For years I’ve hosted my own linux server to host belshe.com and my few other websites. It’s a little celeron box with 256MB of RAM and about 40GB of disk. I’ve got so much custom perl, C++, and other code on it that hosting it on some of the cheap shared servers just was too much work. It takes a non-zero amount of system administration to maintain, and I’m no longer excited about doing it. I’ve had the hard disk fail a few times (most likely due to poor ventilation and overheating under my desk), and it’s a pain in the neck to rebuild.
Finally, a colleague pointed out that getting a dedicated server hosted elsewhere is getting pretty damn cheap. I had assumed it was pricey. You can get dedicated servers for $99 or so at some placed, but I elected moved to ServerBeach for $119 per month. The buys me a dedicated Athlon 2200 with 1GB RAM and 80GB of disk. Unfortunately, it only includes 2TB (yes, Terabytes) of bandwidth per month, and belshe.com requires a tad bit more than that, so it’s $80 extra per month for the unlimited bandwidth.
I’m still in the honeymoon phase, I guess, but it’s been great so far. A technician called me up and answered all my questions, then he gave some solid recommendations on configuration and setup, and the server was ready in less than 24hrs. This means I didn’t have to upgrade my crusty old 2.4 linux kernel myself! Finally, moving all my apps was surprisingly painless. I couldn’t believe it was so quick, and everything seems back in order. It was a zero-downtime move.
If you are a belshe.com fanatic, and you feel like switching to serverbeach yourself, use my referral code and you’ll save $100. If you don’t use mine, be sure to use someone else’s, as they give you $100 and the referrer gets $250 🙂 Just type in this coupon code when you checkout: 3W2BWG7SS7, or click this link: ServerBeach Coupon