Decent Co-Location or Virtual Server Hosting?

gclef writes "Speakeasy announced recently that they're being bought by Best Buy. Despite all the promises to the contrary, I suspect my ability to host servers in my home is going away soon. Does anyone have hints as to where I can get a reasonable co-lo space or virtual hosting? I don't want to outsource the management of my domains entirely, nor will 'webhosting' be good enough, since I like having control of my own stuff (and like running my own DNS, IMAPS, and other assorted network services). Is there some place that will give me a blank box with an unfiltered connection to the net?"

That really depends.

How much are you willing to pay?

A lot of places are running "Specials" right now, giving you a relatively decent piece of iron but very little bandwidth for ~$100/mo

Other places give you less impressive hardware but more bandwidth for about the same price.

I personally host with Cyberwurx [cyberwurx.com], a p4 3.0, 512mb ram, 80gb hd and 500gb bandwidth for $95/mo, and they'll install your choice of Linux on it, or even boot you into a gentoo live cd so you can roll your own.

If you go that route, put "vanamar" in your referral code!

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Bytemark [bytemark.co.uk] - UK based, decent service, VMs and Dedicated hosts... really well supported. Been using them for two years.

EV1Servers.Net

EV1Servers has done a good job on mine so far. They have lots of options available depending on how much storage space, bandwidth, etc. that you need. You have full root control over your server. They recently merged with ThePlanet, but it does not seem to have affected anything.

Jason

Re:EV1Servers.Net

Yeah, but didn't ev1 buy a license from SCO, basically helping to fund SCO's assault against Linux? Then after the fact (due to customer / industry reaction) decided that they made a bad move? I'm still waiting for them to do the right thing and sue SCO for fraud (selling a license for IP they didn't own.)

Waveform

waveform.net [waveform.net]

When I was recently looking, I found these guys and discovered that they are in my back yard (Troy, Michigan).

$50/month to colo 1U (or a mid tower) and that includes 1000GB of transfer. If you are going to be using more than that, then you mig

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If it isn't mission critical stuff, Waveform is good. I have a server over there and have been reasonably pleased. However, on two occasions where I had to call support, they took a few hours -- during normal business hours -- to get hands-on.

They do off

Personal Colo

Paul Vixie maintains a directory of services providing personal colo [vix.com] for power users. You might find something there to fit your needs.

WebHostingTalk.com

I'd recommend reading a site like http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ [webhostingtalk.com] since it has forums dedicated to this kind of question.

Or you could just google for "vps hosting" or "dedicated hosting" and start working through the plethora of results

VPSLand

VPSLand [vpsland.com] will give you a VPS Linux Box (w/Debian! or something else if you're inclined) or a windows box for fairly cheap. I used mine for a number of things that SBC or AT&T or whatever they are this month won't let me do. Their terms say that you ca

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Why no IRC? It seems interesting that IRC would be the only thing they would disallow. Is there something about the traffic patterns or legality of IRC that would make it a problem? What about a server that does the same function, but isn't specifically

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Why no IRC? It seems interesting that IRC would be the only thing they would disallow. Is there something about the traffic patterns or legality of IRC that would make it a problem? What about a server that does the same function, but isn't specifically IR

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IRC is a magnet for DoS. Even smaller networks frequently get hammered by random people for various reasons.

Another reason is covering their asses legally. If you have someone hosting an IRC server in your facility and a botmaster decides to stop by on tha

Linode.com

I'm personally really happy with my Linode [linode.com] For $20/month, I get a UML-based system with 256MB of Ram and a bunch of hard drive space. Granted, it can be a bit slow at times, especially if other users are heavily using your node at the same time. It's perfect for Web/Mail hosting, plus you do have root access, so you can get it to do whatever you want!

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About VPSs, I use Rosehosting.com [rosehosting.com], and I'm very happy with their service. If you find their google ad, you'll get the monthly fee down to $20. Performance has been fairly good so far.

ThePlanet

They were perfect since 2003, without a glitch. They merged with ev1servers, some support latency problems issued. but it appears that they are fixing these matters. reliable - www.theplanet.com

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elaborate more please. we are going fine despite the ev1 merger still.

VPS Hosting

There's lots of hosting providers and I actually work for one. We provide managed servers, unmanaged servers, VPS, and colo services, send me a message if you need more details.

Rackspace, 1and1

For the important stuff, I use Rackspace [rackspace.com]. Starts at about $300/month for a decently-specced linux/freebsd box. Network, reliability, and support are top-notch. In the case of major problems like hard drive failures (which are going to happen eventually whe

RimuHosting

I use RimuHosting [rimuhosting.com]. They are a bit pricey, but they have been unbelievably reliable and their support is actually competent, quick and knowledgeable.

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I have used a Rimuhosting VPS for my personal server for over 3 years now, and I've been very happy with the reliability and performance I've gotten (and that was even before they switched to Xen, after the switch performance got even better!)

I have not us

PowerVPS

I have been using PowerVPS [powervps.com] for close to two years. In that time, I have not had a price increase, but the specs of my server have gone up. Last year, the hardware node I was on had some stability issues where it would crash every few days. Rather than leav

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I'll second PowerVPS. Been going strong for a year and a half. Oddly, I was part of the Hardware node issue as well and was taken care of without even complaining. Support is usually on top of any questions I have within an hour or two and they're willing

Jumping the gun a little?

Honestly? Think about it; Speakeasy made their market and sold their services based upon their "geek friendly" attitude. Now, I know that Best Buy really screwed up Geek Squad... but first of all that was a different business model, and secondly Best Buy a

I've had good luck with Cari.net

I've had some dedicated servers with Cari.net [cari.net] for about two years now. While I think some of their setup fees are a little excessive for new hardware (it's reasonable for the initial server setup), their monthly costs are reasonable ($60-$100/month for mo

Johncompanies.com

They're great. They offer the choice of Linux VMs with RedHat or Debian, or FreeBSD VMs. They also support the open source tools that run their stuff by giving discounts to contributors.

Even through I am no longer with them (decided I didn't need a full