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Managed UK Hosting
| Posted by appworld, 08-09-2007, 10:52 AM |
| E-Commerce website that's in the £m's of turnover, however in a very tight margin industry so the £m's of turnover does not equate to an open cheque book for consideration.
Had a truly truly awful time at the hands of UKFast, I would plead with anyone who considers them as a host to go anywhere but there. My fully managed server with 'monitoring every 5 minutes on 6 major services' had Http down for over 12 hours when a log file got too big and 'nobody is sure why it happened'
So now I need someone else.. Obviously the 'fanatics' at Rackspace are a major consideration but I'm looking for other alternatives.
Fully managed, 100gb bandwidth, nothing major in terms of machine, and business critical support.
Any advice??
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| Posted by directhostinguk, 08-09-2007, 11:03 AM |
| Could try Host-It, they have there Own UK in-house data centre
http://www.host-it.co.uk
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| Posted by intellitech, 08-09-2007, 11:42 AM |
| Appworld,
If you post your exact / specific server requirements, (and preferred location or alternatives), I am sure you would be able to get better advice.
All the best ..
Regards,
Faiz
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| Posted by appworld, 08-09-2007, 03:32 PM |
| Thanks Faiz
I currently have:-
Graphite Solo - Celeron 2.4Ghz 512Mb RAM 1x40Gb IDE HDD
Although more RAM wouldn't go amiss
Personal Firewall
Multiple Service Monitoring - FTP, HTTP, PING, POP3 and SMTP
100Gb Bandwidth
I really would prefer UK hosting or at worst, European.
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| Posted by nauae, 08-09-2007, 05:22 PM |
| We have been with Dedipower for over three years now and have 6 servers & 2 firewalls with them. Connectivity, bandwidth, peering and level of support all excellent, however, their pricing is a little higher.
I would put them on par with RackSpace but not nearly as expensive (we did have servers with RS up until a year ago and moved them all to Dedipower).
They have a data center in Reading, England and offer both managed and self managed servers. Their website isn't brilliant (Dedipower.com) but you can get more details there.
Good luck.
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| Posted by Apolo, 08-09-2007, 09:10 PM |
| Hi,
You could try www.kualo.co.uk
Both Jo and Craig run a tight operation there.
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| Posted by HDCraig, 08-09-2007, 09:12 PM |
| I would give rackspace a call, they are a solid provider having used them myself in the past.
What sort of budget do you have if you don't mind me asking?.
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| Posted by appworld, 08-10-2007, 01:58 AM |
| Thanks for the suggestions so far. I called Dedipower yesterday and got 'sales team in a meeting, email your details and they'll get back to you'. It put me off momentarily, I may try them again today.
I have a quote from Rackspace and they have seriously impressed me, they are just coming up around 30% higher than everyone else and whilst I don't mind paying for excellence, I do still need to make sure I buy best value.
We'll pay what we need to to get it right, but the £350 mark is what I'm looking at.
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| Posted by iHubNet, 08-10-2007, 02:16 AM |
| Why are looking for UK Managed Server? It should be UK based?
If you don't mine, how much are you paying for that current managed server?
Last edited by anon-e-mouse; 08-10-2007 at 06:20 PM.
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| Posted by Karl Austin, 08-10-2007, 04:46 AM |
| If you're doing £m in turnover, then you shouldn't be considering a server without at least RAID Level 1 - Make sure it's hardware RAID with hotswap drive bays though, else you loose most of the benefits. We've not built a server for 3+ years now that doesn't come with at least RAID Level 1 (Mirroring) as it's just not worth the risk to our clients.
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| Posted by OfficeSharing, 08-10-2007, 05:46 AM |
| You may want to try lumison.net
They have a purpose built datacentre in Edinburgh and will soon open for colo in Croydon.
Entry level business dedicated server is £100 per month for a new Dell 860 and optional SysAdmin support is available.
Their support team is superb.
Cheers
Adam
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| Posted by southj1, 08-10-2007, 06:30 AM |
| I second KDA's recommendation for using some sort of RAID level and a managed backup plan in the worst case scenario.
We have been using Coreix very happily for several years now and have been impressed with their pro-active monitoring and uptime. You can checkout their site at www.coreix.net
Coreix will not be your cheapest provider but the money is definitely well spent.
I can also recommend www.kdawebservices.co.uk and www.gyron.net both are respectable providers.
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| Posted by nitrohosting, 08-10-2007, 09:01 AM |
| You should find plenty of providers that will offer you a much better spec system (including at least RAID 1 with hotswap drives) and a good 'managed' package for your budget.
Probably worth firing off a few emails to hosts just to see the detail/suggestions that they come back with, in case any unique selling points strike you as significantly more suitable for your business than others.
Kris
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| Posted by intellitech, 08-10-2007, 01:09 PM |
| Hey appworld,
I agree with nitrohosting - i have seen a couple of more "reliable" hosting providers able to provide you with a better spec at the sort of pricing ...
But, to be on a winner, throw a few e-mails out ther and get the quotes in ... and then make your decision.
More importantly, is there any specific reason you only want a UK or European host? I'm think in terms of £350 = $700 !! You can get definitely get a very reliable server with NAS backup to ensure you system is always up with monitoring as well for that sort of price!
Let us know who you settle with and your experience.
Regards,
Faiz
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| Posted by appworld, 08-10-2007, 03:18 PM |
| My problem lies in the fact that I went with UKFast because of their claims and reviews, yet I seemed to just suffer horrendously in their hands.
The specs aren't that much of an issue, I could push the website back online complete with database in under 45 minutes because of the way its structured. We have a system back at our office that manages the whole thing and if anythings missing/lost etc, it pushes it all back up pronto.
Its down to reliability and support. Despite all their promises and lots of people on here's reviews, the site was down for all that time on Sunday because of something so simple and their server monitoring didn't catch it.. They still "aren't quite sure what happened"
This decision has to be based on my ability not to have to call someone, to know that its in safe hands and its not something you can be sure about until you place your business with them. Sales will always talk up the support.
I'm also trying to get a Fedora expert to look at my current server before I get off it because I'm absolutely sure that it hasn't been patched correctly, they tell me theres been absolutely no security patches required in the last 18 months?? I find it hard to believe.
For those interested, I was paying £280 a month with UKFast..
Whilst I could host in the US, I think its just going to slow down an already intensive page, maybe someone can convince me otherwise? I'll quite happily PM across our domain for anyone who thinks its possible.
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| Posted by Olate, 08-10-2007, 06:20 PM |
| You might want to look at getting off Fedora and onto a so called "enterprise" OS. Fedora EOLs after about 13 months (see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle) whereas something like Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives you 7 years (http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/) of updates. There are other "enterprise" OSs if you don't like Red Hat based distros but since you're on Fedora atm (I assume) then Red Hat Enterprise will be the closest match.
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| Posted by dkitchen, 08-10-2007, 07:11 PM |
| I find it incredibly surprising that you're running such a server on a website that does turnover millions. I can see there are budget constraints, but how much loss would a small amount of downtime make you? Perhaps it'd be worth reviewing the financials to look for a better price point.
I would second what others have said however. I personally don't think you're getting value for your money in the slightest, I for one would never place a customer on a Celeron desktop chip. For the price you are currently paying, you could probably expect a reasonable spec managed server with built in disk and power redundancy.
Having space in the same datacentre as UKFast I've seen them grow, which they seem to have done incredibly quickly. It surprises me because they aren't cheap, and you aren't the only person to have commented on the service...
Dan
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| Posted by zetec452, 08-10-2007, 07:17 PM |
| I would recommend:
www.gyron.net
www.serverstream.net
If you claim to be turning over £x million then these companies are for you. If your website is that important why not have some kind of DR facility?
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| Posted by dkitchen, 08-10-2007, 07:41 PM |
| Just FYI - Gyron don't do managed.
Dan
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| Posted by Apolo, 08-10-2007, 07:58 PM |
| I believe they do particular tasks that fall under "managed" services, upon request and quotation, if you ask them.
Regards,
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| Posted by appworld, 08-11-2007, 04:40 AM |
| Sorry, can you clarify DR facility?
Its important the website is right as it supports a lot of the business. But as I stated, its in a very low margin industry so budget constraints are an issue. Its low volume, high priced goods. We don't push tons of traffic through and I don't fret horrifically at the thought of the odd patch of downtime but 12 hours plus was way too much.
I was suprised how well the site copes on a Celeron if I'm honest, and whilst the new quotes I've had are definitely for better specced machines, thats not my major concern because I know the site copes on lower.
Rackspace have impressed me so far.. I even tried the 24/7 support number and sure enough I got through to a RHE engineer (albeit a Level 2 lol) within 3 rings last night at 11.30pm.
I think most of my fear comes through the fact that I went through a 'big name' and still had such problems. It makes you incredibly nervous the next time.
Thanks for all the support and advice.
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| Posted by astutiumRob, 08-11-2007, 09:59 AM |
| It partly depends on what you call fully managed, as its heavily "misadvertised" by lots of hosts - some think its ok to simply enable automated updates, others will pro-actively monitor server and services, fix the common faults, patch the applications as necesary, and simply do whatever you require when a ticket/email/telephone call comes in....
For windows hosting I'd recommend Secura or Internet Engineering - both are in the "full-service" arena, run very tight ships, and have truly impressive networks and uptime.
For Linux I'll 2nd other recommendations for KDA, I've worked with Karl & Dean a few times over the years, and also php4hosting.com who offer custom built dedicated server solutions tailored to your exact requirements.
Despite your budget comment this sounds like mission-critical hosting, so reliable hardware, onsite and offsite backups, 24/7/365 phone support should all be part of your requirements ...
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| Posted by Karl Austin, 08-11-2007, 12:37 PM |
| Unfortunately no provider is ever perfect - any that tells you that they are, is lying, we all have problems at one time or another, even Rackspace (Although I'm not going to get in to that here).
One thing to bear in mind, just because you can get hold of someone qualified on the end of the phone, doesn't mean the problem will get solved quickly - but you're never going to find that out until you try a provider unfortunately.
I'd second what Rob says, if it's Windows, then try Secura Hosting - we recommend all our customers that want a fully managed Windows solution to use them.
All really comes down to cost/benefit analysis. What's it going to cost you to get a more reliable solution, what are the benefits of that going to be - i.e. We won't loose £x per hour when we're down, the boss won't shout at me when it goes down etc. etc.
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