Okay, I see a need for an example.
If I decide to provide shared hosting, I can rent one server from OVH/Hetzner/anyone, SSH in, install cPanel, setup packages and pretty much leave it running in autopilot mode. The support doesn’t have to be great, it’s a cheap service and people expect that not everything will be perfect.
//EDIT: As mentioned, CloudLinux will effectively prevent one client from bringing down the whole server as well. Less things to worry about
In the meantime, if I provide dedicated servers:
If something breaks, I have to stop doing whatever it is I’m doing, drive to the datacenter, troubleshoot and fix/replace the hardware (which costs money). This all has to be done in a timely manner (hours maximum).
We’re comparing properly maintained companies. 100’s of clients on a server Vs 1 client on a server will always require more attention (thus personal) and the machine will still be there for you to maintain regardless.
That’s why I don’t agree with saying that selling dedis requires more maintenance. The maintenance is always there to be made, regardless of how you sell the resources (your servers).
I disagree. 100 people on a properly setup shared hosting environment will require pretty much no attention whatsoever.
As @FHR rightfully pointed out, the support and overall maintenance behind dedicated servers tends to be significantly more complex. There are ways to limit and prevent certain occurences, but it’s still not as simple as offering shared hosting.
I see where the confusin is at.
I’m not talking about renting a server in OVH to provide shared hosting. I’m comparing managing your servers to provide shared hosting Vs renting your server to one client at a time (dedis).
Let’s say…
Online shared hosting vs Online dedis offer. Online haves to maintain the servers behind powering their shared offer just liek they maintain the servers they rent as a whole to one single client. But the servers powering the shared offers require more personal, as they’ll be managing the system and the clients in it.
Nope. Taking care of one single server with 100 clients is easier than taking care of 100 separate servers, each for one client.
Also, you can practically train a monkey to copy-paste articles from a knowledge base into tickets. Someone will open a ticket “Hey, I want to install WordPress” - baam, your $2/hour support person will copy-paste a link into the ticket, ticket closed.
In the meantime, if we’re talking physical servers, you actually need support people that know how servers work, at least on a basic level.
Perhaps the price difference is justified by a number of factors:
Cost of Energy
Cost of labor
Taxes (in Europe there are tax incentives)
Anyway, when OVH is operating at full strength in the US we will find out if the US market can compete with the European market in terms of price and quality.
Yes, but you’ll have plenty of servers with 100’s of clients in each.
But ohh well, I’ll take you guys word for it, I’m just a noob and hate people, so its always easier to deal with one rather than 100
Never had a LES NAT VPS, but for some reason I really really want one. I don’t need it… I just want to see if I can install debian-nginx-php-mysql into a 64MB RAM 1GB HDD. I can’t justify to spend a penny on something I don’t need at all.
Maybe a BF deal that it’s too good to refuse will make me get one.
There will be a bundle deal on BF.
Probably limited quantity before I remove myself from the Internet. Got carries away last year and published a few offers that I now regret.
I know, but I’m not looking to keep it for a year. Just a month to play with NAT and low memory/storage VM.
I just got a $2/y 128MB Ram from Cam, already having fun
Something that makes me go “Oooooooooooo” no idea what that is though.
I’d like to replace/retire my Dedibox XC from Online.net. Its used for a combination of website, mail and limited sharing of linux ISO’s. Want to try and save some money (As an aside I just had to rebuild the server after the Mobo died and they moved me to a new box. (lost a little important data, had everything but my dokuwiki data backed up))
For mail I plan to move to MXRoute (either the pre-bf offer or wait and see what the BF offer is), website/wiki can go to a cheap VPS. Which leaves the last bit.
You could probably achieve all or most of this with a single Hetzner Cloud instance.
The last BF offering was great! $30/year for 100GB storage. Picked up two for two years, I overestimated how much I would actually need. The second one has basically just been idling all of this time! It was just too good to pass up.
Indeed it was an insanely good deal and I had MEANT to buy one of those deals but failed. I am hoping that it will make a comeback this year but I suspect thats fairly unlikely given how insanely good an offer it was.