Which deal to keep?

[Ree]

This message got way longer than I originally intended it to be!  So a short TL;DR version:

Which deal would you keep, assuming both are more than adequate for your needs?

And the long post with all the details:

So a month or two ago I signed up with Wholesale internet for this deal: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1255450&highlight=wholesale+internet+5520

Dual Quad Core Xeon 5520 (8 physical cores, 16 virtual cores)
24GB RAM
1TB SATA Hard Drive (swapped out and now have 2x500GB and 1x250GB)
100Mbit Unmetered Port
5 usable IPv4 IPs
Linux
IPMI

$59/mo

Then earlier this month I saw an ad for HeroicVPS, and pricematched to get:

4 vCPU

4GB RAM

120GB HD

1 IPv4

$14/mo

I don't really need both though, and can't choose between them!  My thoughts are:

- Spec wise, I obviously have way more room to grow with the dedi

- Price wise, I much prefer $14/mo to $59/mo

- Deal wise, I think the $59/mo dedi isn't a great deal, but a 4GB RAM VPS for $14/mo with a non-oversold* host may be once-in-a-lifetime (or at least for the foreseeable future anyway)

- Performance wise, both are more than adequate for my needs.  Way more CPU power behind the dedi, but the disk is considerably faster with HeroicVPS**

- Support wise, there were some issues with Wholesale internet swapping out the 1 TB drive for 3 x 250GB drives.  One was DOA, and one might as well have been (VERY slow).  They were fairly quick to respond to my request to swap both out, but they swapped out the DOA and lone GOOD drive by mistake, leaving me with an unusable system while I waited for them to swap out again (and that ticket wasn't responded to nearly as fast).  One good thing to come of that was since they ran out of 250's, I got 2 x 500's for the same price.  On the other hand, HeroicVPS was always extremely fast to respond to tickets and there have been no problems at all so far (tickets were all related to pricematching and matching specs to the PMed offer)

So right now I think the biggest differentiator (for my needs) is the fact that one is just a good deal and one is an amazing deal that I may be insane to even consider giving up.  Or is it?  That's the part that's making it hard to decide!

* Since the pricematch was advertised as one month only, I'm assuming prices for new clients will go back to normal in June, and so then things won't need to be oversold like crazy to try to turn a profit at that low price.

** If you read this SPINIKR-RO, can you comment on how loaded the Archer node in Ashburn is?  Am I getting great speeds because it's a relatively empty node, or is it a full node without (too many) abusers, or is it somewhere in between?

 

[shovenose]

I would keep the dedicated server personally

 

[vanarp]

My suggestion would be to keep the VPS if it very much serves the purpose for you (and preferably has little additional capacity too). Go for similar spec VPS with another good provider and have a sync setup between the two. Save the remaining money

Personally a good reason to stick with VPS is that you do not have to deal with hardware issues. Not sure how exactly it works with Wholesale Internet, but I am sure of some good downtime when hardware failures happen.

 

[wlanboy]

Depends on what you want to do with it. But I would not keep both.

Plan A:

Keep the vps. You won't have any hassle. Enough RAM for database, webserver and a lot of scripts. If it has got enough CPU power and I/O speed for you then just keep it. Do not buy something you do not use.

Plan B:

You want to do more in the future. And you want to have a test environment and a playgroud too. Skip the vps.

Keep the server and add two KVMs to it. Result:

• Dedicated Linux with 14 GB of RAM
• KVM 6 GB vps for test environment
• KVM 4 GB vps as a playground

You messed something up? Just reinstall the KVM. It will not touch your dedicated Linux nor your other KVM. And KVM will also support other operating systems like Windows. You want to have a Debian, a Kloxo instance and a Windows box? No problem.

 

[Ree]

shovenose, any reason why?

vanarp, yes there's still some room to grow on the VPS.  I host several sites using a memory hungry CMS, but am still only around 2.5/4 GB used.  HD/CPU/Bandwidth wise I don't use anywhere near the limits.

And yes, hardware issues are one concern, although I was testing a VPS from BlueVM at the same time as HeroicVPS, and it was down for 21 hours the other day, so VPS can also be a problem is the provider/remote hands at the datacenter/whatever are slow!

wlanboy, I actually have the dedi virtualized with a couple guests already (although I used vmware), and I do like the possibilities it opens up, so that's one of the main selling points for keeping it.  Some of the sites I host are for friends/family, and not that I don't trust them, but it would be a pretty big bonus to be able to compartmentalize them in their own VM away from my stuff!

 

[HalfEatenPie]

wlanboy, I actually have the dedi virtualized with a couple guests already (although I used vmware), and I do like the possibilities it opens up, so that's one of the main selling points for keeping it.  Some of the sites I host are for friends/family, and not that I don't trust them, but it would be a pretty big bonus to be able to compartmentalize them in their own VM away from my stuff!

 

I feel like you just convinced yourself there.  

Regardless, depending on how much that server costs (and assuming it isn't putting any strain in your day-to-day activities) I'd personally go with the dedicated server and just not buy any VPSes for a while.  That dedicated server has more than enough space to help you grow for a long time and also you'd get to work with a system with 100% dedicated resources to you instead of noisy neighbors who could bring the entire node down!  

Although I will admit at 4x the cost you're getting about the right amount of hardware but with more RAM and also, the entire point that it's all dedicated resources does help out.  

That's at a personal level though.  I personally own like five dedicated servers and I can state that those dedicated servers rarely go down (and when they do, it's usually due to network issues).  

 

[wlanboy]

Really nice discussion about the topic dedi vs vps.

I want to add a new argument: Benefits of vps:

• different locations
• more bandwith
• shared risk

Maybe some examples will explain my idea in detail:

• Separate mail servers (for different domains)
• Separate dns servers
• Backup space in different location
• Moving closer to users (cache)
• MySQL cluster (master-master replication)

I do prefer 4GB of RAM on 4 location to 24GB of RAM on 1 location.

 

[Ree]

HalfEatenPie, it's $59/mo for the server, and not a problem on the day-to-day.  And actually I guess that's a good way to look at it.  I was leaning towards the VPS because it's a great deal, and cheaper, but if I don't really need cheaper then why worry about that detail.

wlanboy, I completely agree with your examples, they just mostly don't apply in my case (I use Google Apps for email, 3rd party for DNS, have more than enough backup destinations (although I guess more is always better so that one sort of applies), and they're small hobby sites so I'm not too concerned about being closer to users or replication across multiple servers.

In the future if I try hosting something a little more important that'll be something to keep in mind though.

I have a couple weeks before anything is up for renewal, so I'll probably flip-flop back and forth a few more times before then!

Thanks for the input all.