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[weasello]

I've read all the hosting threads I could find, but they all seem to be focusing on lightweight, inexpensive, easy-to-use hosts.

I'm looking for a big, bulky, awesome host.

I have several applications, websites, and games - that all make very heavy use of databases in expensive manners. I can run command lines and know all about hardware, but I don't have the time or inclination to run a co-lo. I guess that means I'm looking for managed dedicated-server recommendations?

MySQL performance is my top necessity; lots of CPU and RAM available for use. Fast hard drives, good access times. Bandwidth and hard disk space are secondary concerns. Usage comes in spikes - within a few hours per month, typically. The rest of the month it's usually slow and can manage fine on a shared host.

When running Fantastic Contraption through its growing pains, we hopped between a total of 5 different hosting companies - and each of them burned us pretty badly. One kicked us off, one turned us off, one didn't fix a failed hard drive, most didn't return our calls. Never found one we really liked, in the end. Don't want a repeat of that experience.

Anyone know of a good one?

[bateleur]

I'd suggest looking into running your own dedicated server. It's actually not very expensive at all these days and has the advantage that nobody will get angry at you for usage spikes.

I've been running a server for over ten years now and never regretted the decision to move away from shared systems. The only downside is that you need some basic sysadmin skills to keep the box happy and healthy. (But nothing advanced. I'm no Unix guru.) If you're in the UK, best low cost option is probably RapidSwitch. Not sure about other countries.

Also, for really serious usage spikes I'd recommend looking at Amazon S3 (or similar cloud storage services). Host all your big files there for almost-free and you pay a fee based on the download volumes (something like $0.10 / GB). I've been using this system as an online backup for a while and it seems good.

[weasello]

Yeah I really don't have to time to deal with "keeping it healthy" and want someone to take care of security, hardware upgrades, making sure it stays online, etc... last thing I need is something going wrong at crunch time and having that burden on *my* shoulders.

[Slash - Santiago Zapata]

Have you tried Joyent? they have MySQL Accelerators and pretty flexible plans... Not that I have had any experience with it, but I have heard good things...

http://www.bit-blot.com/ uses Joyent, though I guess it doesnt use heaps of resources maybe you could ask their owners (they must be around, somewhere)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

you probably didn't read my replies to those hosting threads, then D:

i'd suggest nearlyfreespeech.net and liquidweb.com, both are very good in terms of what you talked about

[weasello]

i'd suggest nearlyfreespeech.net and liquidweb.com, both are very good in terms of what you talked about

already been kicked off LW and NFS is my current host - with several warnings :3 I use them for my static day-to-day stuff, low traffic sites. They just don't have the hardware to keep up with those spikes in MySQL usage.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

could you be specific on why you need that many resources? if you really need that much that even those two couldn't handle it, perhaps the only option is a dedicated server (which can be pretty expensive, about $150 a month on average)

[Raisins]

http://www.webfaction.com/

I run a blog(wordpress) that gets about 3k unique a day, 2 python/dajngo sites, and a handfull of other sites/blogs. Never had any down time even when I was on the front page of Digg and Reddit in the same day.

All on the one of the basic plans. They are simply the best host I have ever used. They know what they are doing, are quick to respond (either email, or on forum).

Really give them a shot. Doesn't matter what tech you use, rails/django/wordpress/drupal/ect.. they have 1click installs for most and also allow you have to have shell access if you need something else.

Affiliate link

[weasello]

perhaps the only option is a dedicated server (which can be pretty expensive, about $150 a month on average)

That's why my OP said I'm looking for recommendations on a good managed dedicated server Well aware of the price!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

oh, didn't catch that, my mistake

perhaps he should also ask on other forums, because i imagine almost nobody here has a site with traffic enough to warrant a dedicated server -- i doubt even tigsource.com is on one?

the only thing i've heard about good dedicated servers is (again) liquidweb.com, but i haven't tried one myself. when he mentioned not liking liquidweb, i wonder if he meant their shared servers or their dedicated servers?

[bateleur]

imagine almost nobody here has a site with traffic enough to warrant a dedicated server

It doesn't take much, actually.

Small dedicated servers aren't particularly expensive and it can be well worth running one if any of the annoyance associated with shared hosting solutions is inconvenient for you. It's not at all hard to generate usage or bandwidth spikes even doing quite mundane things.

I run my server mainly so that when I'm developing server-side apps I can have unrestricted access to logs, CPU monitoring and so on and can use as much power and bandwidth as I like without making anyone else grumpy.