Dedicated Server Question

[47networks]

A company I am working for is interested in the Dedicated 2 & 4 Plans. There are a few questions I was wondering if someone could answer for me:

With a dedicated server, what is the setup time?
Can you create accounts that have access to their own WHM?
Does the admin of the system have root access, or does Alpha Omega administor the server?
Is there an additional cost to have software upgraded or installed on a server once running?
Is there cost for support of the server?
Are Cpanel & WHM are both free, or is it just CPANEL?

Sorry for the lengthy list.. just a few quick responses I think :-)

Thanks

- 47networks

[admin]

Thank you for your interest in AOH's dedicated server line. I will try to answer your questions below:

Setup time is typically 2-4 days depending upon the amount of further customization required by the customer. We typically take somewhat of a laundry list of items in addition to the "normal" set of requirements depending upon customer needs. This may include SSL certs, fantastico, imagemagick, stats monitoring, server monitoring, backups,etc. The addons can certainly effect pricing and setup time.

Dedicated server customers are allowed to create reseller accounts that give the server owner the ability to provide WHM access to their customers.

Root access can be handled either way. Typically if the customer requires a good deal of hand-holding (which is fine), we prefer to keep root to ourselves. However, if the customer is somewhat familiar with server management, we are happy to provide root access. However, additional charges may apply if we spend alot of time fixing things that were broken due to the access provided.

There may be additional cost to install some things, it typically just depends on what is requested. Minor things like forums, imagemagick, etc are usually free.

Support and monitoring is included in the cost of the server. Again, it typically depends on what the customer is asking us to support and the amount of time that is consumed by their requests. This hasn't been an issue lately. We expect a certain amount of elevated support time with the setup of the server.

The cost of cpanel and WHM are included in the cost of the server.

No need to appologize for the questions. Please let me know if you have any additional questions or if I failed to properly answer any of the above questions.

[47networks]

Seems like all of my questions were answered. What type of routine maintenance is done on the servers? Basically, all I believe they are looking for is a server box with the following:

CPANEL & WHM
PHP/MySQL
PHPMyAdmin
Perl
ImageMagick
CGI

Since most of these fall under CPANEL.. I think there really isn't a lot of additional time except for Perl & ImageMagick.. but I'm not sure :-)

[admin]

Routine maintenance is limited to what is required to keep the server running and installing patches as necessary. We monitor disk space, processes, server load, etc. So if there is something that requires our attention, we are able to identify it before something goes really bad. As far as Imagemagick installation, that is not a problem at all. The install takes about 10-15 minutes. Perl comes standard. If any other perl modules are required we can assist with those installations or they can be done from WHM.