[Tfug] The Semiannual Colocation question

[Michael Schultheiss]

Adrian wrote:
> In general, you have much more control over a machine that you
> collocate. This means you can pick the OS brand and version you are
> most comfortable with, the software versions you want to use, change
> configurations at will, etc. In a dedicated machine you may or may not
> have root access, the ability to change configurations, or even do
> updates. All the provider is guaranteeing is that they won;t host
> someone elses website off the same box as you...

The dedicated machines I've used (several machines over several
different providers) have all been full root access and a variety of
available OS choices.  If they don't have the OS of your choice, you can
usually get another OS if you can provide it to the provider.

> If your only interest is hosting a website, then a dedicated, or even a 
> shared, machine makes far more sense. For more advanced things, like 
> providing your own mail server, a place to tunnel SSH to and fro, 
> creating/manipulating multiple databases, hosting custom applications, or 
> deploying any of the above at will, a collocated machine is usually 
> necessary.

I can do all of those on my dedicated machine.  Only difference from my
old colo'd box is that it has way more bandwidth and newer hardware.  I
also don't have physical access to it, but if I'm not maintaining the
hardware, I typically don't need physical access to it.