Dedicated Hosting & cPanel Licencing

owaters · 6th September 2008

Hi,

After using shared hosting for several years now, I've decided to take the plunge in to complete control and therefore a dedicated server. As I am a complete newbie to running an unmanaged server it's proving to be quite a learning curve and I've decided that I really need something with more of a comprehensive control panel (like cPanel) to automate the common tasks.

I recently purchased a dedicated server from Fasthosts (DC 250) with CentOS. Whilst this server meets all our requirements (at least I think it does - cant tell till we move all our sites over and see it performance) the thing that is a HUGE let down is the Matrix Control Panel. It's very limited (compared to cPanel) and has a terrible UI.

I'm trialing Fasthosts for 30 days - mainly to test out their Matrix Control Panel, which I have decided isn't right, so I'm looking to either move my hosting elsewhere OR buy a cPanel licence.

I'm just wondering what other companies can quote me for this setup (same as fasthosts) or similar with cPanel installed:

1.8GHz 2MB Cache Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
512 MB RAM (or 1GB)
80 GB hard disk drive
10240 Kbps data pipe
Unlimited bandwidth
2 IP addresses

Alternatively, can anyone out there sell me a cPanel licence? What's the best deal out there for this?

Many thanks!

Jon-NC · 6th September 2008

How many sites do you host? A VPS may be a better option. Whatever you do, leave fasthosts.

freethought · 6th September 2008

We can supply you with a brand new Dell R200, dual core Celeron E1200 (1.6GHZ) dedicated server with 1GB RAM and 2x80GB disks (software RAID 1) as well as 2TB of monthly data transfer for £55/month with no setup fees (on a 12 month contract) and no VAT to pay. A cPanel/WHM license adds another £20/month.

By default, this comes with a 99.95% network availability SLA and will be running CentOS 5.x (although we can provide any Linux, Windows, BSD etc. on request). This server is hosted on our private, gigabit network at Node4's state of the art DC-2 facility located in Derby.

Alternatively, we can provide you with a virtual dedicated server to meet your needs. Our VDSs are built using the Xen or KVM hypervisors and we do not oversell our resources, so the amount of cores, memory and storage you pay for is the amount you get. Guaranteed. This is not like most VPS services where everything is virtulised at the operating system level (which is much less secure) and usually oversold.

Our VDSs are priced in a very flexible and unique manner, basically you build what you want:

£10/core/month
£2/256MB RAM/month
£2/20GB storage/month
£2/1TB data transfer/month
£7.50/month for a cPanel license

For example, a dual core VDS with 512MB of RAM, 80GB of storage and 1TB of data transfer would cost £34/month (£41.50 with a cPanel/WHM license). If your needs grow with time and for example you need more RAM then just drop us an e- mail and with a quick reboot we can increase the available RAM on your virtual machine.

This is hosted on our powerful Dell SC1435 servers with dual quad core AMD Opteron processors which are also connected to our own private, gigabit network at Node4's state of the art DC-2 facility located in Derby, UK.

Please note that there is no VAT to pay on any of the above prices. If you have any questions then please PM or email

Edit: Forgot to mention, these are both unmanaged servers (we can manage them if you want), we supply 2 IPs for free if justified and if you want an unmetered connection then it's quite expensive as we only provide dedicated and not shared unmetered bandwidth.

Edit 2: The disk space for our VDS is on a RAID1 array and we can provide offsite backup space via a SAN if needed.

TDMWeb · 6th September 2008

For a CPanel server I'd recommend 2GB RAM, and you'd be advised to have a second hard disk to do daily "local" backups to, as well as some sort of offserver backup provision.

owaters · 7th September 2008

Thanks for your replies.

I'm wondering whether we actually require a dedicated server at this time, maybe a VPS would be a better solution.

At the moment we're hosting approximately 12 client websites. 9 of which are small sites approx 10 pages on average. Busiest site gets 200 hits per day on average. Some are for video production companies featuring video content, others require database functionality, others are simple sites. The number of sites we host will double in the next few months and a few of our projects will be big.

In the future we will be developing some web services which will be relatively intensive and will require a dedicated server but until then I think a dedicated server would probably be overkill for the above requirements.

What sort of site would you advise be placed on a dedicated server?

Can anyone suggest a good VPS package with Plesk/cPanel?

Many thanks!

freethought · 7th September 2008

Yeah, that really doesn't need a dedicated server. I'd go with a VDS/VPS if you want to get involved in the nitty gritty of running the server or a reseller account if you want to take a hands off approach.

othellotech · 7th September 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by owaters

I'm wondering whether we actually require a dedicated server at this time, maybe a VPS would be a better solution.

It sounds more like a CPanel/WHM Reseller Account would be more in line with your needs right now, with a dedicated/vps only required once you launch these "intensive" services...

BionicInternet · 7th September 2008

25GB UK Web Space
200GB Bandwidth
384MB RAM
Host unlimited domains
RAID 1 Protected
£25.00 Monthly Cost
£300.00 Annual Cost
+ £11.00 For cPanel

Web hosting Specialists providing website Hosting, Hosting Support, Dedicated Server, VPS & Reseller Hosting - Bionic-Hosting

Please feel free to drop sales@bionic-hosting.co.uk an email or feel free to call our 24/7 line : 0845 680 0964

midnightsoftwar · 8th September 2008

For cPanel hosting at that level, we would recommend a cPanel reseller account - however, you should be aware that there is no such thing as 'unlimited bandwidth'

How much traffic are you actually going to be creating?

If you want to take a look at our reseller packages (including Helm for Windows or cPanel for Linux) take a look at Quality Web hosting, Windows hosting, Reseller hosting, Dedicated Servers and Windows VPS brought to you by Midnight Software

othellotech · 8th September 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by midnightsoftwar

you should be aware that there is no such thing as 'unlimited bandwidth'

"unlimited" on the OP's quoted "matrix" box, is a marketing ploy - its a 10Mb/s switchport, with all 48 servers on that switch sharing a 100Mb uplink - so you're *effectively* rate-limited to ~2Mb/s

so you can have an "unlimited" amount of the max 600Gb/month throughput the setup will allow ...

owaters · 9th September 2008

Totally understand the 'unlimited bandwidth' term - simply but the advertised specs of what we purchased. I'm sure 200GB at this stage would be more than enough.