I’m trying to decide if I should set up my own server at home or I
should use a hosting company for my website. I’m inclined to use a
hosting company at this point because I don’t know have experience
setting up a public facing server that is secure, plus I would need to
upgrade my internet plan. There’s also the issue of reliable power
supply. However, what I’d gain is complete flexbility and lots of
memory and cpu power.
If I go with a hosting company(shared or VPS), the ongoing cost may be
high, plus I would only have very little RAM and disk space. Some of
these companies only offer 256MB of RAM. Is that enough for a
MySQL-driven website? Would I have complete flexibility to install
software such as various RoR gems, RMagick, TinyMce, memcached? I hope
to have millions of users one day.
I’d appreciate it if you could give me some feedbacks. Thanks in
advance.
I’m in the same predicament here, and here are the things to consider
Are you trying to run a business? if so, how important is your
uptime?
If you are charging for a service, uptime becomes very important! If you
have lots of downtime, you are opening your business for a lawsuit. Also
the fact that your services are down, will disappoint many, and they
will be driven away, and you will make no money.
Can you provide reliable service at home? Here are things to
consider:
Connection Speed!!! We are considering using bonded T1, for a total
3mbps. This might be enough to begin with for us, since we are doing
lots of video streaming. But we can increment as needed. The cost though
is $850 a month. If you plan to have lots of traffic make sure your
connection can handle it, otherwise people will not come back.
Have at least two servers instead of one. Go to ebay and get a couple of
P4 towers, or just one more to complement your exsisting setup. Keep the
same OS and settings in both, and run a daily script to backup all of
your data; mysql, ror, etc…
Battery Back ups, or a small power generator is a must! Depending in
your location, ensure you have enough power, for the rate of power
outages with in your area. Make sure you can cover all of the equipment.
The other alternative; web hosting with someone else:
Tech support is a must, when runnig web apps! If you can not quickly
troubleshoot your server, the site goes down, and people will not come
back.
Can they support your software needs? ROR, Rmagick, Mysql, tinymce,
memcached, etc.
Can they support your hardware needs? Space, server speeds, connection
speeds, all at a price that you can afford?
With all that said, shop around here is what I found, they seem to have
incredible packages, but I’m still not convienced about their tech
support:
I’m trying to decide if I should set up my own server at home or I
should use a hosting company for my website. I’m inclined to use a
hosting company at this point because I don’t know have experience
setting up a public facing server that is secure,
There’s the rub. You will get in over your head. Not if, when. And
while it will be a learning experience, you will pull your hair out
and it will be generally very uncomfortable when something goes wrong.
plus I would need to
upgrade my internet plan. There’s also the issue of reliable power
supply. However, what I’d gain is complete flexbility and lots of
memory and cpu power.
You would also get these benefits from colocation, without having to
multi-home Internet connections to your house and install backup
generators In all seriousness, if you’re interested in learning
how to set up a secure, stable platform, consider buying a server and
using it at home for development and testing. You can then throw it
in a colo once you gain experience.
If I go with a hosting company(shared or VPS), the ongoing cost may be
high, plus I would only have very little RAM and disk space. Some of
these companies only offer 256MB of RAM. Is that enough for a
MySQL-driven website? Would I have complete flexibility to install
software such as various RoR gems, RMagick, TinyMce, memcached? I
hope
to have millions of users one day.
On a VPS, you’ll generally have root access and you can install
whatever you’d like.
As a general rule, if you’re a developer, stick to what you’re good
at. I got into the hosting game for a while and it was just too much
stress to handle. That’s my $0.02.
Dreamhost.com looks pretty good but they currently don’t offer VPS(or
they send people to hosting.com for VPS). I’ve sent them an email to
see if they’lloffer VPS in the near future. Thanks for the pointer.
I’m trying to decide if I should set up my own server at home or I
should use a hosting company for my website. I’m inclined to use a
hosting company at this point because I don’t know have experience
setting up a public facing server that is secure, plus I would need to
upgrade my internet plan. There’s also the issue of reliable power
supply. However, what I’d gain is complete flexbility and lots of
memory and cpu power.
If I go with a hosting company(shared or VPS), the ongoing cost may be
high, plus I would only have very little RAM and disk space. Some of
these companies only offer 256MB of RAM. Is that enough for a
MySQL-driven website? Would I have complete flexibility to install
software such as various RoR gems, RMagick, TinyMce, memcached? I hope
to have millions of users one day.
I’d appreciate it if you could give me some feedbacks. Thanks in
advance.
By and large, I wouldn’t even consider running a site from your home.
It’s probably a violation of the terms of service of your ISP (if you’re
in the US) and if you wanted to be in compliance you’d probably have to,
as you say, buy a more expensive plan. That would mean an additional
monthly charge, which would probably be the same price if not much
higher than just using a shared host.
You can get a Dreamhost account super-cheap with coupons - it might only
cost you $20-$30 for the year. If that doesn’t work out, you’re only
out $20-$30. If you’re really worried about scalability, MediaTemple
just released a GridServer plan that looks very intriguing (although
they don’t yet support memcached). I’m going to give them a try: http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/
I’m trying to decide if I should set up my own server at home or I
should use a hosting company for my website. I’m inclined to use a
hosting company at this point because I don’t know have experience
setting up a public facing server that is secure, plus I would need to
upgrade my internet plan. There’s also the issue of reliable power
supply. However, what I’d gain is complete flexbility and lots of
memory and cpu power.
If I go with a hosting company(shared or VPS), the ongoing cost may be
high, plus I would only have very little RAM and disk space. Some of
these companies only offer 256MB of RAM. Is that enough for a
MySQL-driven website? Would I have complete flexibility to install
software such as various RoR gems, RMagick, TinyMce, memcached? I hope
to have millions of users one day.
I’d appreciate it if you could give me some feedbacks. Thanks in
advance.
By and large, I wouldn’t even consider running a site from your home.
It’s probably a violation of the terms of service of your ISP (if you’re
in the US) and if you wanted to be in compliance you’d probably have to,
as you say, buy a more expensive plan. That would mean an additional
monthly charge, which would probably be the same price if not much
higher than just using a shared host.
You can get a Dreamhost account super-cheap with coupons - it might only
cost you $20-$30 for the year. If that doesn’t work out, you’re only
out $20-$30. If you’re really worried about scalability, MediaTemple
just released a GridServer plan that looks very intriguing (although
they don’t yet support memcached). I’m going to give them a try: http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/
Hope it helps,
Tom
MediaTemple looks pretty good. It’ll be another 2 months before my site
goes to production. If you could give me feedbacks on MediaTemple’s
grid server, I’d appreciate it.
I don’t know much about server/network configuation and here’s my
question - Let’s say my domain is mysite.com. Is it possible to set up
my website at one ISP and have my mails for the website, e.g. [email protected], set up at another ISP? How does that work? If I end
up going with a VPS, I’d like to dedicate that VPS to my website and use
another ISP for the emails of my domain. Is that possible?
upgrade my internet plan. There’s also the issue of reliable power
I’d appreciate it if you could give me some feedbacks. Thanks in
cost you $20-$30 for the year. If that doesn’t work out, you’re only
goes to production. If you could give me feedbacks on MediaTemple’s
In all seriousness, if you’re interested in learning