i need to find someone to admin my server. i remember seeing a company that does that but i can't remember what their name was. anyone have any good referrals for that sorta thing?

To what extent do you need administration? Is it going to be a day-in, day-out thing or are you looking for monitoring/security/backup services?If it's more along the line of the latter, you can look into our Advanced Services group and whenever you need specific admin work done in addition, you can request it on an hourly basis. If you're looking for a bit more daily administration, a few folks around here might have some recommendations.

i need someone to set up my server and get things running. i've had my server here for about 10 years but my admin has split and now i'm up a creek. i can't afford to pay a fortune, he wasn't getting paid anything. the most i did was bug him every few months to add a domain and that's about it. he didn't update anything and i got hacked a few years ago. my sites are really basic, nothing too crazy.

i had found a company that did admin stuffs for $60 a month or $100 per incident but i can't remember the name of them. i'm wondering if i should just switch to host gator. it seems really strange that i would have to move from the planet to one of their customers to get what i need. i just dont know what to do.

since my server is 10 years old i want to update that too. so i'm going to have to get a new server, move everything over and get it all set up again. i've got freebsd on there now but none of the control panels work with that so i guess i have to switch over to red hat or something. i dont even know if i should get a control panel because of the security risk?

what's strange is i looked at a cheaper server and it's $15 a month for red hat, $40 a month for decent ram, etc.. it seems like if you get an el cheapo server, you get charged for this and that and if you get a sale on a more expensive one and you get all that stuff included and it ends up being the same price for el cheapo as it is for the better server. but i cant even worry about getting the server until i figure out how i'm going to set it up and find someone to help me manage it.

any suggestions?

On the setup side, our advanced services team can work with you to get everything up and running ... here are the currently-offered packages: http://www.theplanet.com/server-management/

The advanced services group was born out of The Planet's acquisition of Touch Support, a third-party management and administration company. It's not uncommon to go up or down the IT stack when it comes to your infrastructure ... many of our resellers provide additional services or features with the servers they resell, so their product catalog may be geared more toward what you need at a given time.

Because small tasks like adding domains are made much easier by control panels, if you're interested in handling those yourself, there are loads of resources available online and in this community. Once the server is cruising along, it sounds like you won't need much in the way of daily administration, so I'd recommend taking a moment to chat with one of our reps about how advanced services to get you exactly what you need to hit the ground running (and how they can help if you need anything down the road).

Yeah, I have already spoken to a few planet reps. The first quote was around $1,500 a month and then a revised quote was around $400 a month. With backup $40 a month, monitoring $15 a month, security $40 a month and on demand Admin at $37.50 a hour that's $95 a month with no admin and that's not even counting the server itself. It would just be nice if there was an economical managed package without getting nickled and dimed to death.. err.. $five and $ten'd to death.

What seems strange to me is that since my server is almost 10 years old, I can get the same one now for about $61 a month, for which I have paid over double for, for the past decade. I can't get that deal unless I get an entirely new server, which seems like a huge waste of time and resources.

Since I couldn't get the answers I need from the reps, that's why I am here asking you. With everyone pointing to everyone else I am still not finding what I need here. It might be nice if The Planet had a list of their resellers so that we could check them out and utilize their services if our needs cannot be served at The Planet itself.

By chance when scouring theplanet.com for an answer, I found a Host Gator quote on theplanet.com/web-hosting-resellers, which led me to their website. Their cheapest fully managed server is $175 which includes everything. It just seems really strange to me that I have to move from The Planet to another one of its customers to get my needs filled. I really don't want to go through all the hassle but I don't really see any other option.