Dedicated server recommendations?

Fullmental

Active member
We're looking to leave Linode as we're tired of dealing with IOPS and cpu slowdowns due to sharing the interface with our vps neighbors. We tried looking at other vps options but we now think we'll need to go dedicated after all. The hope is we can get a ~$100 a month server that can host multiple sites of ours, instead of a vps for each one.

Curious what folks have been using in this price range? We've noticed a lot of host's in this range offer really, really old server hardware, but there are a few that give more modern hardware. We are concerned primarily about single-threaded performance. Our current VPS runs us on an Epyc 7642 which has decent single threaded performance (2131 on Passmark), so we hoped to at least match this if possible.

Ultimately we came up with this shortlist:

1) Knownhost - very dated hardware (circa 2013 Xeon E5-2680v2, 1790 Passmark SC, 10c/20t, 32GB ram) but solid support options across the board at least for VPS users. Unknown if dedi is the same? $119 a month for our required storage and ram configuration. Storage in particular is quite expensive.

2) IONOS - slightly newer hardware (circa 2017 Xeon 1270v6, 2484 single core Passmark, 4c/8t, 32gb ram), but less customization and higher cost especially after the promo pricing. They also charge a $50 setup fee which is annoying as we can't easily order one for a month to see how it performs. We can't add a high capacity hard drive to the config. $130/month after promo pricing $20 discount for 3 months

3) Interserver. This is a weird one. I have trouble finding a lot of folks that have even heard of this host, let alone used them. They have a ton of customization options and we were able to configure a test server with way more than the rest were offering. Unknown customer support. Their sales team was hit and miss as was their vps support, but their dedicated support seems to be a different team and in a 1 month test I've not had issues. They even caught a config choice I made that wasn't optimal (wrong raid software config that needlessly increased CPU overhead), and suggested I approve a fix for it before provisioning. Very new hardware but using a desktop chip (circa 2020 Ryzen 5600X 6c/12t with 64gb ECC ram, 3352 Passmark, nvme boot drive), $100/month including our ideal storage solution. Notably their storage is super cheap, 2tb data drive for just $5 a month makes a data drive in raid 1 super viable. Curious if anyone's had experience with their dedi team?

4) Hivelocity. I've heard good things about them but again like Knownhost it's mostly VPS reviews. They have a dedicated option with newer hardware (circa 2019 Xeon E-2236, 6c/12t, 32gb ram, nvme boot drive, 2841 Passmark), but they don't offer software raid which is annoying and their properly configured hardware raid is $50/month...also their storage, especially HDD data storage, is stupidly expensive compared to other options. $119 a month but notably no OS raid 1 at this price. Can improve pricing with a long term commitment but we don't like that. Coming from linode, we prefer flexibility to pick up and go if we ever need to without worrying about too much in lost funds.

We'd be using an S3 compatible bucket to self-mamage our backups, so keep in mind we aren't relying on raid as a backup, just want to ensure as much redundancy as we can to avoid disruptions in service. That said, we'd absolutely prefer redundancy vs no redundancy...Any other host's I should consider in this price range? Right now based on pricing an customization options, it's between Interserver and Hivelocity, but customer support is also important and that's a bit of an unknown for both in the dedi space. Both have been around a long, long time with 20+ years in business. Any experience with these?
 
2) IONOS - slightly newer hardware (circa 2017 Xeon 1270v6, 2484 single core Passmark, 4c/8t, 32gb ram), but less customization and higher cost especially after the promo pricing. They also charge a $50 setup fee which is annoying as we can't easily order one for a month to see how it performs. We can't add a high capacity hard drive to the config. $130/month after promo pricing $20 discount for 3 months

IONOS is a European company, so I'm looking at the details from the U.S. office, based in Philadelphia.

Here are the relevant links, and they are not quite as you describe for the current offer (at least in the U.S.):



IONOS offers Plesk as a control panel on many of the system configurations. It gets the job done, and is easier to use than WHM/cPanel, although some stuff still requires command line functionality.

I get pretty decent performance in a mid-level AMD setup for a price that is lower than other dedicated offerings I've checked.
 
IONOS is a European company, so I'm looking at the details from the U.S. office, based in Philadelphia.

Here are the relevant links, and they are not quite as you describe for the current offer (at least in the U.S.):



IONOS offers Plesk as a control panel on many of the system configurations. It gets the job done, and is easier to use than WHM/cPanel, although some stuff still requires command line functionality.

I get pretty decent performance in a mid-level AMD setup for a price that is lower than other dedicated offerings I've checked.
Where did you find that? I was on their "dedicated hosting" page. For the record we are based in the US as well and would want any server to be located in east or central US.

For the record we're not using any control panel. I've not used one since most hosts started charging for it. Perfectly comfortable managing things from the terminal.
 
I've been using them for a while, and am happy with the performance and reliability. Plesk is worth the extra five bucks per month if you want to give it a whirl. There's a new Performance Booster feature that offers server and PHP optimizations and speedups, and they plan to add MySQL soon. It actually seems to work better than just testing or applying the optimizations posted online.
 
I've been using them for a while, and am happy with the performance and reliability. Plesk is worth the extra five bucks per month if you want to give it a whirl. There's a new Performance Booster feature that offers server and PHP optimizations and speedups, and they plan to add MySQL soon. It actually seems to work better than just testing or applying the optimizations posted online.
Thanks for the info!

Unfortunately even their plans at that link you gave me don't offer any customization of storage. It's my one annoyance with IONOS in general. Their middle intel ssd plan might work but it's not ideal. Will have to consider it.
 
Understood. All they offer is either an HD or SSD for each package. To me, that was more than sufficient.
Yeah, wouldn't have been a problem if not for the whole imgur issue. We could go S3 storage with cloudflare R2 but if we have the option I'd rather local storage. No idea what the storage and transaction fees might be like but it cost us $12 just to populate an R2 test bucket with copies of our data and internal_data folders. Our ideal is a small nvme boot drive for fast IO, and then a storage drive for less frequently accessed images. We're estimating 500gb needed, with potential to scale 100gb per year. It's enough where a "pay as you go" S3 option becomes less desirable over time.
 
Dedicated hosting, which I have used for several years now:
  • OVH (using since 2013)
  • Hetzner
  • ReliableSite
 
Dedicated hosting, which I have used for several years now:
  • OVH (using since 2013)
  • Hetzner
  • ReliableSite
Hetzner doesn't have any US dedicated servers, only cloud products. And OVH? I've heard enough horror stories particularly related to billing and support response times that I'd never want to deal with them.

ReliableSite is not price competitive with their customizable options.

Just like @rdn I use Hetzner for quite some time now. They have dedicated servers in Finland, Germany and the US.

Great value, the performance is top notch.

Hetzner does not offer dedicated server hosting in the US. Only their cloud products can be ordered there.

Known Host

Have you used their dedicated hosting, or are you suggesting it for your experience with their VPS plans?

What are your forum stats?

Frankly irrelevant to the question at hand. I can saturate a dedicated server, not necessarily with just our forum, but with a good half dozen other projects as well. Our preferred storage and ram configuration alone makes a typical vps ill suited for our forum, and when you start getting into dedicated CPU resources to overcome the saturation/inconsistency issues, the costs quickly spiral out of control to the point dedicated hosting is cheaper when considering all inclusive costs. Ram and storage in particular is quite expensive on vps instances, yet it's dirt cheap in most dedicated plans. Really makes the jump a no brainer.
 
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Hetzner doesn't have any US dedicated servers, only cloud products. And OVH? I've heard enough horror stories particularly related to billing and support response times that I'd never want to deal with them.

ReliableSite is not price competitive with their customizable options.



Hetzner does not offer dedicated server hosting in the US. Only their cloud products can be ordered there.



Have you actually used their dedicated hosting, or are you just suggesting it for their VPS plans?



Frankly irrelevant to the question at hand. I can saturate a dedicated server, not necessarily with just our forum, but with a good half dozen other projects as well. Our preferred storage and ram configuration alone makes a typical vps ill suited for our forum, and when you start getting into dedicated CPU resources to overcome the saturation/inconsistency issues, the costs quickly spiral out of control to the point dedicated hosting is cheaper when considering all inclusive costs. Ram and storage in particular is quite expensive on vps instances, yet it's dirt cheap in most dedicated plans. Really makes the jump a no brainer.
I was going to offer assistance from my experience but judging your response, I won't bother.
 
I was going to offer assistance from my experience but judging your response, I won't bother.
No offense meant in my admittedly blunt reply, but I cannot for the life of me see how my forum stats affect the customer service and reputation of a given shortlist of hosting provider's services, prices, or configuration options listed on their website, or the experiences others may have had with those companies? I could understand the question if I didn't know what to get, but I have a clear performance baseline and price range in mind.
 
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And OVH? I've heard enough horror stories particularly related to billing and support response times that I'd never want to deal with them
I've been with ovh for years and never had a problem. When I once ordered a wrong dedicated server (didn't notice until it was already deployed) they allowed me to change it for the correct one.

But support is only hardware based, they won't help you with anything else, so you need to know what you're doing.
 
I've heard enough horror stories particularly related to billing and support response times that I'd never want to deal with them.
We had crap experience with OVH. If you want good support from them you need to pay for an extra SLA contract.
We had a disk going bad on friday 17.30 hours when we first tried them several years ago.
First time for replacement (since we did not have that SLA) was at the Monday morning at 08.15 hours because we did not have an SLA. So that was hardware based support and they did nothing outside opening hours as described.
We will never go back there again for shared hosting servers or dedi's.

At Hetzner, we don't have a seperate SLA, servers same price or cheaper, and disk replacement will be done mostly within half an our or at a desired time, even night or weekend.
They don't do software support though as far as I know, or maybe with contract, not sure.

However they are not yet in the USA but in Germany and Finland.
 
We had crap experience with OVH. If you want good support from them you need to pay for an extra SLA contract.
We had a disk going bad on friday 17.30 hours when we first tried them several years ago.
First time for replacement (since we did not have that SLA) was at the Monday morning at 08.15 hours because we did not have an SLA. So that was hardware based support and they did nothing outside opening hours as described.
We will never go back there again for shared hosting servers or dedi's.

At Hetzner, we don't have a seperate SLA, servers same price or cheaper, and disk replacement will be done mostly within half an our or at a desired time, even night or weekend.
They don't do software support though as far as I know, or maybe with contract, not sure.

However they are not yet in the USA but in Germany and Finland.
This is pretty much in line with the things I've heard, yes. We don't expect software support, but we absolutely need prompt responses on infrastructure or hardware issues. Yet I regularly see people complain of having to wait days to get a response on infrastructure issues, even while paying their $50/mo "premium" support fee.

We also do not like the idea of "long term commitment" plans in general, we've been burned twice out of two times on those kinds of offers when they ultimately don't deliver as promised and then refuse to refund as well. If the company offers a good product, they won't need to rely on locked terms to offer competitive pricing, IMO.
 
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