revjim.net

I currently pay $95/mo for internet services outside of my personal connection (i.e. webhosting, FTP, IMAP mail, etc). I host the sites of several friends, a few businesses, my personal sites, and a site for my father all on the same account, and all free of charge.

I am considering purchasing an unmanaged dedicated server, as opposed to what I have now. The cost is $99.95/mo with a $250 setup fee. With this configuration, the amount of CPU power, disk space, alloted memory and software possibilities all increase drastically.

Here are the down-sides:

1) I will have to do backups myself. This can be as simple as a script that just copies from one HDD to another during specified intervals, or can involve offloading the data to another site for safe storage. For another $50/mo, software disk mirroring will be provided for me.

2) With my current configuration, I have unlimited bandwidth. I will be limited to 50GB/mo with a cost of $35 for each additional 10GB of transfer needed, when pre-paid. I am uncertain what my current usage rates are to know whether I would exceed 50GB or not. I doubt it.

3) I will have to move everything. Enough said.

4) I will have to configure and install all the software I want, and I will be responsible for upgrading it as time goes forward. This can be considered a good thing, but it can also be very bad. This may also mean that migrating to the new server could take some time, as I will have to setup all of the software and copy over all the data before I can make the switch. During this time period, I will have to pay for BOTH servers, which means, at least ONE month, I will pay $200.

Of course the configurability of my current hosting company is very good, but still nothing compared to having root level access to my very own machine.

Is the move worth it? You tell me.