| Posted by nethider-FE, 01-25-2017, 11:23 AM | |
Dear members,
I came here to ask you for your professional opinion in choosing right dedicated hosting partner (hoping a long term one)
Before you decide to help me, I would like to ask from you NOT to send me following:
- managed servers (simple hardware management required, all software management is done by us)
- those who resell dedicated servers
- those who don't operate under own network
- those who operates under shady business model (having any sort of questionable customers under its network)
- those who operate outside of Europe
So basically, we are preparing two projects with huge potential and we sre in process of finding reliable partner who will be able to deliver latest hardware, premium 1gbit bandwidth for each server and provide at least basic ddos protection.
1st project) We are in process of finalizing WPcP (wordpress control panel) wich will be an dedicated control panel for providers/customers who delivers managed WP hosting, with wide range of possibilities, so we will be needing:
a# licensing servers which will handle verification checks for WPcP licenses
b# operating servers - web servers, dns server, mysql server and several load balacing servers
c# backup servers on several locations in Europe
All of those need to be with redundant links (2x1gbit/s at different upstreams or one private/lan and one public uplink), with at least 2 SSD's under hardware raid (1) and latest Intel E3 or E5 cpu's (depends on type of servers) and free bi-annually hardware updates (by free I mean paying only setup/replacement, but not by increasing monthly price).
2nd project) Behind first project, we will be starting to offer managed Wordpress hosting so we will be looking for several dedicated servers for clusters which will serve wide range of customers. Requirements are same as for 1st project, just beside that, I will need servers with more disks.
I would appreciate if you could post here your recommendations for my requirements as I would like to hear personal reviews rather than looking for offers and false promises.
Thanks in advance,
Sergei
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| Posted by MrTony, 01-25-2017, 11:37 AM | |
WHT has many providers like this present and participating on the community, you will not have a hard time finding it at all, you can check the user feedback on many companies and make your selection in the top of it, no to mention the numerous offers in the hosting offer section, your requirements aren't hard to accomplish, in fact they're paired to what most seems to be offering, except by companies (shop like ones, which are reselling from someone else as you've stated you don't want to work with).
So I'm sure you'll find a good partner to work with over here, best of luck on your research and decision.
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| Posted by bear, 01-25-2017, 11:53 AM | |
As providers are not allowed to make offers (in threads or privately), that's not likely. If you receive any, by all means let us know.
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| Posted by nethider-FE, 01-25-2017, 11:59 AM | |
I am not looking for offers as I said, but personal customer reviews as asked. I won't look on any private offers as I need someone reliable so will be glad to hear reviews, but will gladly report any offers if I receive
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| Posted by StealthyHosting, 01-25-2017, 12:00 PM | |
By "seperate upstreams" do you actually mean seperate redundant TOR switches? In most cases upstream providers will be mixed at BGP and wouldn't be routed down to a server seperately. A private LAN link would be a seperate requirement in most cases, are you looking to have a private lan between all your servers with the provider? What kind of hardware upgrades would you be looking for? If you are changing CPU sockets and raid arrays you would pretty much be looking at a whole new server. Most providers ROI on new hardware is not 6 months, unless you are either paying much higher than market value or close to 100% of the hardware cost as a setup fee, this would be a hard requirement to meet.
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| Posted by madRoosterTony, 01-25-2017, 02:24 PM | |
Im sure what you are trying to accomplish with updates to hardware every 6 months. Xeon CPUs are currently on about a 14 - 18 month cycle, DDR5 Ram is still a ways off and hard drive models change every couple of years.
Now I some hosts allow for a setup fee to say upgrade things like ram, or a add a hard drive, where you are basically covering the costs of the hardware plus installation time. But as far as upgrading to a whole new server without changing your monthly pricing, I do not see any host doing that, due to the fact as mentioned, ROI is more then 6 months by most hosting companies on hardware if they are providing the newest available.
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| Posted by nethider-FE, 01-25-2017, 02:42 PM | |
my mistake at typing, i meant every two years and complete hardware = server, not just parts
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| Posted by SolaDrive - John, 01-25-2017, 03:07 PM | |
Check our Quadranet, they should be able to help you with all your requirements you mentioned. They offer good support and are definitely not resellers.
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| Posted by nethider-FE, 01-25-2017, 03:22 PM | |
@StealthyHosting - Yes, separate switches is what I meant and yes, private lan for each project for all servers. And as for hardware replacement, I am looking for complete server replacement, depends on cpu upgrades. I would normally ask for ram and drive refreshments every two years but cpus are upgrading so often that it would be pointless not to upgrade, but I believe we could make a deal on that.
@madRoosterTony - I believe that server replacement shouldn't be a problem as most providers do also have server deals and could throw used server on those deals and also, lets be honest, if they create new offer with new cpu with match deal as my older server, I would br offended not to get either upgrade for setup fee or current hardware price reduction. Of course, this statement is for 2 year period. Sorry for typo in original thread.
@SolaDrive - John - I think that quadranet operates on US soil, while I'm looking for European providers. Thanks for the input.
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| Posted by madRoosterTony, 01-26-2017, 01:23 AM | |
Every 2 years is within reason, but still not sure any company could guarantee that. For example, when the E3-12xx V5 CPUs came out and introduced DDR4, the ram was very similar priced to DDR3 ram, but also the mother boards were some what limited in the beginning, make the prices very similar to the E3-12xx V3 CPUs systems. But DDR4 has dramaticly increased in price as of lately as well as better quality / feature motherboards have come out, making reliable systems effectively more expensive to make.
While some company do discount older systems, some companies sell off the older hardware directly as any recurring income it would make on the system is not worth taking up space in a rack vs what the discount hosting providers will pay for the server.
So yes, 2 years is within reason, but you also have to understand that if every client replaced their servers every 24 months, most hosting companies would be out of business. We see a standard of 3-4 years from most clients.
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| Posted by NortheBridge, 01-26-2017, 03:09 AM | |
I was going to echo your statements. Two years for a replacement is within the realm of reasonability but at the same time providers may not see the "value" in purchasing the latest hardware. Remember, capital cost of servers can be anywhere from as low as ~$1,500 to over $500,000 although hosting servers tend to average about $4,000-$24,000 depending on the convergence level a company is looking for and so it might not make fiscal sense to refresh the server lineup.
Our enterprise servers (i.e. servers we use for our own company use) have stayed statically the same in terms of specifications for a while now: dual E5-2620s @ 2.00GHz with 64GB or greater of RAM (other components vary based on the brand as we buy Supermicro, Dell, and HP but we have a "playbook" for each brand). Smaller servers tend to use E3-1271v2 or v3 (v3's have Trusted Platform). I imagine that many hosting companies meeting your requirements are the same - they refresh their lineup when it fiscally makes sense and when the servers are no longer competitive. Newer isn't always better but you will always pay more.
You shouldn't have trouble finding anyone that can meet most if not all of your requirements. Of course, limiting to Europe may cut some really good providers from consideration; is there any real reason for the EU clause as it seems you have no interest in doing business with US companies or their EU subsidiaries?
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| Posted by nethider-FE, 01-26-2017, 11:39 AM | |
@NortheBridge - Thanks for answering. As for the hardware replacement, I want to avoid any possible hardware failures because of old hardware. Of course, we could get hardware failures during 2 year period, but we would like to avoid any, as we will be operating mission-critical servers (especially licensing ones).
As for limiting to Europe only, this is purely because of our company will be Europe based and we would like to keep business within Europe. We are also interested in working with US companies having European subsidiaries and datacenters within Europe (EU is not neccessary).
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| Posted by madRoosterTony, 01-26-2017, 03:14 PM | |
As long as the hosting company is using enterprise grade hardware and has good clean power, hardware failures are almost a thing of the past in the first 5 years of a server. The one exception to that is hard drives. This includes traditional spinning and SSDs. Where this comes into play is closely monitoring the smart data of the drive. 99.8% of the time it will tell you its going to fail before you ever have a problem out of it. There are a few exceptions where the drive just stops responding for now reason, but these are few and far between.
If you have your system designed correctly, having one server go down should not dramatically effect the business. As I cant imagine things like your licensing servers, DNS servers, etc using a ton of resources. It might make sense to split a server into VMs to handle these parts. Then you could have a couple servers with load balancing and or true fail over. Not only would this save you costs, but also give you more flexibility in how you configure your network.
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| Posted by NortheBridge, 02-02-2017, 08:37 AM | |
Thank you for clarifying that point; when I read your original post it seemed you had no interest in US companies that have EU subsidiaries and points of presence. Did you every find someone that met your qualifications?
I only ask because I'm interested in how the whole "two year service life" worked out for you. For our mission critical applications our servers tend to have a service life of 5 years. By the time the server enters year 5 all decommissioning protocols should have been followed and a replacement that has been imaged and tested takes its place.
As others here have echoed, the highest chance of failures happen in the first 3 months of a server's life. Following that is the first year. After that you are usually "safe" although problems can crop up from time to time. However, at this point all the "kinks" are usually worked out of the system. Likewise, at the same time, after you pass year 5 you will start experiencing diminishing returns on reliability which is why at year 5 we remove servers from service and replace them with the already ready (last three months before year 5) replacement server.
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| Posted by rginfo, 02-02-2017, 05:21 PM | |
You are getting into "micro management" with the 2 years replacement requirements and such. I would step back and climb up and look from the SLA and business level perspective. Consider WHAT you want and review the proposals on HOW the providers will meet your requirements.
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| Posted by nethider-FE, 02-02-2017, 06:05 PM | |
Hello guys,
thanks for answering here. At the moment we are planning to contact few major European providers:
- Hosteurope (Serverloft)
- Leaseweb
- Redstation
We've spoken with sales manager of Serverloft and they offer us their reseller program and regularly updates once we determine performance deduction on sny of it as long as we bring a good volume of servers rented which we find as good offer.
As for other two, we have sent inquiry emails and we are yet to negotiate.
If you have any suggestions I'd still appreciate any submission
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| Posted by dinek, 02-02-2017, 06:17 PM | |
Hello,
As others have previously mentioned there is a myriad of providers who can fit your bill.
Apart from those you mentioned in the post above you can also consider:
23media
swiftway
velia.net
Dino
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