Colocation Review

I am colo-ing now for a bit over a year. I used shared, vps, and dedicated for years.

The learning curve to 'properly' set up dns, mail, httpd, etc was a bit tough, but once done easily redone. Not using a control panel made it hard at first but now a better sys admin is awakened.

downtime: In the entire time I have been colo-ing I only experienced one 'slow down' and no downtime. The slow down was a few weeks ago when some group did a 'full gig' DDOS on someone at the datacenter. Took a few hours to get qwest to work with the center to stop it. Server was slow, but not down.

In my years with vps, shared, and dedicated I experienced (through all hosts) significant downtimes every month, weird 'apache turned itself off', and other weird things.

Many times those hosts would have 'fails' of equipment that would knock out my site for a few hours. I always had to check each day to make sure the site was up just in case.

Some times I would come home from work and turn the computer on only to find a 'page cannot be found' as for some reason my server was inaccessible. No prior knowledge to a scheduled downtime or email explaining an outage ever.

As for my colo, one day I received an email stating they were going to be working on some network equipment (that did not affect my server) but just wanted everyone to know.....3 weeks in advance of the schedule.

The hosts I used left me hanging many times and many phone calls / wasted hours. My colo has never been down (that I know of).

The hosts use ensim, cpanel, etc...and those quirky bugs sometimes cause downtime, mail or apache to shutoff, etc. My colo system without a control panel has never had any kind of issue whatsoever like that.

The only issues my colo has had is when I go in and start playing with it...and mess up a setting that won't allow a restart of apache or dns or something. Easily fixed and immediately back up.

The last year I have had no problem sleeping at night knowing my server was up.

I was really worried about being host free and not having someone to call when I went colo. The sheer number of calls to support with my hosts each month made it scary...who was I going to call when I had issues if I colo?

yikes.

Turns out, I have never had a problem that needed me to call anyone while coloing (at least not yet).

My cost is 150 a month versus 149 a month for the old dedictated.

My internet connection is a full 1mpbs, capped, all my own, right to the net. My hosts gave me shared lines of unknown speed and cap.

My hosted sites always had real slow times. My colo has been consistent in speed and way faster than any plan I had before.

My best dedicated was a 2ghz cel, 2 drives of 80 gigs, 2 gb ram.

My first colo is a dual quad core (intel/harpertowns), 4 320 gb drives, 4 gb ram.

Going colo was hard. In retrospect I would add the time it takes to learn to manage your own server is much less than the time you spend banging your head while waiting on the phone with a host's service plan.

One of the best decisions I ever made.

Oh, and security....

I looked back at my old dedicated systems (have them backed up)...and I see all the things the host had running as part of the managed servers...wow. So many unneeded insecure things.
And the settings were pretty poor too.

my colo is buttoned down, cleaned of most software I do not need, and the settings are for security...

yea...colo one year review? The best ever.

FYI- I leased a shared cabinet direct from a datacenter, not a reseller. 2u space, but I put in a 1u computer.

My only growth option is to go to a private half rack for 500 a month which is about 20U.

I cannot wait.