Co-locating servers

just_grass · 16 May 2006 at 14:33

Thinking of buying a secondhand or cheap server....

mainly to host my e-mails and domain... (to take over from my home pc), but also thinking about it possibly being a website hosting server for people to use, obviously to pay me for...

I dont think i'd be buying a server or hosting it anywhere if i can't get people to host a site on it, as i dont think i could afford to do it.

Ive found some co-location hosting at £39/month with £15 setup - 300GB traffic 10ips 99.97% uptime etc... in maidenhead.

sounds a good deal - for a 1u server.

I expect to be looking for at least, a dual pIII 1ghz, 2gb RAM spec server with ample hdd space - most likely sata. (cheaper disks).... and this is most likely overkill.... not sure though... - would most likely be windows based, as i know nothing else, and can be easier to manage (vpn / rdp).....

Any ideas? or suggestions?

Any ideas for cheap servers either reconditioned or used? probably around £500ish.

Also, to get people to know about the server - whats the best way to advertise it before setting things in motion?

And one final thing, roughly how many concurrent website sessions / max sites would that server handle? - (bearing in mind it could be running x amount of sites with my mail server software too.)

Thanks,
Alex

Toytown · 16 May 2006 at 15:49

Any ideas for cheap servers either reconditioned or used? probably around £500ish.

No sure if im allowed to mention them, but a very well known computer company does a great deal on 1u servers for £379 without VAT and delivery, you would get a

1u server
2.8ghz P4 Xeon (with space on board for another processor)
512MB DDR2 memory
80GB SATA Harddrive
etc etc

This would be a lot faster than the dual p3 you were thinking about and is around the same budget. Also you could just just buy a 1u case, and put in your own components, this is what i did, and my colocated server is still going strong today (18 months later).

1 thing i would recommend is that you have everything running stable and all your networking setup before hand, so that once its at the provider they simply have to place it in there racks. Changing network settings can be a pain once you have it colocated as one little mistake means you can no longer access the machine, and the provider can charge high hourly rates to fix it.

EDIT - Theres a lot of providers that will also host MicroATX/Shuttle boxes for the same monthly price your being charged, some of the reputable (but cheap) companies will also give you up to 2000GB of monthly traffic for £39 month.

just_grass · 17 May 2006 at 07:53

I found both the server and the co-location center! - thanks for posting them - i think that settles definetly the co-location! - and very nearly the server!

I just need to know how many sessions/sites the server would cope with - or some sort of idea on the load.

i think most co-location places ive been looking at suggest setting up before hand and some insist that you do. - I definetly will be.

Are we talking 10s/20 sites? - or 50+ sites? or more?!

Thanks for your reply.
Alex

Topgun · 17 May 2006 at 08:16

It depends entirely on the type of content. If it's just static pages then literally gigabits of throughput should be possible providing you have enough memory and network capacity. In terms of dynamically generated content, a Xeon 2.8 with 1GB of ram should be able to cope with +200 concurrent vbulletin sessions.

daz · 17 May 2006 at 11:33

Toytown said:
etc etc

This would be a lot faster than the dual p3 you were thinking about and is around the same budget.

A dual P3 with SCSI will be a perform similarly at web and email hosting to a single processor SATA machine 2.8ghz. The only issue is of course warranty.

The amount of sites you can put on it depends entirely on the sites in question. You could probably host 500 or more static, modest traffic sites, and I'm sure the server wouldn't have a problem pushing hundreds of gigabytes a month (probably with SATA disks being the bottleneck). Conversely, script heavy sites such as forums with lots of users may max out the server before you've pushed 100GB of transfer (with the CPU being a bottleneck).

One other thing I'd like to point out: £15 per U per month is very very very cheap. You have to consider that you're handing over £500 worth of equipment to them. Certainly a dual processor server or a Dell poweredge will use more than £15 worth of electricity a month... so you have to wonder where the company is making money if at all, and you have to wonder how much longer they will be in business. Considering the OP has mentioned Maidenhead, that sounds like Poundhost's datacentre. I'm not sure how much connectivity they have, but it's not huge, and really not as good as being located in Redbus, Telecity, Tyco etc in London.

I notice you also haven't budgeted for a control panel. I would seriously recommend getting at least something to manage your sites with. DirectAdmin is a cheap and cheerful option at something like ~£10 a month, whilst things like cPanel and Plesk and generally around £20 a month.

Toytown · 17 May 2006 at 11:58

I notice you also haven't budgeted for a control panel. I would seriously recommend getting at least something to manage your sites with.

This is good advice, if your hosting other peoples sites, then this is a must, otherwise your going to find yourself working overtime setting stuff up.

£15 per U per month is very very very cheap

That was just the setup, 39 a month for the hosting, which is still cheap, but if you look around you can get good hosts for that amount of money.

daz · 17 May 2006 at 12:10

Toytown said:
That was just the setup, 39 a month for the hosting, which is still cheap, but if you look around you can get good hosts for that amount of money.

Oops, totaly missed that. I have to admit I do have a busted eye at the moment.

£39 is a fair price to pay for the maidenhead datacentre. Raise your budget by just a tenner a month though, and you can co-locate with someone like www.2host.co.uk (who we use) in Redbus. Alternatively, www.register1.net has pretty cheap dedicated servers (i think £59 if paid monthly). They use the PowerEdge SC1425s for the dedicated servers.

One thing you might want to check out is whether you have an APC remote reboot port included with your co-location/dedicated server deal - so that you can reboot your server whenever is needed instead of raising a support ticket and waiting for one of their techs to go and flick the power for you - it could take 30 minutes or so.

just_grass · 17 May 2006 at 13:54

i have discovered www.49pence.com - i think heavily suggested by Toytown. - These offer apc reboots afaik, and 2000gb traffic for 0.5amp power.

I did completely oversee the control panel for managing sites.

I have looked at cpanel and awbs?

i wont be going into domain registration aswell, because, from what ive read, it costs a lot to have this facility.

What control panel would you suggest for me to allow people to
1) signup for hosting,
2) and possibly for me to host a nameserver and dns for their domains(which they buy elsewhere, unless it is far cheaper than i thought originally)
3) accomodate billing and payments

do these control panels automatically setup usernames and password privilages to space on the disk and create ftp accounts for them to use? - how/what do they do exactly?

On another note, - do i have to register a trading name to trade under or can i just bung up a site and call myself something - without registering it with an authority?

Sorry for these questions... but i am more technically minded and capable of running/managing the server/ongoing maintanance but the initial setup i'm finding a little confusing to say the least!!

Thanks again!!
Alex

daz · 17 May 2006 at 14:14

cPanel is very good as it manages a lot of the functions for you. You can create accounts easily enough from the WHM interface, and change all manner of settings from within it.

You might want to look at something like modernbill (http://www.moderngigabyte.net/modernbill/web-host-billing.htm) for cPanel auto account creation and billing management.

If you are trading, you should inform the Inland Revenue - there is no need to setup a limited company to start with, although nothing is stopping you. Often the increased amount of paperwork makes it a hassle, especially when just starting your business. Good luck with your venture.

Topgun · 17 May 2006 at 14:57

http://www.vhcs.net/new/ is a pretty good free control panel

just_grass · 17 May 2006 at 17:20

i think cpanel will do the trick for this - i don't mind paying for something thats very well known/used.

What OS is best for this type of server? - i am very fluent in windows server (2k and 2k3 enterprise) and have a legit copy of backoffice server 2k......

do i use this? as i can set it up, but not have the resiliance and reliablilty of a linux server (of which i haven't a clue with atm)

I would prefer to use linux - for reliablilty etc... but how easy is it to manage remotely? - with win servers, rdp/vpn and other measures can be used.

Alex

Beansprout · 17 May 2006 at 17:23

I really wouldn't do co-location for one machine run by a single person. I'd go with renting a server.

Check out www.ochostreview.co.uk for reviews on a range of decent hosts - the few dedicated providers from there that come to mind are 2host, Clook, Catalyst2 and Register1.

Edit: As for the OS, it doesn't really matter unless you want to run Microsoft-specific stuff such as ASP, in which case you need Windows. I'd always choose *nix for a server (assuming I'll never need MS stuff) but above that I'd advise you to choose what you're comfortable with.

If you know nothing it might be fun to start out running a server, but your clients won't think that

I tinkered with remote linux servers for ~18months before I went into business with them

In terms of control panels cPanel doesn't run on Windows however Plesk and Helm do, and they're both very good.

Beansprout · 17 May 2006 at 17:32

just_grass said:
i wont be going into domain registration aswell, because, from what ive read, it costs a lot to have this facility.

No it doesn't

It need only cost a lot if you want a full Nominet membership for .uk registrations, which is £400+VAT reg fee then £100+VAT/year membership fee, and it entitles you to their cost-price domain registrations (will save you about £1/domain if I could find the pricing on their site...) and your own tag (registration agent), which looks more professional.

For com/net/org/biz/info/name/etc you can use a DirectI or Enom reseller account (and there's lots more besides), which will provide you with an API to hook into your ordering system (popular ordering systems are Modernbill, Client Exec and Whois.Cart).

It's really very simple and incredibly cheap

daz · 17 May 2006 at 18:03

If you're going for a windows based server, a hardware firewall would be a good idea too.

bigredshark · 18 May 2006 at 06:59

to be honest, if you're not completely clued up as to how it works, stop now. Besides, windows shared hosting is done by big reputable companies for stupid money these days, what exactly can you offer over them?

My employers offer windows shared hosting, i don't know the exact details of what they get but it's not expensive and we've got our own core network, edge routers, idp firewalls and a 24/7 NOC. i think you'd be crazy to try and get into it personally

bigredshark · 18 May 2006 at 07:01

daz said:
If you're going for a windows based server, a hardware firewall would be a good idea too.

thats a bit ott, patch it and it's not a worry. we have most server behin netscreens and a few exposed, the only difference is the exposed ones don't generate a dozen odd attack detection emails an hour. none have ever been compromised.

CoXeY · 18 May 2006 at 14:17

If your going down the Microsoft route then I think you will need to license the server under the Server Provider License Agreement (SPLA). I could be wrong (and i'm sure i'll be corrected if i am

) but I do not believe you can provide a hosted service for multiple end-users under the standard EULA - assuming you want this to be legit of course

Dan.

just_grass · 18 May 2006 at 16:17

CoXeY said:
If your going down the Microsoft route then I think you will need to license the server under the Server Provider License Agreement (SPLA). I could be wrong (and i'm sure i'll be corrected if i am ) but I do not believe you can provide a hosted service for multiple end-users under the standard EULA - assuming you want this to be legit of course

Dan.

Yea that'll settle it then, We're going down the linux route. Possible debian or Suse.

Using awbs.com's front end billing and management system.

49pence.com's co-location.

dell or self-build server.

enom for domain registrations

All final decisions as yet.

Alex

Topgun · 18 May 2006 at 19:46

Mate the only way you can make money out of this is by selling your services to local business perhaps with website development. In this case there is no real nead for complex billing software.

bigredshark · 18 May 2006 at 20:33

CoXeY said:
If your going down the Microsoft route then I think you will need to license the server under the Server Provider License Agreement (SPLA). I could be wrong (and i'm sure i'll be corrected if i am ) but I do not believe you can provide a hosted service for multiple end-users under the standard EULA - assuming you want this to be legit of course

Dan.

not for a web server, you'd only need the spla if you were selling CALS essentially, as a IIS box doesn't require that you don't need it