Summary
I just wanted to create a quick post here letting everyone know that we've been with InterServer.net for about 7 months now and everything has been wonderful. The datacenter is beautiful, the support team is brilliant, uptime is fantastic, and the prices are quite a steal.
Datacenter
I personally drove our server to InterServer up in Secaucus back in May '07. It was quite a trip as they are so close to New York and we are located in South Jersey. When I arrived, I rolled down my window and asked the gentlemen who was walking inside if I was at the right place. He replied "Yes this is Interserver are you Richard?". To my surprise, I hadn't been there but a few seconds and was already speaking to the owner (whom I'd been communicating with through tickets prior to coming up). He quickly brought me into their NEW datacenter so that I could put our beast of a server on the rack and get it back online. As soon as I had it up, he had a KVM cart rolled over and was already working on getting things setup. The server was back online in less than 15 minutes of me walking in the door. While he worked, I observed the new facility. It's large, clean, and cool -- perfect combination. Because I had to get going, I couldn't stay for a tour of their other datacenter but I'm sure that it was equally as nice.
Support Team
On a number of occasions I have needed help getting hardware worked on as well as some software tweaks. John & team have always been very quick to resolve my tickets. They are very professional and fast regardless of whether I'm dealing with them through their helpdesk or the telephone. Whenever I call they are very nice and helpful and I really feel that they care about their customers.
Uptime
In all the time I've been with them their network has been just about FLAWLESS. There has been maybe one outage which didn't last long at all, which was a huge change of pace from my previous provider (Burst.net) who would have frequent and long-lasting outages.
Aside from that one minor hiccup in the 7 month period, the network is always EXTREMELY fast. I love the way their network is setup and it has very intelligent routing.
Whenever there is the slightest network congestion, their routers re-route traffic so that everything stays smooth. Because they share a lot of premium New York bandwidth, I feel that InterServer is a GREAT alternative to expensive colo providers like Voxel where you could spend a small fortune because they're in New York.
Bottom line: If you're looking for NY/NJ colocation or even just a dedicated server in that area, I highly recommend InterServer.
I had bought a $39 atom server from Interserver for a personal project that lasted several months and just wanted to give them a "great job" for the great service/support I got from them, even considering it was an unmanaged server for $39/mo.
Anyone use interserver.net lately? they offer fully managed servers or that what they say on their site? they seem quite expensive too. how is their support and whats the response / resolution time for trouble tickets?
We're located in NJ so InterServer would only be 2 hours away. I don't have any previous experience with InterServer so I don't know the reputation in terms of network and support. I have been with LiquidWeb and know their network and support to be extremely good.
Between the two, who would you choose and why?
For the sake of argument, the price is the same and you are making the decision based off being in my location, not your own.
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.
This is a short review about my colocation experience with enotch.
I went for a tour at the beginning of May and was satisfied, I met Ervin and a few of the other guys, and they were pleasant to see. It was a bit of an issue at first, as I wanted to go just see the datacenter itself, not the "meet me room" and stuff, so they didn't get back to me until several days after the original tour date I wanted to come on. I explained that I just wanted to see the facility and they got me in there a few days later. They were very quick to reply.
I signed up with them 5/16/2009, and moved in my equipment a few days later. So far it has been good. The network has been solid, except for Cogent announcing an update to their routers or something like that in the datacenter 2 days before they decided to do it, which was a bit short notice for my tastes. Aside from that, there has been 0 downtime that wasn't my own doing. Their support certainly is not the fastest, but the staff is nice and they get the job done right the first time. Kudos.
A huge plus with them is price point. They gave me quite a deal and I'm extremely happy with the price I pay and what I get for it.
My only complaint with them is the wait when I get there. I arrived once to visit the datacenter, and had to wait in the lobby almost 2 hours for them to arrive to escort me up. Ervin had unfortunately gotten stuck trying to find parking for over an hour - which was bad for both of us as he had to drive around on and on looking for a spot and I had to wait. Another time I did have to wait 2 hours again, because I was an hour early and the gentleman I was meeting there to be escorted up was an hour late. It definitely irritated me some, and it certainly annoyed building security, but all is well, I got what I needed to get done.
Keep up the good work guys, I'll be keeping my business with Enotch for a while. I have received some unprofessional quotes and some companies (cough atlantic metro cough) who were extremely unprofessional in their communication to me. That's another thread for another day.
In the beginning of January, I purchaed a powerful server from Dell that would normally go for around $400-$500/month as a dedicated server from a reputable provider (2 QC Clovertowns, 8GB RAM, 6x 136GB 10k SAS RAID-10).
After talking with Petr from FDC, I decided to colocate it in their DC in Chicago. Petr offered me a phenomenal deal with two 100mbps switch ports and 1000GB total (in + out) premium Internap bandwidth for $55/month. Their Internap bandwidth is totally awesome.
On top of this great deal, I am able to reap the benefits of their volume licenses being located in their DC.
The only downtime I've experienced is during their PLANNED maintenance about a month back due to a fire in the CBOT.
All in all, I cannot be happier with the services I am recieving from FDC, and I would recommend anybody looking for great colo to check with them before sending your server elsewhere.
I'm writing a review on Corporate Colocation (Corp Colo, Corporate Colo, etc). We were with them for 9 months and just recently we decided to move our equipment to Zogmo.
Background: We signed up with Corporate Colocation in September of 2006. At that time, we wanted to find a cheaper colocation offer so we could "get out feet wet" with colocation. For a while, we only had one machine but later on we added a second one. I will go into my reasons for moving at the end.
Sales: In my opinion, this is the only part of Corporate Colocation that I found good. Jon and Victor have been pretty good customer service wise. They seem to always be willing to do things that need to be done and they are pretty good about working with you. Although they didn't seem to be very technically inclined, they did a pretty good job overall with the sales aspect. There were only a few times we had billing issues and they have been pretty quick to fix them with some follow-up. I would give them an 8.5/10 for sales.
Technical Support: Minimal at best. Things seem to take days to get done with technical support and even some of the emails that I sent in with regards to some network issues (not with Corporate Colocation, but farther down) were never even responded to.
For example, I requested them to activate a remote reboot port that I had paid for and a week went by with no word. I ended up calling in and talking with Dima about it and he seemed to know about it the request and he had it setup within a few hours. When it was setup, he didn't even bother to follow my instructions and even proceeded to spell my company name incorrectly. A few weeks later I went to use the remote reboot port and it didn't work. Evidently they fixed it, but I ended up leaving a few weeks later so I didn't bother seeing if it worked.
We had some issues with their network. It's partly my fault for requesting a rate-limit on my port, but it took a few days a few emails to even get a response. He seemed to respond pretty quickly as long as there was no work involved. I can't really hold this one against them because it was my own dumb fault, but it's something that didn't sit well with me.
Overall, I wasn’t very satisfied with their technical support. However, I tend to have a little high standards. If you don’t mind having to follow-up and emails with calls (or more emails) and don’t mind a few days for support to get back to you then Corporate Colocation is for you. I just like being in the loop and communicated to, which is one thing they severely lack. I rate them a 5/10 for their technical support.
Network: I will stay that they had a pretty reliable network and speeds were pretty good. All I can recall is two outages (unscheduled) where the network was either down or very slow. One was where their network room lost power, so I assume all their network equipment went down. I did file an SLA claim on that one, which they did promptly pay. The other was just a few minutes (<15 minutes) where the network was spotty. I can say they have been doing some network over that past few months and they are defiantly improving in that area. I rate them a 9/10 for network.
Datacenter: I drove to Los Angeles to pick up my equipment from Corporate Colo (see canceling for the experience). I was escorted from the lobby area up to FastServ, where Corporate Colocation is located, and I was given access to the datacenter. The datacenter area was reasonably cooled and they had a few big fans blowing air around. The racks themselves looked a little cluttered. The server a couple U’s above mine evidently fell a U or so on to mine (It was on rails, but somehow got dislodged). The server below mine was not even screwed into the rack and when I attempted to pull my servers out it would pull the ones above and below mine. Good thing I brought a couple people to help me with removing the servers and it four of us to make sure the servers on the top and the bottom didn’t move and to make sure their server’s cords didn’t come out. I just hope that others would exercise the same caution when doing stuff with their server(s). Overall, I wasn’t really impressed with the datacenter. There was nothing bad per se, but the servers on the racks looked a little cluttered and unorganized. I would rate them a 7.5/10
Canceling: I wasn’t particularly happy with the way they handled the cancelation. I made sure to have a few people confirm my cancelation (over the phone and email) and I had to do some following up a few times in order to even get some answers (I wanted to have my cancelation confirmed and I wanted to confirm access, etc). After some time, I finally got answers to my questions over the phone.
When I was at the datacenter, I was told by someone from FastServ that I had an outstanding balance and I would need to contact Corporate Colocation to get it resolved.
When I called them, they were trying to charge me for another month of service. But I made sure to keep sufficient proof that I canceled well before the 30 days notice and that both Victor and Jon confirmed it. They did finally give me access to my servers, but after about 20 or so minutes a lady came out with the guy that escorted me to my servers asking my it was taking so long and she eluded to the fact that that I needed to just grab my servers and leave (She did tell me that I need to get my servers and seemed very insistent about why I was there). She then proceeded to wait next to us to finish.
I’m not sure why the lady was so rude to me as I did have a right to be there; my colocation didn’t terminate for another few weeks and I wasn’t wondering around the datacenter touching stuff that I shouldn’t have (In fact, I tried everything I could to make sure the servers around mine were left unharmed. I know it wasn’t just me, because even the security guard that checked us in commented on how rude she was. I would rate the cancellation a 5/10.
Overall I can say that sales was pretty good to me. They did lack in some areas, but overall that’s what kept me there for so long. I was planning on using them in the future for some non-critical (off-site, etc) stuff in the future, but the way that I was treated at the datacenter and the trouble I had canceling has made me to think otherwise. This is one of those “you get what you pay for” situations. If you need something cheap that is fairly good, then Corporate Colocation is for you.
Is there a "premium" for colocation space in cabinets which are taller than 42U? I'm putting some cabinets into a datacenter cage, which I will lease to 3rd parties as colocation cabinets, and there is plenty of height below the ceiling (about 290 cm). I could put in 42U cabinets, but I could go taller, up to about 48U.
The cabinets will have about 10 kW delivered to them (8 kW usable per cabinet), but the UPS is sized for an average load of 5 kW per cabinet. Cabinet depth is 1200 mm. There will be cable tray 10 cm above the cabinet.
If you were going to colo 5 kW of equipment (average) per cabinet, would 48U cabinets have value to you over 42U high cabinets?
I'm with is looking to colo 2 x 1RU servers in the US, so looking for suitable colo facilities.
We definitely want to buy, own and manage the servers ourselves, so we're after colo & bandwidth, not server rental.
As we're new to colo in the US, any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Servers will be 2 x quad core CPU, 8GB RAM, 2 x SAS HDDs, 1 x PSU, so we'll obviously need a facility able to provide the required power at a reasonable cost.
We'll need 4 network points, 2 for each server (1 Internet, 1 LOM).
Bandwidth wise, we're expecting to start with low demand, but grow steadily over the next two to three years.
Ideally we're after flat rate bandwidth in the order of 512Kbps - 2 Mbps, aggregated across the network points, with no excess usage charges.
95th percentile billing is also an option, but less preferred - we'd much rather know we have a fixed monthly OpEx, instead of the unpleasant surprise of a large excess bandwidth bill!
We're happy to look at other bandwidth options, so long as they provide a fixed monthly cost, and let us scale at a reasonable price, as we need it.
We'll like a /28 of IP space - 8-10 usable, but may be able to get away with a /29 if it's the make or break decision.
I've recently acquired a 1U rack mount server from eBay. I believe it kicks some butt...and now I am thinking about looking for a colocation provider to host it for me.
It's for my own websites, not web hosting or storage. I don't need any sophisticated control panel, as I've pretty much made my own. I only need enough IP addresses to have my own name servers and one for all of my websites (I don't need each site to have a unique IP). I don't need any management help as I can manage my own servers. A simple data center control panel with the ability to hard reboot my server would be nice.
However, if the provider charges anything above $70-$80, I can just rent a dedicated server for around the same price. I know the dedicated server would not have the same features and hardware as my server, but if I'm providing the server, why should I be charged the same amount as if they were providing me with a server?
I'm trying to figure out my whole DNS situation now that I switched over to colocation. I have 2 servers, one hosts multiple sites and the other is just a backup.
I'm not sure what to do with DNS hosting. I could either host my DNS on both the servers (ns1,ns2 main server ns3,ns4 backup server). Does this mean if the main server goes down (ns1,ns2) it'll start using ns2,ns3? If so, can I just have ns2,ns3 point to my backup server IPs and traffic will just resume on the backup of the main server goes down?
If I go with a service like DNSMadeEasy.com, can I just point my main domain's name servers to ns1.dnsmadeeasy.com, ns2, ns3, etc.. and then point all my other domain's name servers back to my main domain OR would I have to point all my individual domains to dnsmadeeasy's name servers?
I was wondering, I always did, that is would be so much nicer to own the hardware. I looked for colocation prices in the past but the prices where allot higher then to rent from a datacenter.
Is this really so?
Is best to buy the hardware and send it to a colocation service or to rent a specific harware.
The colocation prices are normally per Mbit, that means there is not montly GB limits, you can go as fast a the switch allows?
How can you test if you are really getting the speed, any guarantee.
Also what happens if a hard disk fails? Do you have to buy one on overnight and send it to the datacenter? They will charge you for installation i suppose.
We are looking for reviews of colocation companies offering quarter racks at BlueSquare, or another data centre in the south of England. We are based in Dorset and as far as we can tell the nearest data centres are in Bournemouth (not open yet), Southampton (don't know too much about those) and Maidenhead (BlueSquare, where we currently colocate a couple of 1U servers).
Companies we have been considering are connexions4london, a1isp and netrino but we are a bit short on information about their reputations. Reliability is the single most important thing to us, we are not necessarily looking for the cheapest, but for somebody with a good history of service level.
Can anybody tell us about their experiences with any of these companies? I heard about some trouble with Netrino last year but nothing recent, and also a that a1isp use netrino, can anybody confirm or deny that? We have also spoken extensively with connexions4london but we would have to sign up for at least a year - which we would be happy to do if we knew their service was great.
with a decent article as to what colocation is? I have been looking and havn't been able to determine it. I'm trying to do some research as to why my web host is being .... difficult.
I've been noticing always that colocation seems to be much more expensive then with leased dedicated servers, especially when it comes to the A). connection size and B). transfer bandwidth given to you. So has anyone seen good colocation pricing (anywhere in the US or Canada) that has these specs? Leased dedicated servers are at these low of prices, so why not colo?
1U Server around $100 to $150 /mo: 1000-2500 GB (or unmetered) Bandwidth Transfer each month 10Mbps or 100Mbps connection (not 1Mbps).
Anyone seen any $500 to $1500 /mo. for a full cabinet with these specs:
Full Cabinet / Rack (20 Amps or 40 Amps): Unmetered Bandwidth Transfer each month 10Mbps or 100Mbps connection (not 1Mbps).
When dedicated server places like softlayer say that your server is on 10Mbps or 100Mbps, does this mean it is 10Mbps shared among many servers or is it dedicated with your server? Many colocation facilities quote prices with 1Mbps dedicated for the prices I mention above.
I've been using dedicated servers for past 2 years.
I'm a Usenet reseller moving to setting up Usenet Provider.
For Usenet peering with two residents in AMS-IX, I probably require a cross-connect, require at least 4u space with at least 50Mbit. All I can find is companies like Ohtele.com and true.nl who have a "presence" there with IP transit, what exactly does that mean? If I wanted a cross-connect to an AMS-IX resident, my server(s) must also be in that datacenter, correct?
A friend of mine gave me a brand new machine he got from work. Its a medium sized desktop case, p4 2.8ghz, 1.5GB of ram, and 2x 40GB IDE Hardrives. Its not anything special, the ram is DDR and the proccessor is the old socket 478.
I am thinking about co-locating this machine. My home computer has much better parts then it so it is useless to keep at home. I already have a laptop as well as my PC so I don't need a second computer at my home either.
I have looked at some co-location prices, sent out a few emails and it looks more expensive then getting a dedicated server from the company. I thought co-location was cheaper then a dedicated server, but it seems like I am finding different.
This server is going to be used to host a few websites of mine, as well as be used to host a gameserver or two. I don't have a problem being a system administrator, I am currently managing my VPS as well as my friends dedicated server.
I am hosting a commercial website that is consuming about 1.5Mbp/s of bandwidth on a monthly basis (95th. %). The site consists of (6) 1U Dell servers. I am currently seeking a colo provider in the downtown NYC area where I can rent a 1/4 rack. I am looking for a very reputable provider, but don't necessarily need the "gold standard" in colo providers as cost is definitely a factor.
My questions are as follows:
1. What is the general range of pricing that I should expect for a 1/4 rack at say 2Mbp/s of bandwidth? I have been getting quotes from around $500 to $1000, but wansn't sure exactly how to evaluate them.
2. Do I need to purchase a rack-mount keyboard/monitor drawer, or does the colo facility usually provide a cart or similar?
3. Is is better in the long run for me to provide my own firewall/vpn solution or is this something that the colo facility would typically provide for me?
4. With regard to DNS, is this normally a colo provided service or am I better off using a 3rd. party service. If the latter, any recommendations?
5. Any recommendations for quality colo providers in the downtown NYC area?
I currently have Dedicated servers here and there with different companies but one of my sites is out growing its current setup and is growing at a rapid rate so its going to get expensive to run if i just have multiple dedicated servers so I have started to look into colocation.
The down side to colocation for me or from what I have seen is Limited Support compared to dedicated support.
However I do pay a company that will help me with the upkeep of my servers and will advise me on what I need so really now im looking at prices.
