Yeah, they never answer the phone for support. That means it's a mom and pop reseller most likely using another hosting provider reselling virtual machines. Trust me, I've dealt with these types of people and businesses. Anyone can become a dedicated server reseller, it's almost like finding a lawyer, you can spit out a window and hit one.

I have my own servers at a colo myself, it is the better way to go if you want an actual dedicated server with physical and remote support from the staff that are required to answer the phone and email within a certain time frame.

Alot of datacentres network the storage into a SAN for a reason -

When your server dies - your data does not. They can just setup another server and link that to the clustered SAN for your files.

I know a host that goes one furthur and clusters the actual web servers themselves, so very very rarely does the site go down, because even if a node goes down, the others can pick up the load.

Yup. Many many features and benefits to using virtual servers with a SAN/NAS backend to store the actual data.

Also if they're using VMware ESX/GSX, etc, they can migrate your virtual server from one machine to the next if they need to move it while keeping it running, you'll never know.

I am new to this forums.........