Dedicated vs Reseller - Q's ?

spike1207 · 5th September 2007, 06:18 AM

Hi,

Have had a read on the forums already, some good stuff here by the sounds of it... I have a few questions, i'm thinking I may need a custom solution.

Basically, I manage a bands website... i'm based in the U.K., but the site, the traffic, and the finances (i.e. CC/PayPal) are based in the U.S. Do i need to sign up for a U.K. account or can I sign up a U.S. account ?

At the moment my set-up is as follows, shared hosting on a Redhat/Ensim/Celeron (crap) box, 40GB/mo. + a another with 50GB/mo for shoutcast services.

The site can be very high bandwidth @ times, and REALLY processor intensive due to some extensive PHP/MySQL scripting, this is causing system resource / speed issues... if i went for reseller Enterprise/Enterprise+ do I get a decent share of system resources, or are the servers pretty jam-packed ?

The site has 5, tho might add more, domains that point to it... i can manage this from my Enom acct but i might just transfer the domains in. Does dedicated include self-managed DNS, or are multiple resolutions handled @ registrar level ?

Does the dedicated box have a 'reseller' cPanel ? I may use the box to host a couple of other small domains.

Shoutcast. Can it be hosted on Reseller/Dedicated ? If so, can it be hosted on the SAME Reseller/Dedicated... for some reason my current host is unable to have the website and shoutcast on the same box, so we've pointed a sudomain to the 2nd server.

Re: Support. Had a dedicated server a while back, albeit un-managed. It had Plesk+MailEnable on it. ME went ar$e over tit and mail services simply stopped working. I couldn't sort it, a reinstall of ME wouldn't sort it, and the host basically washed their hands of it. Do you guys fully support 'pre-installed' applications, obviously custom scripts/software on a dedicated is my responsibility ?

Lastly, I only NEED about 2GB Disk, 100-150GB Data, ~10 domains, and ~20 mailboxes - what sort of custom option would be avilable to me, either UK or U.S. based, preferably U.S ?

Cheers,
Chris.

UH-Matt · 5th September 2007, 06:34 AM

Location is up to you, both will work but its best to choose a location closest to your main target audience/visitors... If the band is in the US go with US hosting but if the band is a UK band then go with UK hosting.

None of our servers are "jam-packed" as we do not oversell, but reseller accounts are mostly designed for many small sites or a handfull of larger websites, so if you know for a fact that your one site needs a lot of CPU then we recommend dedicated hosting every time. We would hate for you to signup for reseller service and find the site is suspended due to using too many resources one day. Its best to choose the right platform now and save hassles later down the line.

Yes our servers include full dns all setup and ready to go for you, so you would just point each domain to the nameservers we provide, and then dns is handled by your control panel on the server.

Yes our servers include a "reseller" control panel so you can sell hosting to other sites and also sell reseller accounts to your own clients.

With a dedicated server we can setup shoutcast for you yes. With reseller accounts this is not possible, but with your own dedicated server it is yes, and on the same server that hosts the websites.

Our servers are "fully" managed so we do provide the server totally secured, online and with all software and services ready to go. We also monitor and manage your server 24x7 to ensure it is always online and responding as expected, if you had a problem we email we would fix it (probably before you even noticed). Our server management is the most comprehensive available and it sounds from your last experience that this is exactly what you need

For a quote you will need to contact our sales team, personally I would recommend our bronze dedicated server shown on the website, if the budget will stretch that far as its a super configuration (much higher spec to most high spec offers elsewhere) so its a great server to be based on especially if you need a lot of CPU resources AND plan to run shoutcast off the same server...

spike1207 · 5th September 2007, 03:07 PM

Matt,

Thanks for your response, ths is everything I wanted to hear... 2 more quick ones:

I will be using custom NS, i have a domain that I will already have name servers registered with the roots, thru Enom... I assume it's not an issue for you guys to supply the IP's that I need to point NS1. & NS2. at, or if i transfer in, register the NS for my domain with your Enom acct ?

How easy is it to do hardware upgrades with dedicated ? If i were to go with your budget option initially, does Ensim Pro give you some sort of plug and play functionality where you can remove the installation from 1 server and put it straight into another.

I suspect hardware configs will make this a no-go, so might be best to go for the higher spec one.

I'm sure i'll be in touch shortly once I work out some sort of window for moving them.

Cheers,
Chris.

UH-Matt · 5th September 2007, 03:29 PM

Hello again Chris,

Its fine to use a domain you already have nameservers registered with, you just update them with new IP's in your Enom account in the same "register dns" screen as before but an option further down to update nameserver IP's with the ones we give you for your dedicated server.

It really depends on the type of upgrade... If you want to add more memory for example then this is just a quick shutdown and plug more in, we can usually also improve on the CPU's but if you start moving from a single cpu to a dual cpu system or wanting to change to RAID hard drives then this would involve a migration to the new hardware, something we can handle for you without downtime once your on our platform. So we can provide a nice easy upgrade path for you with minimal fuss.

MRobinson · 5th September 2007, 03:29 PM

Hi Chris,

I'm sure the UH staff will be able to give you a more detailed answer, but I'd just like to add that from my personal experience server upgrades haven't been a problem.

Recently I upgraded/replaced a server (see this thread) and everything was taken care of for me. Every site hosted on the old server was moved over to the new one with virtually no down-time.

spike1207 · 6th September 2007, 02:36 AM

Matt,

Thanks again, sounds fine to me... re the upgrading, was thinking along the lines of upgrading to a more powerful dedicated box, should that be necessary... all sounds fine, will be signing up in the near future !

Cheers,
Chris.