[TriLUG] OT: evaluating a hosting provider

[Christopher L Merrill]

Ok, it's somewhat on-topic...because we are only considering hosts that
will give us a root-access linux system.  Either virtual or dedicated.

How do I go about determining if a provider can reliably deliver a
somewhat high-bandwidth site???  Most of our site is typical website
stuff, but our software is a good-sized download (50-70M) which results
in consumption of ~700G per month of bandwidth.

TIA,
C


more details, if you care....

We are considering moving our primary website away from our current
provider because we got shafted by a billing mistake, made by THEM,
and our website was down for a while without so much as an e-mail from
the provider.  This wasn't an accidental failure, they shutdown our
account because of problems THEY faced while moving their accounting
system to another location.  We've been their customer for >5 years,
so this kind of treatment is unforgivable, IMO.

We have one provider in mind (rimuhosting.com) that we currently use
to run our support system.  We chose them because they offer a variety
of systems with Java/Tomcat/etc pre-installed, which is what we needed
for our support system.  They also give us CentOS with full root access
in a virtual server and offer similar dedicated servers at reasonable
prices.  Their support has been excellent - yesterday they upgraded our
system to more memory for free simply because I inquired about how to
upgrade the system and their current plans offer more than the plan
we signed up for 6 months ago.

But I don't know how to decide if they are up to the task. I'm out
of my element here.




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Chris Merrill                  |  http://www.webperformanceinc.com
Web Performance Inc.

Website Load Testing and Stress Testing Software
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