My colo box, which I bought used on 10 January 2007, hung last night and needed to be rebooted. That’s the second time in 3 months, after nearly two years of flawless service. I wonder if it’s time to replace the hardware?
And once I open the discussion about whether to replace the hardware, I open another discussion in my mind: is it time to go back to Linode or some other VPS provider? I left Linode years ago because they didn’t have enough RAM and hard disk for what I needed, but over the years what they provide for the same amount of money has been growing and growing. I currently pay $100 a month for my colo space – I subdivided the box into three Xen domUs, and of the two guys who rent the other domUs, one of them pays me pretty regularly and the other guy sometimes remembers to pay but usually forgets. I don’t think either of them are making very extensive use. So essentially I’m paying $70 a month for 1Gb of RAM and 100Gb of HD for apps, and 370Gb for a music collection. Well, the music collection isn’t all the important, and for $60 a month at Linode I could get 1Gb of RAM and 50Gb of hard disk. Evidently adding another 50Gb of disk would add another $25/month to that, which isn’t optimal. Anyway, I’ve got to consider my options here before spending another $500 on a used colo box.
Every time I have to mess with upgrading cws.org, I think about doing this. Linode’s $20/month plan is more than sufficient, but it’s more than the per-month costs of the static IP from U-Verse.
Maybe next time…
Why do you think of buying a box? Renting is cheaper, more flexible (conerning upgrades and location), and running Linux isn’t that big of a problem anymore. Some colocation providers around here charge for every watt above 50 (fifty) watts, so I avoid them.