server management?
 

ok, i'm thinking about getting a server from rackshack. they're having a sale right now, and i want to get in on the action.

they run completely unmanaged servers... with RH 7.3. looking at getting a celeron 1.3 w/ 1gb ram & 60gb hdd. should be plenty for what i need.

i've managed servers before, http and all my hl game servers have been FreeBSD.

my only concern is setting up domains and email. i've never messed with that. looking at their tutorials, it can't be too hard, and i've always wanted to learn how to set up pop accounts (generally i've just used mail in the shell).

anyways, is there anyone that does this, and is it difficult at all? i'd be saving hundreds of dollars monthly for the bw they're giving me. i've installed apache and stuff like that before too, so i'm pretty comfortable running a server. but, this HAS to work, or i'm screwed. i'm not doing any php or mysql stuff on this, at least it's not for the necessary stuff. just html. i mean, really, how hard can it be?

also, is there anyone here that in case i ran into trouble i could flip some cash to set up my domains and pop? i just want all the email from the domains to go to one account for now, i'm not picky. i'll be moving about 4-5 domains to the new server. i could install cpanel to manage the domains/email, but i don't really see a reason to spend an extra $30/month on it. you can get ensim and plesk for the same price as the server, although i'm not too into ensim because it's so deeply integrated into the OS, where cpanel just sits on top of it.

suggestions?

If you do not mind NOT having a 99% up time then Rackshack is ok. Support really sucks, once you get a server you're on your own.

Also they use Gogent backbone which is the worst IMHO, and overall they (rackshack) do not have a good track record for up time.

As for setting up the server services you should use webmin (Free) or other similar program that would make your life much easier.

As for temporary pop, you should move your domains to another registar auch as namecheap.com, that offers full DNS zone editing services, and if needed smtp and pop servers for a modest yearly fee.

it's cogent, btw. i've heard a lot of people saying their uptime is pretty good... hrm. because i need a pretty solid uptime. if i don't have that i can get blacklisted.

i register most of my domains with godaddy at the moment, they do have a zone file management i can sign up for i believe.

i'm thinking maybe i just order a box with cpanel and forget about it. i dunno... it's an extra $30/mo for something i'd do basically once or twice and forget it. i'm going to look into plesk a little more. if it's as unobtrusive to the OS as cpanel is, i'll use that. it comes with the servers for free, so it's no big deal. i'll check out webmin as well.. as long as it doesn't take me 3 days to install it i'm all for that.

Hehehe wow someone doesnt like Rackshack.

Well it is the place this server is run out of. Like Iroc I also took advantage of the new sale, and thats why procooling has a new server we are moving to in a few weeks. ( P4, 1Gb/ram, etc...)

Uptime with Rackshack is really quite good, I havent had more than 5 minutes of down time caused by them. Support on their forums with the user base is really quite impressive. Support from the staff on your box lacks, but shit.. you are buying UNMANAGED... thats what that means.

If rachshack woulda ****ed me around at all in the last 2 years we have been on their network (this is the 3rd server I have bought from them) I would have gone somewhere else, but in all honesty, they are damn good. They seem very good at what they do. And also... take a look, they dont have one backbone, I think they are approaching 10 Gbit backbones now between Timewarner, Verio, Cognet, and a few others.

really I havent had issue one yet, and dont expect to any time soon.

As far as server management, they do offer ENSIM, PLESK, and CPanel management ( or if you wanted to go with a clearance RAQ box, you could just use its management which is not too bad) . Plesk seems to be the most vanilla, CPanel seems to be feature rich but a bit too green still, and Ensim has a killer support base in the forums. if you just wated raw RH7.3 then its all on you.

The three or four times I have been tempted to switch to Rackshack and paid them a visit, always encountered a bunch of desperate people at the support forum with their servers down.

May have been simple bad luck or coincidence, but it sure spooked me. There were people literally crying.

Also the thing is that for me being able to perform backups and the use of mirrored disks is very important and required. The only solution that I would ever use at that Rackshack would be renting minimum two servers in order to use one as backup, by keeping a mirror.

joe, that's good to know, thanks for the info.

looks like i'm probably going to order a celeron 1.3 w/ 1gb ram and 60gb hdd. what really hooks me is the 700gb transfer. right now i generally don't push over 250gb.. but in the next month or two i could easily see that doubling.

i realize it's unmanaged, really shouldn't be a problem. i hope :)


edit: yeah, from what i hear they're moved in a lot of stuff, so apparently they use stuff that's non-cogent a lot more now. their little graphs and stuff show like 10 different providers. but this stuff it doesn't really matter if it's on mickey mouse's line, just as long as it loads fast and it stays reliable.

on a side note.. i see i have to get back to work! my alexa ranking has gone up lately to 35k :(


but i see i gots procooling still beat by 20k ;)

I dont even know what the **** an alexa ranking is or why anyone would care about it.

Also, I dont fancy procooling being that much in compeition with anyone, especially a kid's porno hosting site.

alexa.com -- it's a horribly inaccurate method of ranking webpages. it's based on a toolbar that clients have to download. it gives you a rough guide though to know your traffic history.

my sites don't compete with this one anyways, so i'm not worried.. i was just kinda curious what this site was listed at. i like to check stuff a lot... especially sites i do compete and/or work with. kinda handy, that way i know if getting traffic from a certain site would be completely worthless, etc.

btw, little hostile, are we?

Yep

why's that?

cause hostility is all the rage these days... just trying to fit in.

aahh, yes. well, one would think from the mood of the post you had issues with me.

i realize my error in leaving my portfolio in my profile. it was an honest mistake, when i registered here that domain was not being used as such. i've withdrawn it for one of my other domains.

but if you have other issues, i'd be more than willing to discuss. i'm always on icq :)

You may want to take a look at this program called Webmin . Its GPL and dose a great job managing Linux Servers. I've got it running on my RH9 box.