Server Building

[nmX.Memnoch]

Buildling a server and then co-locating it somewhere can get quite expensive. You're paying for both the space in the rack as well as whatever bandwidth you use...and the bandwidth with co-location can be pretty expensive.

If you're looking to run several websites and want total control of the server it's better to just rent a server for a monthly fee. It's much cheaper to do this and you also aren't responsible for the hardware...meaning that if a hard drive fails, stick of RAM goes bad, etc, it's up to the HOSTING COMPANY to repair the server at THEIR cost.

I've been using Server Matrix, a sub-company of The Planet in Dallas, TX, for years. We've had some minor issues with them but nothing serious and nothing that wasn't resolved really quickly. Most of their packages include 1500GB transfer/month, 10MB/s connection (upgradeable to 100MB/s for very little extra), your choise of OS, etc, etc.

http://www.servermatrix.com/products/superServers.html

Any one of those servers would be just fine as a web server. If they're going to be low traffic sites you could even just go with the P4 2.4 box. We're currently running several sites on one of their P4 3.2 boxes without any issues at all (on FreeBSD 5.x). We're in the process of transitioning them to the Super Xeon (dual Xeon 2.4) setup though. It's not really necessary...but we were already paying for both boxes and just decided to combine everything.

Anyway, renting the server gives you complete control over the box other than being able to physically put your hands on it (and you can't add your own upgrade parts either)...and it leaves them with the responsibilty of repairing hardware outages.

[Thauzar]

thanks for the advice, I started looking for server rental in canada or in NY region, found iWeb and Eserves that looks quite competitive.