Tech Speak Translation Please!

Can someone translate the following into English for me? We are trying to buy a new server, and we just got this proposal, and I don't really know what it means.... HELP!


2U
P4
3.2Ghz
1GB RAM
146GB SCSI
2500GB monthly traffic
2 IPs
100 mbps port
Red Hat Server (Running Fedora Core 3 or 4)
Additional Secondary Hard Drive: 146GB SCSI
(EMT 64-bit versions available for most Operating Systems)
Hardware-based Firewall (shared)

The monthly fee for this is about 2,000 for the first year and 1,500 for the second year, minus set up fees. But without knowing what I'm getting, I am handicapped in any decision making!

Help Please, oh Wise Ones!

:-)

Shaun

check your pm's please :)

$2000/month for this? if you want to save a lot of money and be on a high quality fully managed, maintained and monitored server TALK TO ME!!!!!

cheers,
Luke

Hi Shaun,

Looking at that configuration and the monthly fee, I think you would be well advised to talk to Luke. He has the best service of any host I have ever used, and I think you will realize some significant cost savings.

Thats a LOT to be paying for that setup :eek:

Regards,

Lee

Well he didn't mention a currency so maybe it was in Mexican Pesos? Turkish Lira? Yen?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shaun

2U
P4
3.2Ghz
1GB RAM
146GB SCSI
2500GB monthly traffic
2 IPs
100 mbps port
Red Hat Server (Running Fedora Core 3 or 4)
Additional Secondary Hard Drive: 146GB SCSI
(EMT 64-bit versions available for most Operating Systems)
Hardware-based Firewall (shared)
Shaun

---

What you're getting here is a pretty nice machine... the dual SCSI drives aren't cheap, and 2500 GB is a decent amount of bandwidth for an adult site... and if you're pricing this in a top-tier data center in San Francisco, I could conceivably see somebody charging this...

BUT...

I totally agree with everyone else. You should be able to find the same configuration at probably 1/4 to 1/2 the cost ($500-1000/month), perhaps even less if you look. I know a lot of people working with Luke, and he comes very highly recommended. Oh... and be wary of the "setup fees"... a lot of hosts don't charge at all for them now, and if it's more than a couple hundred bucks, you're basically paying for the ISP to buy the server and then rent it to you.

But I dont see Dual SCSI's - Nor a raid array.

Am I missing something?

The price includes 2500 GB bandwidth for 1050 (that seems really high to me!), Firewall ($50.)

Service (Configuration + 4 hours a month .... hmmmm) for 300.00

Co-Lo, Rack, and Pipe 99.00

Lease to own fee: 25.00

Server per month for 1 year.... 400.00

They are also bidding about the same on a total of 5 servers - but why would a lower traffic site need to be on a seperate server?

(So - than means I am paying !!!!!! 4800 !!!!!! for this server?????? Times 5 Servers? ) Yikes!!!!! So perhaps this host doesn't want me anymore????? Or they read "Limited IT knowledge" as "stupid and ready to fleece"?

They probably aren't intentionally trying to rip you off. I've just found an insane variation in the prices that different hosts charge for the exact same service. And, for what it's worth, there are geographic differences (real estate, labor costs, bandwidth, etc are *much* higher in San Francisco than in Houston) and it's also possible that some ISPs may be locked into multi-year high-priced contracts with bandwidth providers, making it difficult for them to compete with people that negotiated more recently.

Also, keep in mind that it gets cheaper as you get larger, so the per-server maintenance/physical plant/staffing/bandwidth costs for a data center like the one Luke's servers are in are very low compared to a smaller one somewhere else... so that could be part of the difference.

My personal opinion on the RAID issue: Properly configured SATA RAID isn't tremendously different in terms of access speed than SCSI RAID. And if you have only 2 drives, you don't really have proper RAID-5; it's either mirroring or spanning. Spanning doesn't give you redundancy, and mirroring doesn't give you any speed increase (arguably a minor speed decrease) over a single drive.

I don't know many people running RAID-5 on their production web servers unless they're using a separate storage area network to store data, images, video, etc and using front-end web servers to handle the html or PHP front-end. If you have a backup solution in place that's making nightly or weekly backups (depending on how often your site changes), and you're running SATA mirroring, you're probably fine without it.

That seems really high priced for that server.

And only 2 IPs? what the hell?

Hows this sound instead:

Option 1:
Processor: Dual Xeon 2.4GHz Processors
Traffic: 2000 Gig Bandwidth
100% premium bandwidth (no cogent)
Disk: 2x80 Gig 7200RPM IDE disks
RAM: 1GB DDR Memory

Option 2:
Processor: 3.06GHz HT Processor
Traffic 20mbps dedicated unmetered (approx 6000 Gig usable traffic)
mix of Cogent and Level3 bandwidth
Disk: 1x80 Gig 7200RPM SATA disk
RAM: 1GB DDR Memory

Both of these servers include:
OS: Linux Enterprise Level (free), Control Panel: CPanel or Plesk (free), Firewall (free), initial setup / config / security hardening (free), ongoing service and support (free & unlimited), dual third party monitoring (free), full management and maintenance including all security, os, control panel and script updates (free), co-lo/rack/pipe (all included), lease to own fee n/a (this is 100% lease, why would you want to own this in a years time when 4.0GHz servers are the norm).

Both of these can have upgraded disks, memory or RAID installed for a small additional fee. Optionally, I can also offer similar setups on Netherlands based servers.

Total cost per month for either one of these packages is $525/mo, thats about a 74% savings. And, if you are looking at ordering 5 servers I will provide you with a custom quote which will be better.

cheers,
Luke