To be honest, I've been in this business for more than ten years, and every time I hear someone ask for the price of a high defense server, I want to laugh. I'm not laughing at them for being amateurs, but at the fact that the market is so chaotic that it can drown people in water. Yesterday, there is a buddy to find me complained that rented a “high defense” server, the results of the DDoS down, all the data lost, the business ran away, the money also hit the water.
These days, choosing a high defense server is like dancing in a minefield, one wrong step, the whole plate is lost. Today I will nag you, how to avoid those pits, spend money on the knife edge.
Don't rush to ask the price first, you have to understand what the hell is a high defense server. It is not an ordinary server with a firewall so simple, the core lies in the ability to carry a large-scale attack, such as DDoS, CC, such as a flood of traffic. I found that a lot of businesses blowing a lot of money, in fact, using the same old hardware, a real attack, directly shut down the matter, the name is “maintenance”.
Do you think it's exasperating? So, the price ranges from a few hundred to tens of thousands a month, and the difference is in those details.
Why is the price so mysterious? I'll break it down with you. Defense capability is the first element, but the defense is divided into many kinds: some can only prevent small DDoS, some can carry T-class traffic; some focus on CC attacks, some can not even protect the application layer.
Don't believe those “unlimited defense” nonsense, there is no unlimited in this line, are marketing routines. Last year I tested a, boasted 500G defense, the actual hit 200G on the break, customer service also said that the “abnormal traffic”.
Bandwidth quality is also a big deal. High-defense servers are expensive, often expensive in the bandwidth - it has to be really exclusive, high-capacity quality bandwidth. I've seen too many cheap, with a shared bandwidth, usually nothing, an attack on the card into the PPT, even normal access is difficult. This is like buying a car, you want to buy a cheap second-hand car, on the highway only to find that the engine leaks oil, repair money than the car is also expensive. Server is the same, save a little money, may be lost into the loss of business stoppage.
Plus configuration, CPU, memory, hard disk, these basic hardware, look the same, but the brand and stability of the sky is the difference. Some service providers in order to pressure the cost, with second-hand or miscellaneous hardware, short-term use is fine, long-term running high load, minutes to crash to you see. My own experience is that I would rather spend a little more money to choose a well-known brand, such as Intel's CPU with enterprise-class SSDs, stability is at least guaranteed.
Do not underestimate this, really encountered an attack, the hardware can not carry, the software defense is no longer good.
Service provider reputation is more important. This line of fish and dragons, many small companies is a purse searcher, take other people's resources to resell, once the accident disappeared. I recommend that you choose those who have many years of reputation of the old service providers, at least they run low probability. In addition, the technical support response speed must be measured, do not just listen to sales blow. I once helped a customer debugging, encountered problems looking for customer service, waiting for half a day to reply, the results of the attack are over - this service, and then cheap can not be.
When it comes to the price, the market price now ranges from about $500 to $30,000 a month, depending on the defense level and configuration. For example, the basic type, which can protect against DDoS below 50G, contains 100M exclusive bandwidth, 8 cores and 16G RAM, the monthly rent may be in the range of 1,000-2,000 yuan. The high-end point, can carry more than 500G attack, with more than 1T bandwidth, top hardware, monthly rent easily over ten thousand. But this is just a surface figure, hidden costs are many, such as setup fees, excess traffic fees, emergency service fees, these have to be keyed in the contract.
How to choose a good deal? My principle is: first look at the needs, then compare the performance, and finally talk about the price. You have to figure out how much defense your business really needs, don't chase high blindly.
For example, a small and medium-sized website, the daily traffic is not large, choose a 200G defense, 500M bandwidth configuration is enough, the monthly rent control in 2000 yuan or less, it can be done. Don't be fooled by sales, saying what “the bigger the better”, it's a waste of money.
Technical details, you have to know something about the basic configuration, otherwise it is easy to be confused. High-defense servers usually work with a combination of hardware firewalls and software rules, and I commonly use a basic anti-CC attack rule that can be set up with iptables, like this:
This code just limits the flow and reduces the connection frequency, but it is quite effective for simple attacks. However, really encountered a large DDoS, but also rely on the service provider's global cleaning center. So, when choosing a service provider, ask about the distribution of their cleaning nodes and response mechanism - I have tested, some cleaning delay up to a few minutes, it is the same as no defense.
For bandwidth, it must be exclusive and have redundant backups. I recommend choosing the kind with BGP lines that can automatically switch to avoid a single point of failure. Data comparison: shared bandwidth may save 500 yuan in monthly rent, but when it comes to attacks, the loss may be thousands or even tens of thousands of business income. This account you have to understand, do not pick up the sesame and lose the watermelon.
Hardware configuration, don't just look at the parameters, check brands and reviews. For example, the same SSD, enterprise-grade and consumer-grade life expectancy difference of several times. I list a simple comparison, you feel it yourself:
Obviously, the extra $1500 buys peace of mind and continued operation. I've seen plenty of examples of cheap flips in this business, so my advice is to lean as far up as your budget allows.
The choice of service providers, I used to score from several dimensions: historical cases, customer reviews, technical support team size. For example, a service provider boasts that it has prevented T-level attacks, you go to check the public report or find peers to inquire, do not trust the official website propaganda.
Also, the contract must be written in the SLA (Service Level Agreement), including response time, compensation terms. These days, even the CDN have to “defense teammates”, the server must be black and white to protect themselves.
If you're on a tight budget but want to boost your defense, consider pairing it with a CDN to spread out the traffic.
Like the ones I've used.CDN07It's global acceleration and hide the real IP function, it really makes the defense to a higher level - and affordable, a few hundred dollars a month can handle most of the static resource protection. This is not advertising, is my actual test out: to hide the server IP, the attacker can only hit the CDN node, and CDN07 nodes, cleaning capacity, equivalent to the server added road insurance. Of course, the specific need to add, depending on the type of your business, dynamic content may have to do another configuration.
To summarize, the key to choosing a high defense server is not to find the cheapest, but to find the most suitable. The pits I have stepped on over the years are summarized in one sentence: defense should be enough, bandwidth should be solid, hardware should be reliable, and service should be in place.
Price, medium configuration (200G defense, 500M bandwidth, 16 cores and 32G memory) monthly rent in the range of 3000-5000 yuan, is considered a cost-effective choice. But don't forget, this is only part of the follow-up maintenance and monitoring is equally important.
A final rant: network security is a long-lasting war, and a high-defense server is only the first line of defense. Regularly backing up data, updating patches, monitoring logs, all these clichés are really life-saving. Don't wait until you get hit before you regret it, then the money and business may be gone.
I hope I can help you save some money and go through the process less - in this business, the experience is all blood and tears, share it out for the peace of mind of all of us.