[server-admins] Colocation services quote - Phoenix

[Jonathan Marsden]

Peter and Troy,

>> Notice below they state that they are simply providing wide open 
>> bandwidth (good) without DNS services (obstacle).  Currently
>> Extreme Internet handles all of our DNS entries.  I could probably
>> guess at what our MX and A entries should look like, but I'm not
>> positive, and I've never setup a local DNS server.  I also don't
>> know if it would be wise. I would rather have redundant external
>> name servers I think.  So I suppose we could do this by utilizing a
>> service with our registrar.

I run DNS servers as part of my work, and have done so for years (I
think since 1994?).  About 400 domains DNS are under my control at the
moment.  How many domains are we looking at for Crosswire?  If just a
few (say under ten), I can probably arrange to host DNS for them on one
or more of our work DNS servers at no cost, and I can set up the master
on the crosswire main server and teach you how to configure it (so even
if I and my work servers somehow disappeared, Crosswire would still be
in full control of its own DNS!).

If you prefer not to use other folk's servers at all, even for secondary
DNS, then a very small virtual (FreeBSD) server for just DNS use is
US$15/month from John Companies -- this is actually what we use for one
of our secondary DNS servers at my work.  They are cheap, reliable, and
have good tech support as long as you yourself are a decent server
admin, in our experience.

DNS needs two independent servers, preferably located in different
datacenters, so if one goes away the other still provides DNS for your
domain(s).  In Crosswire's case, you already have one big server, so you
just need one other server to act as a secondary nameserver and you are
all set.

I'm staying out of the "where should we colo" question itself, on
purpose, mostly because I think (especially at the lower end of the
price range) what is 'reliable enough' or 'secure enough' is rather
subjective... I'll just say that $100/mo for a colo with the kind of
bandwidth you are talking about seems a good price to me.

Hoping this helps,

Jonathan