Questions about dedicated servers

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This Hostgator thread was started by dang on 2009-08-12 16:40:47:

I’m very much interested in moving my sites to HG and starting off with at least the basic dedicated server package. My fears are that I know almost nothing about servers and as I understand it, the server will initially be set up for me but after that I will be responsible for keeping the server running smoothly and for resolving certain issues should they come up.

My question is where can I go to learn about maintaining a server and how to resolve those issues ( I don’t even know what those might be). Can someone point me to a good website or book? That way I’ll have a better idea of what I might be getting myself into before I make the jump.

And btw, the reason why I’m considering a dedicated server is that I design a fair amount of websites for movies. The major players of course have their own servers but I’d like to start offering some of the independent studios the option of having my company (wink wink!) host their sites. These sites are mostly done in flash and I think the biggest bandwidth and resource hog would be the film clips and trailers. How much of a burden is streaming movie clips on available resources and would it be prudent to say that the dedicated would be the wise choice or would I be able to get away with a reseller account? Movie sites definitely peak as the opening date gets closer and then drops off to next to nothing after 3-4 weeks.

thank you.

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