If the typical internal IT department can't provide great services, then they are understaffed, inappropriately staffed, or underfunded. Yes, that's an idealistic view in this world of "every dime must go toward executive compensation". But I don't lose data. ;) -Dave
As much as I dislike AWS, they have many redundant paths and when you store data on their storage it's replicated in multiple places. Their game is tight. Granted, my $100/mo colo seems to be worth $440 in AWS server costs a month, but to be honest my host doesn't get used that full tilt. Then a few months ago when I was in Utila the disk array / Linux kernel barfed and the host went down. Had it been engineered around AWS it wouldn't have been such an issue. The issue seems to recur, and it seems to be a kernel bug of some sort. KVM / SmartArray / Linux / etc. Also, AWS has 32+ datacenters here in Northern VA. The data centers are nuts. This area is now #1 in USA, beating all. There are 5 more buildings or so under construction around the corner (I work out of a datacenter for a streaming music company, and no we don't use AWS we run our own stuff.) - Ethan