV1Servers)

Just another point of contact. I'm part of a rather large online community for computer games and we get our hosting via RackShack, which I guess just changed their name to EV1Servers.

www.rackshack.net or www.ev1servers.net

A quick check on their price page seems to show decent rates for what you're looking for, but it also suggests they don't have much available. Still, I figured one more piece of info would help.

 

[DanMcS]

I'm seeing figures kicked around like 150 gigs a month transfer. Bandwidthwise, $400+ a month sounds high for that, though I guess there are colo costs there too.

For instance, pair.com has a "high-bandwidth" plan that's $180/month for 120 gigs of transfer, and $4/gig extra, so 150 gigs on a medium plan like that would run $300ish dollars, which is at least a step down.

Really, I don't consider 150 gigs a month exceptionally high usage, but I'm used to thinking in terms of good-sized info companies like the one I work for, which does tens of gigs/day of transfer, more or less. For webhosting, 150/month probably high.

Wait, I was looking at the wrong section. Here is a dynamic server plan with 200 gigs a month of transfer for $250 a month. That is more in line with what you'd be looking for for a site like this. Insufficient hard drive though (what on earth is this site doing filling 80 gigs of hard drive?).

I don't think pair has what enworld needs, this site needs co-location (which it has, but it needs it cheaper), but this is an indication that it can probably be done cheaper than it currently is, at least.

Then there's always fat-trimming, which Morrus already did a bit, removing a bunch of images from the front page. People complained about that, I don't know why. If the front page is the major bandwidth sink, it might need an enforced diet though.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

The database for the forums apparently takes up the majority of the space. Plus do not forget that Morrus hosts a number of smaller sites, for free.

 

[Morrus]

One thing that you guys shouldn't forget, though, is how great Cyberstreet are. They have always been very patient while waiting for payments, responsive to questions and generally friendly and supportive. That, in itself, is worth a lot.

 

[Flyspeck23]

I'm not quite sure if it would be good to quit on Cyberstreet just yet.
As Morrus pointed out, they were very patient.
Wasn't it just because of this patience that this site kept running in the first place? IMHO it would be highly unfair to them if EN World employed a new host.

While I might understand this "find a new host" issue in other circumstances, it's just plain wrong now (btw, the $400/month shouldn't matter right now...)

 

[EricNoah]

Moving to Meta...