Looking for good colocation.

moetop

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 8, 2004
Messages
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Hi, All

I already have a server and, I am wanting to put up on the net. It's a 1U server.

I'm looking for a good colocation preferably in the Detoit area. It does NOT HAVE to be, but it would be nice. The best I have found locally is Waveform Technology

Their offer that I am looking at is $50 a month with 1000 Gig (1 terabyte) of transfer. I want to keep it around $50 a month.

The primary use for the server is going to be used for a testbed for several projects I have going, so it is running Small Business Server 2003 with exchange, as well as virtual server with several other machines running. (It's got lots of ram)

The secondary use is to maybe play a few games. (possibly Battlefield 2.....)

So any suggestions? 1Tera a month seems like a lot but BF2 is a bandwidth hog. I would like to get more transfer, but $50 seems pretty cheap for what I'm getting already.

Thanks...
 
The hosting company looks good....it's a good deal.

I'd be wary about running that much on a server. I've built a few public gaming servers, always prefer to completely strip them down, initially build it in just workstation mode (don't run DCPROMO). SBS runs a heck of a lot of services, AD, DNS, WINS, Exchange, Sharepoint/IIS, etc. From a performance standpoint, and a security standpoint...something I'd not want to deal with.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
From a performance standpoint, and a security standpoint...something I'd not want to deal with.
It also runs ISA 2004, which is one of the best security products ever made. ~2 years and not even one security vulnerability.

But, I still don't like SBS because with all the products budled in with it, your attack surface is huge.
 
If he's running SBS Premium Edition (Standard edition does not come with ISA or SQL), I didn't see him specify which he had.

SBS is one of my primary packages that I install/support. While yes ISA is a solid firewall (especially if kept up with updates), for hosting a gaming server...well, software firewalls don't actually go in the same sentence as high performance.

I often run ISA at home in between changing routers every few months.

You want gaming servers to be stripped down...lean and mean. Take Windows 2K3 server..shut down all the resources/services you can, and it'll run around 75 megs..nice and lean. SBS however..you're looking a lots of CPU utilization plus RAM use. The Exchange store will suck up as much RAM as it can. Plus a heavier duty antivirus, with the module for Exchange.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
The hosting company looks good....it's a good deal.

I'd be wary about running that much on a server. I've built a few public gaming servers, always prefer to completely strip them down, initially build it in just workstation mode (don't run DCPROMO). SBS runs a heck of a lot of services, AD, DNS, WINS, Exchange, Sharepoint/IIS, etc. From a performance standpoint, and a security standpoint...something I'd not want to deal with.

I am going to see how it go's. If I have to I can shut down some services. Once again gaming is not it's primary purpose, but I want it to run well. The last server I ran (Tribes) was about the same specs for the era. Dual 400 512 Mb ram, but it wasent running anything else. It ran great.

It's a Dual 3Ghz Xeon 2Mb cache (each) Hyperthreded, with 3 Gig of ram.. I am thinking of upgrading to a couple more Gig (4-5 gig total). With everything running (including 2 virtual servers) it's running at about 1.5 Gig of memory used. I know running a server is a lot more than just memory and speed (threds / pages / interupts ETC), but the apps are hardley going to be used.

I will probably monitor it with something (MRTJ or perfmon?) to get a feel on what is happening..

It's small Biz basic so no firewall.. any suggestions on that?? I May end up using an old wrt54g with dd-wrt..
 
moetop said:
It's small Biz basic so no firewall.. any suggestions on that?? I May end up using an old wrt54g with dd-wrt..

I always shut down services and unbound them from protocols and other things to lock the server down...so didn't deal with those...but if you want to run much more than small game server, I'd go to a router with a bit more horsepower. Home grade routers with their under 200MHz CPUs don't deal with heavy concurrent traffic very well. If keeping on a budget, scoure eBay for a Netopia R series or Sonicall or something like that.
 
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