server colocation

[redfirebird.com]

my hosting accout with myacen.com is expiring soon, and I want to switch to something else

I was looking into various packages, and I noticed a thread on this board asking for 'root' access on their hosting account, and I thought - i wonder how cheaply i could get my own server and have it put on a computer floor somewhere.

I happened to be looking at aplushosting.com's site and see they offer server colocation of a 1u server, for the cheapest rate of $50/mnth, with 25 gb of bandwidth.

that sounds interesting, the ability to have my own little server connected to a backbone is nice, but i cant quite come up with enough reasons to justify $50 per month.

so - if you could have a server put on a fast network somewhere and had about 25 gigs of bandwidth per month to play with, what would you do with it besides only hosting a website? I could run as many irc bots, (or heck how about an irc server) or direct connect server or multiplayer first person shooter server or whatever, right? as long as i dont go over the bandwidth?

anyone know of other reliable places with anything cheaper than $50/mnth? am i right in assuming you can run whatever kind of server software you want on it since the box is all yours and you are just paying for bandwidth/floorspace?

[Vegs]

Yes, colocation offer might sounds tempting but there are some downsides too. You are paying for the bandwidth and rackspace and that's all. Any support, you may be looking at $75/hour charge, maybe more. If you make an error, and your server is unbootable, you may end up paying hundreds for support unless if you live close to the NOC you can just repair it yourself. That is if they allow you to go inside the server room. Some Data Centers have a very tight security. They don't allow just anyone to enter. Colocation is definately not for beginners.

Advantages are, the box is yours, you can upgrade them anytime. You can do almost anything you want with it*.

*restrictions applies, varies from NOC to NOC.

[northwind]

Agreed. If you have any experience as far as a *NIX based system then you might want to look more into it, but if the system does become unbootable, most NOC's charge close to about $60/per hour to repair your damaged server.

If hardware fails, you would need to pay for that as well, plus the replacement parts.