Re: [cobalt-users] should I buy into RaQ3

[Marco Baurdoux <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there,

What Simon just said before, was extremely reasonable.
Before deciding to buy/rent a box please carefully write down your
specifications. What do you really need.

* a web server with good performances ( with enough disk space and a good
network )
* e-mail facilities, where you can have as many e-mail boxes ( not aliases )
as you wish

anything else ??

Then consider your own skills, what are you capable off and are you not
capable of ( be realistic, don't lie to yourself, cause if you run into
technical problems, you'll be the one to blame ).
If you don't have the required skills, then does anyone in your company have
them. If not, that would mean that you would have to hire a highly skilled
person, and that would cost a lot to your company. Much more then just
outsourcing the maintenance of your machine to a company, that only does
this sort of services.

At the end you might want to think if you really need a dedicated machine,
or would a shared one do just fine. OK, it might sound a bit more
prestigious to announce to your customers that you have your own dedicated
server, but in the end do they really care ??

These were just a couple of thoughts, that I thought I might share.
Everybody has it's own skills, so why should one bother feeling stupid when
something goes wrong, when you could be able to insult the administrator of
the company that is taking care of your machine :-))

Cheers 

le 21.8.2001 12:35, Simon Watts à simon@xxxxxxxxxxx a écrit :

>>> I am thinking of getting a Cobalt RaQ3 from
>>> http://uk2.net/. Is this a
>>>> good idea? Are there any drawbacks from buying into this
>>> particular
>>>> service apart from those directly related to running my
>>> own server?
>> 
>>> I looked at uk2.net a few weeks ago and the things that put
>>> me off were:
>> 
>> * No support of any kind -- try and find a phone no on their site
>> * When you email them you get an autoreply FAQ
>> * You have to pay for 3 years in advance
>> * No prices to upgrade RAM, bandwidth allocation etc.
>> 
>> 25ukp a month is very cheap -- you get what you pay for.
>> 
>> I ended up buying a Raq4i from easily.co.uk for £999+vat,
>> bought 512Mb
>> of RAM (£50 from www.crucial.com/uk) and fitted it myself. They'll
>> colocate the server for free for the first 12 months. You
>> only pay for
>> the bandwidth you use (costs about £15 per 5 gig). Their
>> service and
>> support is very good.
>> 
> 
> Similarly I looked at UK2 before plumping for Magic Moments (Now
> Host-Europe) because the support facilities were evidently better for
> me as a novice. I also didn't fancy the idea of taking what was
> already an old discontinued model server only to find I couldn't run
> all the current things I wanted on it.
> 
> Having said all that, there are a large number of UK2 users who I
> would have no doubt would back up their service (well the fact that
> they are damn cheap). I suppose it depends upon your personal
> knowledge of server management and Linux as to whether it is worth the
> risk to go it alone without support. If I'd have taken the UK2 option
> it would have cost me over £500 in support charges already, although
> you do soon pick it up (mostly with the extremely excellent helpers on
> this list).
> 
> I ended up with a leased 256Mb 20Gb RaQ4i from
> http://www.magic-moments.com for £149 +vat pcm with full 24hr free
> telephone support and all the gubbins. I think to get this (there is a
> £99 128Mb 10Gb RaQ4i) you need to go to
> http://www.dedicated-servers.co.uk now though as the four companies
> have merged (Magic Moments, WebFusion, Dedicated Servers and Host
> Europe)
> 
> I must admit that an associate company that I work with has taken one
> of UK2's RaQ3's but purely for POP relaying for a multi site EPoS
> system, and are having no trouble with it (I do the server admin for
> it but there's very little to do as it only has one domain set up with
> an extremely busy mailboxes! (40 users each transferring email
> attachments to other local users of approx 4Mb every 4 hours)
> 
> HTH
> 
> Kind Regards
> 
> Si Watts
> SiWIS http://www.siwis.co.uk
> 
> Don't Just Think Global, THINK LOCAL!
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> To Subscribe or Unsubscribe, please go to:
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Marco Baurdoux
Unix Administrator
Infomaniak Network SA
Avenue de la Praille 26
1227 Carouge
Switzerland
Tel: +41 (0)22 820 35 41
Fax: +41 (0)22 820 35 46
http://web.infomaniak.ch

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