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Server Colocation and Cloud Hosting Houston and Dallas

Posted on Oct 4, 2011 by Paul White

If you need a datacenter to colocate your hardware, or if you need a really fast cloud, then I can't say enough good things about FastPCNetworks.  I have colocated my server with them for about 1 1/2 years.  The truth is you don't really know who you are hosting with until something goes wrong.  Its not how they treat you when everything is up and running. Its about how they treat you when things go down.  I have been with plenty of hosting companies.  Before I brought my server to FastPCNetworks, I had been on  Shared Hosting, VPS, dedicated, and cloud with some of the largest hosting companies in the world.  Eventually after dealing with terrible technical support, and some of the cheapest hardware, I decided that it was about time I build and colocate my own server.  At least that way when it goes down, I can fix it myself, instead of waiting for a ticket to make it to tech support days later.

Colocate your own server or get on a cloud host?

I am not going to lie, Colocating your own server is not cheap.  You have the initial cost of hardware, and Licensing ( OS, Mail, Stats, DB ).  My own server cost me roughly $4k to build.  This was doing it myself.  Buying a used sever off ebay.  Buying some rails for it. Upgrading the hard drives to 15K RPM SAS Drives, adding a decent RAID card.  Max out the Memory to 16 GB.  Buy a license for Windows Server 2008, SmarterMail, SmarterStats.  MySQL community server is Free thank god!  My monthly colocation bill is about $190 / month.  This has me running a 100 Mbit port, and gives me plenty of bandwidth.  In my opinion Colo is the way to go.  However if you are not big on building your own hardware,  then cloud hosting is an excellent option.  Its just like having a dedicated box, except there is redundancy, and a much larger pool of resources at your disposal.  The Hosting industry is a huge fan of cloud hosting.  You can run more clients, faster, and in less space. 

You get what you pay for

Before you start price shopping for a cloud or dedicated server, its important to understand something.  The largest hosting companies are overselling their network's capacity.  This is why other companies will offer unlimited bandwidth.  Think of it like this.  What if I offered you unlimited water from my kitchen,  then you go to fill up a glass and the water comes out 1 drop at a time, rather than a rush of water.  This is the same thing many hosting companies are doing.  They know that most customers don't know any better.  When you have a consumer that is uneducated about a product or service, they will often make the decision based solely on price.

Dedicated and Colocated servers are not a place where you want to make decisions based on price.  You are better off asking around to see what other people's experiences have been, than to buy into the company's hype. 

So if you want a very fast server for hosting your websites and applications,  Call Jon with FastPCNetworks.  877-614-4678.  One of the best things about FastPCNetworks is they dont' nickle and dime me for little things.  They don't charge me extra for IPs.  No additional charges for reboots.  Plus free remote hands if I ever needed to swap out a drive.  So if you want Dallas Colocation, or Cloud Hosting ( VMware ), Call Jon!

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