I've reached the point where I need to go dedicated on a Win2K box, but looking at the pricing, it works out a lot cheaper long term to buy the box and coloc it in somewhere like Redbus.

Anyone got any views on this? colo vs dedi ?

I could prob give u some sort of deal with either colo or dedi,
If you could e-mail me @ andrew.gearing@agcc.biz with your requirements, ill give u a basic quote

Hi ad-uk, welcome to the forum.
There are a number of choices....

Colo - No Support
Colo - With Support
Dedicated

You can get "colo - no support" from Redbus, but you will have to use someone else for the other two.

More and more people seem to be going with managed colo (colo with support), as they save on the server rental in the long run and they own the kit - but can still get assisstance when needed.

I can certainly recommend Redbus (sorry Andrew - ad-uk did ask), although you should certainly shop around for bandwidth suppliers if you do decide to go for direct colo with Redbus - you would probably be going in to the Meridian Gate data centre and there are a number of good bandwidth suppliers to choose from - we use Easynet and Claranet (although we want another provider aswell) and we find them to be superb.

What you are going to find if you do just colo in Redbus is that you really will be on your own with regards to server setup / support etc, so it depends upon your technical capabilities and staff levels (assuming you want it monitored 24/7?). Redbus do 1/4 racks, although be careful to buy a server that fits (i don't think Dells 1Us do) as the 1/4 racks are specially modified (ie smaller depth wise than normal racks).

Their support guys are always on the end of the phone when you need them, but please realise that their support extends to reboots, unplugging cables and not too much more (they call it “Intelligent Hands”) - they certainly won't try to help you with a software issue (at least i don't think they will - i have never asked or needed to). You will also probably need to buy a hub or switch plus some cables - although in Redbus you don't need to buy a router as you usually get a 100Base-T ethernet connection from your provider - not throttled .

All the Best

Thanks mark,andrew

I spoke to a company earlier today and was quoted 250pa/1U so say 750pa for 3u (i wanna run 1 Linux box and 1 Win2K box + Firewall??) then 4000pa for 1m bandwidth, but I said 256kpbs would do in the first instance which is 1K/pa

im currently paying >1200pa for "shared hosting" as a reseller and its a pain cos the costs are going up and up i.e. 200 quid for an SSL cert, 300pa for SQL database (per domain)

The only thing that really scares me is the "your on your own now pal" with my current ISP I can drop them an email - they sort it (or dont as the case may be)

Im pretty fast at picking things up but my background is programming not web admin, i suppose ive just gotta dive in and learn quick ..

I'd be interested in knowing what you (mark) are paying for your bandwidth from providers

Anyway thanks again
Adam
<a href='http://www.internetware.co.uk' target='_blank'>http://www.internetware.co.uk</a>

edited by me - removed refs to companies ;-)

Hi Adam,

I won't go into specifics as to what we pay for bandwidth on a public forum, but i can say that it is quite a bit less than what you were quoted - but then we do buy quite a bit of bandwidth. The price you were quoted is quite competitive IMHO for a 1Mbps connection - and a think rather good indeed for a 256k connection. Shop around - you can get it cheaper, but cheaper doesn't necessarily mean quality.

I notice you are looking for MSSQL - that is sometimes one of the things that puts people off going dedicated or colo as MSSQL prices are very high per processor as i am sure you are aware.

All the Best