What kind of server do you run?

[bb_wolfe]

Even when the local datacenter wants $300 a month for 1U and 1mbps? Thats pretty fucking expensive... Well I may be able to snag a U or two or slip in a tower at my fathers office. I have a key, maybe I'll install them when they're not there haha. They won't notice

Better yet, run the sites on THEIR boxes!

 

[bb_wolfe]

Brag Time!....got quite a few servers but this one is my fav. It hosts my new social sites this year.

4x Quadcore Opteron 8346
8gb registered memory
2 x 1tb hdds
redhat enterprise 64bit
cpanel
128 ips.
2x 2gbit ethernet cards

it's kind of a challenge to fill it with quality hand made sites. hoping to have it filled by the end of the year. If I accomplish that I get to get another one.

That's a great setup! :bowdown:

 

[Bofu2U]

Are you really that stupid? Is anyone?


Good colo @ $99/month for one box or 1mb u/d @ $95/month for unlimited boxes.

Wow, you're a real leet haxor. $100 says you have like 20 sites tops and none break the 10K/month threshold.

Alright, it's about time someone called you on it. Are YOU that STUPID? 99/month to colo one box considering the bandwidth is a good deal considering you're going to split 1 mbps u/d for "unlimited" boxes? You show me one site that makes over 10K that doesn't burst over 1mb up during it's biggest peak time. I'm not going to lie and say I make a shitload of money, but hosting I do know about.

Colo's are configured (if you choose a good DC) to burst up to 100 to cover costs, as long as the average monthly GB's dont go over the "cap". In other words, your sites wont buckle if you get on Slashdot / Digg.

"At home" connections dont burst. They're hard capped and can actually affect performance of your sites, and therefore, your income. But that's just bandwidth, let's keep going.

Colo also includes UPS Power and voltage metered coverage. In other words, before the power goes out the backup generators kick in. The DC I had experience with could run servers for 2 weeks with onsite resources (I believe). What if your power goes out at home? Not to mention you'll have to pay extra depending on whether or not your city/town wants to raise the power costs. Fuck that risk, colo covers it and puts a uptime guarantee on it.

Oh, that reminds me - uptime guarantee's! Most colo providers give a 99.8%+ Network guarantee. Whens the last time you saw a 1mbps up provider giving an uptime guarantee (that WAS NOT a datacenter)? Go with the proven results.

Physical security. Keycards. Retinal scans. Climate controlled rooms with non-conductive fire prevention. Fire at home? Bye bye servers!

I'm sure there's more I can put for in depth, but the only advantage you have for doing this at home is being able to physically be there to change hardware etc, but any good DC has remote hands around $40-$60 an hour and hardware on site (I'm assuming you can get that rate through talking, I know I did).

 

[bb_wolfe]

Alright, it's about time someone called you on it. Are YOU that STUPID? 99/month to colo one box considering the bandwidth is a good deal considering you're going to split 1 mbps u/d for "unlimited" boxes? You show me one site that makes over 10K that doesn't burst over 1mb up during it's biggest peak time. I'm not going to lie and say I make a shitload of money, but hosting I do know about.

Colo's are configured (if you choose a good DC) to burst up to 100 to cover costs, as long as the average monthly GB's dont go over the "cap". In other words, your sites wont buckle if you get on Slashdot / Digg.

"At home" connections dont burst. They're hard capped and can actually affect performance of your sites, and therefore, your income. But that's just bandwidth, let's keep going.

Colo also includes UPS Power and voltage metered coverage. In other words, before the power goes out the backup generators kick in. The DC I had experience with could run servers for 2 weeks with onsite resources (I believe). What if your power goes out at home? Not to mention you'll have to pay extra depending on whether or not your city/town wants to raise the power costs. Fuck that risk, colo covers it and puts a uptime guarantee on it.

Oh, that reminds me - uptime guarantee's! Most colo providers give a 99.8%+ Network guarantee. Whens the last time you saw a 1mbps up provider giving an uptime guarantee (that WAS NOT a datacenter)? Go with the proven results.

Physical security. Keycards. Retinal scans. Climate controlled rooms with non-conductive fire prevention. Fire at home? Bye bye servers!

I'm sure there's more I can put for in depth, but the only advantage you have for doing this at home is being able to physically be there to change hardware etc, but any good DC has remote hands around $40-$60 an hour and hardware on site (I'm assuming you can get that rate through talking, I know I did).

Call me all you want, I still make mad money hosting. Flames from you are like water on a duck.

The difference between you and I is my customers aren't small potatoes and need a lot more than just landing page support. I took a job this Spring after 7 year of self employment because an existing customer switched jobs, took a high ranking state job, and insisted I manage things. I also get a ridiculous salary for what I do, so flame all you want, won't change a thing.

Maybe I'm a little green to the needs of the AM industry, you have me there, but don't assume that because someone hosts a site at home it's not worthwhile.

And for what it's worth, you spewed a ton of academic textbook/corporate IT policy verbage in your post, but nowhere did you address the simple business requirement the guy wanting the server had:

Free hosting is the goal, but I'm going to make sure its stable before I transfer anything. I plan to use LAMP and Direct Admin.

For 1K WP sites, he's not going to function unless he's got a little horsepower under his belt.

I'm not saying your points are wrong in the grand scheme of things, but for fucks sake, don't discredit my solution simply because you want to play Internet Tough Guy. No matter how you slice it, poor solutions don't earn, and I earn plenty.

 

[Deliguy]

I'm inclined to agree with Bofu2U. I do both, I have servers setup in the office on our fiber line and at a server company. The server company is way better. We used to loose servers, there'd be more downtime. We'd have to wake up in the middle of the night and rush over there to sit in the dark listening to our UPS and generators beep. Not to mention its not free for unlimited servers. You got to buy ips which from a provider tend to be quite a bit more expensive. Then theres the bandwidth as he mentioned and was absolutely correct on. Then theres router collisions you got to deal with. Once you get more than a couple servers the routers and switches start to get VERY expensive. Then theres stuff like OS and cpanel licenses which are much cheaper from a dedicated provider. You run into all these same problems with a colo because we won't even discuss costs of insurances to get reimbursed if your servers die or theres a fire. My list of bitching can go on for pages. Just know it seems like a great cost saving and custom idea at first, but in the end it really sucks ass and will hold you back.

 

[bb_wolfe]

I'm inclined to agree with Bofu2U. I do both, I have servers setup in the office on our fiber line and at a server company. The server company is way better. We used to loose servers, there'd be more downtime. We'd have to wake up in the middle of the night and rush over there to sit in the dark listening to our UPS and generators beep. Not to mention its not free for unlimited servers. You got to buy ips which from a provider tend to be quite a bit more expensive. Then theres the bandwidth as he mentioned and was absolutely correct on. Then theres router collisions you got to deal with. Once you get more than a couple servers the routers and switches start to get VERY expensive. Then theres stuff like OS and cpanel licenses which are much cheaper from a dedicated provider. You run into all these same problems with a colo because we won't even discuss costs of insurances to get reimbursed if your servers die or theres a fire. My list of bitching can go on for pages. Just know it seems like a great cost saving and custom idea at first, but in the end it really sucks ass and will hold you back.

I know, and you're right if you have a lot of boxes, sites, etc.

My only point is the guy wanted to get the most out of his idea and make it scalable, so I told him what I'd do. It goes without saying that it's not the only solution.

 

[Bofu2U]

Call me all you want, I still make mad money hosting. Flames from you are like water on a duck.

The difference between you and I is my customers aren't small potatoes and need a lot more than just landing page support. I took a job this Spring after 7 year of self employment because an existing customer switched jobs, took a high ranking state job, and insisted I manage things. I also get a ridiculous salary for what I do, so flame all you want, won't change a thing.

Maybe I'm a little green to the needs of the AM industry, you have me there, but don't assume that because someone hosts a site at home it's not worthwhile.

And for what it's worth, you spewed a ton of academic textbook/corporate IT policy verbage in your post, but nowhere did you address the simple business requirement the guy wanting the server had:

For 1K WP sites, he's not going to function unless he's got a little horsepower under his belt.

I'm not saying your points are wrong in the grand scheme of things, but for fucks sake, don't discredit my solution simply because you want to play Internet Tough Guy. No matter how you slice it, poor solutions don't earn, and I earn plenty.

Just wanted to follow up real quick. But first, I just wanted to say - water on a duck? I've never heard that one before, props!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion obviously and I agree, in certain situations your solution will be best. But in the overall scheme of things, my OPINION is that colo/renting would be the better solution.

As for his requirements, I would say renting a older dual xeon or even a higher end single proc opteron/ath with 1-2GB RAM would be interesting. Just watch out on the budget boxes the drive speed is often 5400 not 7200. Go with 7200 or if you really can, get a box with 2 GB RAM and a 10,000RPM Raptor - You'll be FLYIN with your data!

Edit: showing my age, now dual core's are the price of the older single cores. Dual core with the 2gb/10K would be very nice for scraping, and even only on a 10MBPS port (burst to 100) you should be able to handle all of the spidering.

 

[bb_wolfe]

Just wanted to follow up real quick. But first, I just wanted to say - water on a duck? I've never heard that one before, props!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion obviously and I agree, in certain situations your solution will be best. But in the overall scheme of things, my OPINION is that colo/renting would be the better solution.

As for his requirements, I would say renting a older dual xeon or even a higher end single proc opteron/ath with 1-2GB RAM would be interesting. Just watch out on the budget boxes the drive speed is often 5400 not 7200. Go with 7200 or if you really can, get a box with 2 GB RAM and a 10,000RPM Raptor - You'll be FLYIN with your data!

Edit: showing my age, now dual core's are the price of the older single cores. Dual core with the 2gb/10K would be very nice for scraping, and even only on a 10MBPS port (burst to 100) you should be able to handle all of the spidering.

Thanks dude, sorry I got kind of wicked earlier.

 

[Fuzzo]

Running on two VPS's here, and a few shared hosting accounts. Can't wait till I need as much as Eli ha!

 

[JamesH]

Thanks guys for keeping the bitching down, some good info was posted up there. I honestly only need a dedi for possibly running the script to setup the 1000-1500 MU accounts and sub domains, however after that its nothing but making requests to the MySQL db. No scraping will be needed (fuck, I got a DMCA today). So I honestly think an affordable budget server would be perfect. But I'll experiment for sure. And something about having a ton of servers running in the closet sounds pretty cool, knowing there there and everything. But I agree, dedi/colo is the best way to go.

 

[xmcp123]

Thanks guys for keeping the bitching down, some good info was posted up there. I honestly only need a dedi for possibly running the script to setup the 1000-1500 MU accounts and sub domains, however after that its nothing but making requests to the MySQL db. No scraping will be needed (fuck, I got a DMCA today). So I honestly think an affordable budget server would be perfect. But I'll experiment for sure. And something about having a ton of servers running in the closet sounds pretty cool, knowing there there and everything. But I agree, dedi/colo is the best way to go.

If they can figure out who you are to send the DMCA, you need some more anonymity

 

[JamesH]

If they can figure out who you are to send the DMCA, you need some more anonymity

Haha, they sent it to my host, who then contacted me. My host is uber white hat, and said they would shut the site down if they sent an 'official' DMCA. So if they sent it to my host rather than to me, I must be somewhat invisible eh? Any tips on how I can find out if I am, and how to hide if I'm not?

 

[-Matt-]

2 x 1tb hdds

What a pathetically small amount of disk space.