Just want to share my experience today.  Overall, support and effort was great, information was wrong.

My objective:  Rent a dedicated server for my DNN 2.1.2 instance that would utilize a shared sql server that was carefully and routinely backed up and serviced.

Sat Morning: Contacted sales and they said the only way to utilize a shared SQL server for a new dedicated server was to open one of their shared hostings accounts.  Both share the same network and it should be fine.   I did.  Was also confirmed I could use Enterprise Manager with that database.

Sat Afternoon: Discovered I couldn't connect to SQL Server database with EM.  Called support and they said that server was not accessible outside their network.  I had to install EM on the dedicated server and access from there.  Did that.

A short while later:  Realized EM doesn't install on Win 2003 web edition, so had to ask them to rebuild server with upgraded OS.  They did so very quickly for me.

Sat Evening:  Called support and told them I couldn't connect to the database with EM even from my dedicated server.  They said that is correct.  The shared hosting network is separate from the dedicated server network.  That about did me in, but I continued since I have to be up Sunday night.  Decided to install MSDE and check performance and would deal with backups on my own.

Sunday Morning: Server response was good.  I had everything installed but web app emails weren't working through my main smtp server (and two other backup servers).  Called support and they said they block ports 25 and 110 for security reasons.  Couldn't believe it.   I had to use their SMTP server only.  Can't do that since that increases risks of having critical emails being tagged as spam or having the smtp server blocked by recipients.

Sunday at noon:  Had a small mental breakdown.  Then wrote this post to share my struggles.

Godaddy is excellent for domains, their prices are great, and their service is very zealous. But their recent venture in dedicated servers does not have all their facts straight and up front.  Just be careful.  I know what most will say.  You get what you pay for.  I good lesson re-learned.

Jeff

How much did the dedicated server cost? How was the speed? I pay $98 a month to host my own server at calpop.com in downtown Los Angeles. I backup my server each night using a DTS through EM (SQL 2000 Enterprise Manager).

To me it is the only way to run DNN. I can understand when people want a quick site for $20 a month, but if you're paying $70+ a month then taking a old computer, putting Windows 2000 on it and co-locating it is something to look at.

We pay 50 dollars a month for a co-lo server with Eric Smit of htp://www.northcomp.com.  Great guy.  Wrote a book on ASP.NET.  Now that price is for a 1u server and he recommends a 2u, but you won't have *any* issues w/blocked ports or whatever.  It's *your* server.  You do whatever you want w/it.  And he's also the most *helpful* and nice ISP guy I've ever dealt with in 10 years of web stuff (actually started w/Macromedia Director and then Shockwave).  Heck I was paying 1500+ a month for web service back in the day.  *Ack*.

I'd definitely check out Eric's services.  Never heard a bad work about him, and he's extremely flexible.  As a matter of fact, *he* usually is the one answering the phones.  I would dream of going anywhere else.  And no, tho Eric has a program where you can get a discount for attracting customers, we don't accept it.  We just want the guy to stay in business.  He also just moved in January to a warehouse, with gigabit pipes...so he's doin' pretty well.  Service and good prices and putting the customer first will sort of take care of the rest of the issues, ya know? ;-)

Try www.easycgi.com

They have a shared Win2003 hosting plan with shared SQL Server 2000 for about $27/month. Huge bandwidth, diskspace, etc. It's very fast and any technical issues or outages they have are posted publically. I can EM into SQL and even had other web sites and machines use that database from the outside. You can also use any SMTP you want. It's better than my own hosting, or I'd advertise that. lol!

Any comment on http://www.rhemadesign.net/ ?
i am looking a host and would like host my dnn3 portal.
i m come from Hong Kong and looking an oversea host.

Want look for a not much expensive host with 2-4G space/40-50G bandwidth, with ms sqlsever, php, mysql support for my dnn3 portal and i think http://www.rhemadesign.net/ is pretty good one compared with the price offer, but not sure service or speed are okay or not.

thanks for any comments.
Davis.

Thanks for sharing this story - I've been raising these issues in the core team forums regarding hosting for larger companies, and subsequently approached godaddy in reference to hosting, support and some education that is required by both DotNetNuke core team and Hosting companies when doing large scale dnn hosting.

I have been working with a large hosting company working through installs, what's required, how to create custom templates on install, giving an overview on modules and providing them with a couple of resources, and Shaun met with them last week, and the outcome has fantastic in my opinion.

Although they had provided dnn hosting since 2004, September in fact, their understanding of DNN has been limited, and now with the impending release of DNN3.1 and documentation/infrastructure on web farms and in my opinion, this release will be fantastic. I know the guys are working on some important fine tuning and reluctantly, have held the release back a short time while making changes to important areas.

So, I've instigated something that was discussed a while ago about working closely with larger hosting companies to give better advice on how to manage dnn on their system, and believe it will make a better environment all round, as they don't know DNN as well as many of the developers in the community, and the users coming into the market, shouldn't have to go to these forums for support.  They have not come in using dnn, but more to an environment where dnn was provided for them.

But again, good reading here to see the dilemmas / challenges we all have in running business and how vulnerable we are relying on support / knowledge of the tech teams who manage the servers.

And another thing, it's truly amazing how people do things - same industry, different practices..... and we often find out the hard way!!

Nina Meiers

#1. GoDaddy's shared SQL Server is firewalled (best practice).
#2. GoDaddy does not allow open relay SMTP (best practice).

I'm not sure if an increased knowledge of DNN would have helped GoDaddy provide better support.

IMO, there's no point in having a dedicated server for IIS when you have the data on shared. Why not have a dedicated server for SQL Server, and put your web site on shared? I bet DNN can put quite a load on SQL Server, especially when you think of all the separate connections each module on the page is making in one post back.

I'd drop your shared and put SQL on the same server. Eventually go with 2 dedicated servers if you are really getting millions of visitors a day.

 ywkyee, can't lose with that price. Give it a try for a month and see... you can always switch. Trick is to monitor your own hosting to be sure it's good or not.

Well, whether best practice or not is besides the point. The point to me is that he is promised all these things and the sales folks and custoemr service people appear to feed from each other's hands, or have no clue, depending on your level of skepticism.

Personally, I'd rather stick w/a smallish ISP, and not have to worry about the above 'best practice' stuff, since I know the ISP owner and if there's ever an issue w/spam gettin' abused on port 25, he'll just *take care of it*.

And 'best practices' is a well-overused term. Best practice for *who*? Not us customers...though of course it gets twisted into that because, 'well, we'll be able to spend less time worrying about a *potential* problem that has never happened to us, but just might, and yada yada....'

We've been in that situation. Heck, I won't even have anything to do w/domain management anymore. I leave all that to partners.

I too had a horrible experience with Godaddy and DNN.  I intended to use their Deluxe shared hosting plan with a DNN installation.

The first problem I ran into was that the DNN installation has to go into a subdirectory and you don't have access to this subdirectory.  The domain had to be www.yourdomain.com/dnn.   Well what is the point of this?  It rather defeats the purpose don't you think.  They said the only way around this was to have a page redirect.  Well I didn't want to have to do that but thank you very much.  Now I like to tweak and modify and that is basically out of the question not having access to this dnn subdirectory.  The only tweaking you will be doing is through the DNN web interface. 

The next problem was db connectivity. Well fine I will upload my own DNN installation and utilize their SQL Server in order to get what I want.  Wrong, your db connection from the web app is blocked as described above.  Again (GoDaddy) nothing we can do about that.  Their support was friendly and involved but that is only worth so much when their services are sooo locked down. 

Again a good company for domain registration/management but I think they should reconsider hosting DNN.  I realize that you get what you pay for and this was one of the cheaper plans around but I am very happy with Webhost4life.  Especially at $9.95 a month :)

Ok that's even worse corker! I don't know why you guys even defend GoDaddy at all -- what's so great about their domain registration? How hard is it to mess up that? Ohhhh maybe by trying to upsell you on 100 different things and make it impossible for the average person to get a domain. Most of my clients pay me to register domains, because they come back saying they didn't know how to answer all those questions. Same thing with Network Solutions.

Sorry for the delay in response.  I was out having fun on Memorial day. 

Paid about $160 per month for their premium box. Pentium 4, win 2003 Standard, 2 gigs of Ram. Only 1 Hard Drive, though.

I thought it was very fast in comparision to what I was used to.  I really could see how fast things could run if you didn't have to push content over the internet.  DNN pages aren't light.

That included a steep discount for paying a year in advance.

I think they are just a reseller for godaddy.com.   I have a similar site for domains.

I am doubt if http://www.rhemadesign.net/ is a reseller of godaddy.com, as i think that maybe a good hosting for me i will choice later on, but now i heard all -ve impression from godaddy.com, what should i supposed to do? I would like to choice their deluxe plan for my 1st dnn3 portal soon.

someone told godaddy.com does not allow rely SMTP, but that is one thing i need at least. any comments? or any +ve comment on godaddy.com for reference?

Davis.

They use their own SMTP Relay server, smtpout.secureserver.net. You can send out 250 emails per day. As it stands right now, we got the shared hosting install steps for dnn down to 4 I think. It is true that you have to put the install into a subdirectory. The application infrastructure people say that being to do this on root is on the roadmap though. Use a subdomain mask on your domain if you'd like. Yes, the reseller accounts are very easy to spot (Just like my airdepth.net one) , well the general ones anyways (they sell an API if you want to use your own custom web design)