NGU

I have always used virtual hosting, moved some sites once to a dedicated sever but they screwed up and it ended up costing me a lot so I have just stuck with virtual hosting, but it would be nice to pull my sites togeather onto dedicated servers, but never having used one I am totally at a loss as to what specs I need.

Most of the sites I will be running will all run several scripts and most have a lot of SSI. I mainly build low traffic sites 1-5k.

I have a few questions if anyone can help out

Is running your own dedicated server complicated/ time comsuming. Would it be wise to look for a managed server to start with.

Of course I want to keep the costs as low as possible to speed and reliabilty is more important to me than cost. So what is important to speed/reliabity? OS, Memory Harddrive ect?

Any tips or advice would be great. Also any links to good writeups on buying/running a dedicated server would be cool

Thanks