Dedicated?

[Mark Roberts]

Hi,

A complete novice here, we have a forum that will be powered by vbulletin 3.5. The most users we have online is 100-150 rarely and they dont post pics. So no great bandwidth use.
If we decided on a dedicated server, we might run a few normal sites on it as well which have independant www names.

I have no experience of dedicated servers only shared so am a little lost about setting one up.

Is there any articles out there, or can anyone suggest what to look out for, for our needs?

Ive been quoted on this

* 2 x 2.0GHz Processors
* 2 x 1MB Cache
* 2GB ECC DDR 400 RAM
* 2000GB Public Bandwidth
* Unlimited Private Network Bandwidth
* 5 Public IP Addresses
* Windows / RHEL / CentOS
* 1x250GB SATA II

All the best,
Novice

[Noppid]

If you are not a linux-apache-php-mysql and more expert, you better consider a managed server with cpanel on it.

But if you are confortable with that, you'll get by. Reputation and price matter as much and possibly more when you contrat for a server.

PS. What price for that server?

[Mark Roberts]

$159 Softlayer

Yep Im no expert with those, so I think I need managed. Thats one thing sorted.

If I was not on managed would I need to load all this stuff on and take care of it myself, I think that might be out my league but not sure whats involved.

Thanks

[Noppid]

Well, there are countless ways to get the desired result. So it's subjective.

With what you have said, I would suggest a server with cpanel installed and set up so you can manage your sites with WHM and Cpanel. Plus some sort of backup support if you get in a jam.

See what type of management you can get and if it's a reasonable fee. Don't forget to check reputaion of the proposed host and how many tiers down from the ISP/DC they are.