A question about dedicated server
 

Hi, if i buy a dedicated server from a hosting provider, i pay a tot every month...but after 2/3 years these hardware is old, but i'm continuing pay the same monthly amount.
So i could have from the same hosting provider or another at the same price a better hardware.
What do you do in these situations ?

Contact your host and ask them to review your server and see if they can provide you with an upgrade to newer hardware, either at the same monthly cost, or slight increase, depending on the situation.

If they have prices listed on their website, perhaps you can compare to what you have now and request to be changed to the better plan.

Have good communication is all you need to do :)

It really depends who your provider is...I have seen several places going to an annual upgrade program, where they will update your hardware and migrate the content for free each year. From a support and maintenance perspective, it is in a provider's best interest not to let their hardware age too much before replacement.

If your provide doesn't offer something like that, consider moving to one that does. Also, have you considered an on-demand instance setup like Amazon EC2 or Rackspace CloudServer?

Just speak with your host, i can't imagine they wont do this unless they are using old equipment in the first place

what's the difference from a dedicated solution and a cloud server ? what's better ?

Well a dedicated server handles everything itself usually, unless your host provides you with other services. For example, the mysql server, Apache server, DNS. In cloud computing all this is usually handled by remote machines on the same network.

But the best advantage is that cloud hosting gives you on-demand resources when your site asks for it, it's usually more stable, but costs more. Shortest (but not the exact) way to describe it, it's a hosting account which self-up/downgrades on the run.

Also, most hosts will provide you services to migrate to a better/cheaper plan when new hardware plans are added or price is dropped on dedicated servers. The ones that don't (unmanaged) expect you to buy a new plan and move yourself.

By the way, why not go for VPS? an OpenVZ is usually burstable with RAM like in a cloud, while a XEN VPS acts more like a standalone dedicated server where everything is fully private and isolated.

Good question, I asked about that one host, not happy with the answer ;)

Well depending on your business plan, its either scoped to support your current and projected usage, so if it is good now, it will be good in 5 years. If your plan is one with increasing users then you;d be moving to multi-homed fail over sites and expanding as you go along in any case. Typically you'd end up with a load balancer, a couple of varnish servers, a nginx, two application servers and a master/slave/slave db setup. So you can migrate the box further down the line to say an admin console or logging server.

I was thinking my server at mojo has been up a few years but there is never any issues. And it works fine. Don't really need an upgrade. What I do need is to make a backup just incase the old hard drives decides to call it quits. But I guess my point is I don't need a hardward upgrade just because I can get a better deal some other place. I also get great service at mojo which if I went some other place to save a few dollars and have better newer hardware would not compare.

Unless your server is unmanaged, we already do regular backups. Further, your hard drives are most likely in a raid setup to protect against physical failure. If you have questions about either, simply shoot me am email or put in a ticket. Thanks!

Brad

Send your account manager an email and let him know you're looking at new hardware, ask what they can do for you.

pay me to move your sites to new server...

http://www.awmzone.com/services

Depending on your exact requirements, firstly I'd recommend a cloud-based solution (since these servers are revolving and consistently updated). Secondly, if you need a solid server, for say a pay-site, I recommend rolling your own and updating it yourself. :2 cents:

If it's been a couple of years and I'm happy with the hardware (sufficient HD space, CPU not burning up) then I politely ask for a review of monthly charges.

I manage the server myself and have hundreds of little sites so it's a real pain to change to new hardware; I'd rather stick with what works.