Rapidswitch; My Dedicated Server Review
In this post I thought i’d just write a quick review of my old dedicated server provider; Rapidswitch.
Dedicated servers are ideal for individuals and businesses that outgrow their shared and vps hosting plans, expanding the hard drive capacity, memory limits and cpu power. In reality, all you are doing is renting a pre-built computer (server) from a company and also renting space in the rack and internet connection.
Enough of the explanation, you probably knew all that anyway.
I purchased my first dedicated from Rapidswitch in June 2008, their setup wizard was easy and quick to navigate and we had our order placed within 5 minutes. After placing our order, we were given an account login to track the progress of our order and were kept up to date with tickets.
System-Generated Note The following order has been received and will be setup shortly. Processors: Dual Core Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz Memory: 1GB RAM Hard Disk: 1x 160GB 7200rpm OS: Linux - Debian 4.0 Control Panel: None Bandwidth: 4,000GB Bandwidth Per Month Port Speed: Dedicated 100Mbit Port ......
02 Jun 14:16 Staff
Hi, Your order is currently being worked on. Regards Ajaz
02 Jun 14:55 Staff
Hi,
Your server has been setup as required and is ready to use.
Regards
AjazFrom placing our order to recieving a working dedicated server with Debian OS installed, it took around 55 minutes, not too shabby; we were well impressed that we could start work straight after our lunch break. We also got a 2.4Ghz Core2Duo cpu instead of the 2.2Ghz we paid for, not a bad error for Rapidswitch to make.
As explained in my other posts; apache, mysql and php are super easy to install using debian apt-get.
I did come to one major problem during my install and ended up removing part of the kernel, an amateur mistake to make, but I made it. So at 2am, I decided to call technical support and see if anyone was awake; Which was funny because I ended up waking up the technical support guy who was really helpful once he’d recovered from his snooze. He pointed me and helped me get used to KVoMIP which is basically remote computer at a much more advanced level; kicking in from boot up. Here is a screenshot of my recovery, which was so simple to do.
Furthermore, I decided to run random speed tests at intervals, they always ranged from 8Mb/s to 12.5Mb/s peak (maximum a 100Mbs port can handle.) So not too shabby their either as the drop to 8 may be caused on the external speed test server or due to the bandwidth being shared at the RapidSwitch end. Just as a note; the maximum bandwidth you can use on a 10Mb port is 3,200Gb and the maximum you can use on a 100Mb port is 32,000Gb or 32Tb. Many providers offer deals of unlimited usage on 10Mb ports, I don’t consider them deals.
arkin@venus:~$ wget http://------------/100MB_nonzero.bin Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream] Saving to: `100MB_nonzero.bin' 96% [====================================> ] 101,432,312 11.2M/s eta 1s
Support was great, any questions I had were answered within 10 minutes. Although, I was a little annoyed when one technical support member told me we could purchase our cPanel license and reinstall CentOS ourself using KVoMIP and then the next morning, when purchasing the license we were told we couldn’t and had to pay an extra £40 for them to install CentOS and install cPanel; both an easy task to do.
All in all, my time with Rapidswitch has been great and there have been no faults; I have been kept up to date by email about planned maintenance (weeks in advance), latency issues and any other information such as electricity prices and company expansion.
I would rate them.
5/5 for Speed 5/5 for Support 4/5 for Cost (but you do get what you pay for.) 5/5 for Reliability (no downtime apart from 1 night there was a powercut at 5am, back within 5 minutes.)
I hope my review has helped, there is nearly always an offer on at Rapidswitch, if there isn’t; wait for one.
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