Dedicated Servers

[Interwired]

I have a large customer who I provide website development support to, who's site is currently hosted on a Dedicated server at another host.

They pay $5k a year for this dedicated server rental, with a 10GB bandwidth limit. They are constantly hitting 30gb a month, and therefore paying overusage charges of $500 a month ! (despite the same site never having any overusage charges at there previous host which only gave a 5gb limit)

Recently it was discovered the server has been hit by Trojan virus's. They were then told that the server does not reside behind the hosters firewall, and to move it behind the firewall they want a further $1000 to move it there, and an extra $250 a year, plus $300 for any changes. (not sure what changes)

When they purchased the hosting plan they were not told any of this and were not given any information on recomended security setups.

They have since installed virus checkers, trojan checkers and a personal firewall.

They are asking my opinion on what they should do. I would love to offer them a dedicated server, from vortech, but Im not a server admin and dont really want to get involved in all of it. Plus im worried about them having all the same problems.

Is it normal for a dedicated server from a hosting company to not live inside their firewall ?

Are they being seriously ripped off by this company?

To me those fees seem awful high regardless of the problems you've had.
Were getting out of Dedicated servers altogether but we offer excellent colocation services and will soon be offering custom built servers, made to order specifically for colocation.

For a 1U colo with 100 GB of transfer we charge $99.00, so if you ever decided to take on a server for your client, we certainly could save you alot of money in the long run.
Regardless, usually anyone wanting a firewall must provide one themselves or least pay extra for the service. Most NOC's do not provide firewall services included with their packages.

[Funnyhat]

Also check out rackshack.net in the last six months I have setup 3 servers with these guys... their support is good but prices are awesome... It us un managed so if you do not understand linux it is not for you.

Just a side note their support is not as good as Vortechs .

[Brangwyn]

If it's a dedicated Server, why not install your own firewall, or depending on the OS at least use the inbuilt features provided by the OS, ie Unix/Linux IPTables, Windows Use IP Security.