Welcome Back to the New Hardware Asylum
For the past seventeen years I have been hosting Hardwareasylum.com and Ninjalane.com on a dedicated server. Before that my websites were on a shared hosting plan. Shared hosting is an affordable solution for people just starting out but, as the name suggests, you are on a server with quite a few other sites sharing the bandwidth allocation and server resources. If your site becomes busy it becomes slow and unstable.
That thing happened to me back in 2003 with my first trip to Computex. This was the year they delayed the show due to SARS and also made it so I was one of only a handful of tech media to attend. As it would turn out [H]ard|OCP posted some of my coverage and for the next 5 days the website reset itself over and over as my shared hosting provider attempted to keep up with the traffic.
Once I got back from Computex I searched around for an affordable dedicated server which allowed me to not only handle the increase in traffic but also run additional applications like the Ninjalane Message Forum, Email and FTP.
I even had a couple of game servers running which made the weekend L/WAN parties kinda fun.
Sadly, the party had to end. One of the issues with dedicated servers is that they are, in fact, dedicated. The server host makes sure the server is online and replaces hardware but, is under no obligation to upgrade the server or operating system. After nine years hosting with them on two different dedicated platforms they wouldn’t upgrade me anymore without a significant increase in cost.
This prompted me to go a slightly different route and Co-Locate a server. Turns out you can get lease return servers on eBay for cheap and all you need is some knowledge on how to operate them and you are set.
Fortunately I have that skill set and looked for a local host near my home and the host I picked was SolutionPro. This was a Micron seeded company left over from the Micron Internet Services (Yes the memory maker) and was eventually purchased by Involta. From 2012 to just a few days ago my server was Co-Located in their DataCenter and things were good.
As it would turn out Involta is in the process of a re-brand and started an internal audit that impacted me. Basically I wasn't paying enough so they decided that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed. There were also some misinterpretations of my contract, oversights, etc.. Needless to say they flipped a switch that forced my hand.
The server had to move.
This post is the first one you will see post Hardware Asylum dedicated server move. I was able to get a backup server installed to handle the DNS redirect while I physically moved the server hardware to FiberPipe. Turns out for a few bucks more I can get more bandwidth and similar level of hosting support by simply switching vendors, Imagine that?!?
Eventually I might move Hardware Asylum into the cloud but, it is currently too expensive for the level of service I need and, when I finally decide to retire from doing product reviews I’ll only need to keep the archives around for a year before they become obsolete.
Overall I’m glad things have worked out for the better as they could have gone MUCH worse. I have seen hardware sites lose their domain names, some have shut down over new jobs and even more get pushed out for doing bad reviews, scamming and/or having disagreements with hardware makers. As they say it’s all about the money man, the trick is to remain fluid and not to be afraid to put in a little work.
