Co-location info?

[Euroranger]

I'm in need of some guidance with regard to colocating a server. The server is a simple tower (former game rig) and hosts both the web server and database server. It's a starter rig that will be upgraded to a more capable piece (or pieces) of hardware when the necessity arrives.

That said, I'm hosting the server from my home right now and naturally I'm concerned about uptime, power outages and Comcast's simply marvelous level of internet service (end sarcasm). I've never co-located a box and, so, have no idea what to look for in terms of bandwidth and other handy things I might need. The needs of the site I'm launching will (hopefully) grow as time progresses so the initial bandwidth doesn't need to be monstrous (I'm also trying to do this as frugally as I can get away with).

Any insight into the world of co-locating would be greatly appreciated. Naturally I'm looking at the Atlanta area but any input would be welcome.

[Durzen]

Not being a colo expert, most places I have seen don't like to have tower systems.
Rack mountable systems are the preference.
something you might want to look at as a cheaper solution is a virtual (VMware) instance on a shared server to start with.
yes you need to rebuild your environment on there virtual machine.
but it's got to be cheaper than space rental at this point in time as Datacenter space is always at a premium.
Rackspace is one place that does stuff like this I believe.

If they have a VMware ESX infrastructure then can even do what's called a PtoV with your server.
Physical to Virtual conversion.
works pretty good from my limited experience at work with it.
Oh yea this can easily be migrated to a larger server as well as have redundancy built into it pretty easily.
Also they can actually bring the virtual server to a physical one as well but that is a bit more complicated to pull off.

Anyone else have some suggestions / experience?

/Durz

[Euroranger]

Thanks for the thoughts Durz! Actually, a couple of recent contract gigs have enlightened me to an alternate software setup to power my site and the irony is that should I port the app over to this other software setup, hosting opportunities are much more plentiful and the cost is much lower.

The only real sticking point now is that I'd still get raped on them hosting the database (my current SQL2005 database is right around 10Gb).

My current setup (from home using DNS2Go) is working okay. I've considered getting business class service to the house here and keeping the hosting here but I'm aware of all the advantages of having it hosted elsewhere so I'll end up doing that eventually...either having it hosted or me buying a rackmount server and doing a co-lo.