My Search For a New Dedicated Linux Server...

We've outgrown our existing Aktiom server.. Pseudo server really... they take a great big box, and create a bunch of smaller virtual boxes... we get root, and it appears to be our own box except when we're checking free memory running "top" we see 6 gigs, and we still get out of memory errors - ah well...

So I spent the weekend looking at alternatives ... They include building our own box and putting it in a local data center, or renting a dedicated linux box from someplace down in the US (most of our customers are in the US, and it's important that they've got low latency to the box...) ... I narrowed things down to servepath and netsonic.net ... I decided to go with netsonic after looking for opinions about them on groups.google.com, and finding that the owner has in the past helped others with Linux issues as far back as 1997... I also used netcraft to get an idea of what kind of uptime their customers were getting (servepath & netsonic), and who else they're hosting...

I ruled out the local solution for 3 reasons:
1) Time it would take us to put a box together - ordering / getting the machine, getting a working Linux kernel installed, etc... As much as 8 hours of work, and a week to get a box
2) Hardware failures... Really if we build it ourselves, we should get a second to allow us to swap out the machine in the event of hardware failure... so there's the added expense of having some hardware sitting around... A big dedicated hardware place has lots of spares handy, and will repair on our behalf...
3) Price... Local I'm looking at $300 Cdn (~ 220 US) + the cost of a machine (amortize over a year or two, but we're still looking at what would be around $100 / mon)... Vs. $99 US / month for bigger bandwidth...

I've spent the evening getting the new box setup, and it looks like we're good to go... When I have a spare moment tomorrow, I'll vent about how out of date / crappy the debian/java docs are... :)